What makes your favorite metroidvania your favorite?

Hello dear metroidvania community,

we are an aspiring indie game studio and as our first big game we want to create a metroidvania. Our goal as a studio is to create a flourishing community and take as much input as possible into account when creating the game. As we just started development, our community is still very small so we are coming to you guys for your help.

So please tell us what makes your favorite metroidvania games your favorite!
Is it the immersive world? Complex mechanics? Smooth Combat? Tell us what you love about your favorite games.

Thank you so, so much for you input, we can't wait to implement as much of your feedback as possible.

PS.: If you are interested in deeper conversations about our game specifically, feel free to join our discord and help shape the game from the beginning :)

Edit: Sorry for our long response time. We mistakenly posted this while attending an exhibition and didn’t anticipate so many detailed replies. While we can't respond to all of them, we assure you we’ll read every one (ikely more than once). Thank you so much for your input; it truly means a lot.