I have to say, I'm guilty of actually liking the game. I like the fact that Samus actually does talk. Yeah, her personality is the very stereotype of a girl... but she is a girl. What I can admit, is not liking her fear of Ridley, considering the game takes place after Super Metroid, but before Metroid Fusion. At that point, she has fought and beaten Ridley multiple times; in the original Metroid, she fought and beaten Ridley, and in the remake, Zero Mission, she fought and beaten a mechanical version of Ridley, so that technically two encounters. Then in the Metroid Prime games, she encounters Ridley in the first game once as Meta Ridley, and a second time on Noron in Metroid Prime 3, and again later in Prime 3 as Omega Ridley, so that's three more encounters there. Then you have Super Metroid, which precedes Other M; Ridley is encountered in the beginning, and if you dealt enough damage to him, he actually runs from Samus. Again, later in the game, she encounters Ridley in Norfair, so that's two total encounters with Ridley in Super Metroid. You add it all up, that's 7 encounters with Ridley in which she defeats him in all but the encounter at the beginning of Super Metroid.
Had Other M been either a remake or a prequel to the original Metroid, and they made Samus' reaction into that of a scared child, seeing the very being that slaughtered her planet - let alone devour her parents in front of her and taunt her for it - for the first time, then that would be believable. However, considering how many times she encountered Ridley and beaten him by the time Other M took place, I would've imagine her reaction being somewhere along the lines of "how many times do I have to kill this douche king?!". That's pretty much my only gripe with the game. I really don't have too much to complain about other than its cliché and sometimes cheesy story. I can forgive that fact, however, as the Metroid series were inspired by the Alien series of movies, which has now come to be recognized for its cheesiness and clichés. True, Alien wasn't cliché at the time, but in today's age, a lot of the elements in the Alien movies, if used now, will be cliché.