3rd run, still shy of the second ending
First run, I played blind, checking under every rock, bombing every wall, floor, and ceiling, wall jumping to get to places I shouldn't be at yet, spider balling across ceilings for great lengths of time only to be knocked down by some stupid flying thing that can somehow move behind the terrain I'm rolling on. Fighting bosses involved slowly adapting, with metroids being unpleasant to fight because I can't fire at a 30 degree angle or have a step to aim from. I was only missing a few things and looked up a map where I stared at every pixel, compared to the in-game map, trying to find what was missing. Was baffled by that shinespark puzzle in the upper right where I needed to see a video to learn that you could re-store your shinespark if you mash down as you hit an uphill slope. I felt stupid, thinking only that crusty rocky part on the top of the queen's head was the only vulnerable part, because of course you have to aim at something annoying.
Second run, I learned there was a launcher with more updates and could play in widescreen and New Game+ that let me explore without linear quake unlocks, so my fusion mode run was that way with those thick plant things and those apparently friendly bug creatures that sink into the dirt without protest if you stand on their heads. It was miserable. Everything could kill me, enemies knocked away more than an entire tank in one hit, and struggling against bosses like the Torizo only to die to the COVID thing that pops out because it has more iframes than normal enemies. I unexpectedly ran into progression issues by trying to go to areas that needed power bombs or super missiles and forgetting I could go around the weird bubble pillar things. I watched some videos and learned I could kill the Tester with a single power bomb.
I went back to normal NG+ for my last run and I felt fairly invincible, damage boosting my way through some bosses, skipping past save points and killing multiple metroids while I tried to quickly navigate and collect my stuff. I still got turned around a couple times, but it felt like a pretty efficient run. Maybe I could have shaved off 30 minutes if I knew exactly where I needed to go at any given time, but I'm not sure I could do a sub-two hour run for the best ending at 100%.
I'm going to take a break from the game, but I'm curious if anyone has some general advice to speeding up my runs in general. I get that I could just copy a speedrun video, but that doesn't sound horribly fun, and I can't even consistently jump morph spiderball onto a wall, let alone do crazy shinesparking every 5 seconds. I'd like to just play it casually without wasting time.