I mean, it's an SNES game... Of course it has basic visuals?
and bad movement/controls
Wha...? Super Metroid has one of the best, most responsive controls out of the SNES and platformers in general, especially compared to other Metroidvania types.
It had so many great ideas and the 'NES Glitches as gameplay' was quite brilliant. Some amazing 'keys' evolved the formula.
But the whiny protagonist and lame story were downers. Bad bosses and too many weapons too.
There were some cool aspects to Axiom Verge (I really like the fever dream stage, it's amazing), and I definitely liked that it didn't use the genre staple power-ups like double jump - the glitch gun in particular is cool - but the game has a lot of flaws. The boss fights, as you say, are very bad, and are definitely not helped by the weapon arsenal - there was some interesting guns in there, but honestly, I ended up using the same 2 or 3 weapons, most of which from the early game, all the time regardless because they were just so much better than the bizarre weapons you end up finding later on.
That said, I think my biggest issue with Axiom Verge, and pains me to say this because in a vacuum, the art direction is really awesome and I just adore how alien it is - is the visual overload.
I am red-weak colour blind, and I struggled every so often discerning foreground, destructible objects, enemies, projectiles, background and once you pick up the red coat, the player character. It doesn't help that the health bar also is red.
And even in the areas where that colour blindness didn't affect me, I found the visuals to be super busy way too often.
