u/AfroChamp89--

Let’s start off by saying that the game had a lot of ideas that feel undercooked. The Psychic Powers was a gimmick I was actually enjoying since the beginning but later realized it was incredibly underutilized. Would’ve been nice if you could dismantle enemies with them or even stop and return projectiles all of that would’ve been awesome. The desert was also underutilized, it had good ideas to it like the shrines and the moments you encounter Tokabi, (who is my favorite of the cast btw) But it also felt like there was more to be desired. I actually enjoyed the desert and didn’t hate the crystal hunt nearly as much as others as I play RPG’s I’m used to grinding but I do think they could’ve done a lot more with Viola and the desert . Clearly it was an idea they had given up on and just decided to move on from. I also think they could’ve shaken up the enemy variet, it does feel rather lackluster, there’s really not a lot enemy types to fight like in Prime 1.

All that to say though…. this game’s good, it is Metroid Prime Through and Through, The world is so beautifully crafted, the music is great and alien like, like any other Metroid Prime game. I actually enjoyed riding around in the bike from place to place, getting chased by those spinning robots and. The bosses were fantastic. The characters were enjoyable to have around despite what everyone said I actually appreciated them. Everyone says this game holds your hand too much but tbh, as a person with an atrocious sense of direction I appreciated Miles’s presence. The bosses were super epic, really enjoyed every single one, the story was also fun to play through, and the characters I really appreciated. And despite all of the anger people have with the ending I’m actually more intrigued to figure out what happened. Whenever you get companion NPC’s in game that actually play along side you I always like that, while I do feel like this was also an idea that was undercooked, when it was there, it was done right

Overall Metroid Prime 4 is a Game that didn’t fully commit to the new ideas it was bringing into the Metroid Series which looks to be the result of so many different people from all over the industry handling Metroid for the very first time. This game started development troubled and then it was given to a new team that was formed within Retro Studio since all of the OG devs left over the years, it was impossible that this game wouldn’t have a single problem, but the overall gameplay, visuals and story are satisfying and fun to play through, boss fights were epic, music was great, the gameplay was solid and the visuals were fantastic.

The game has problems but it is regardless a good experience that has some unfinished plates but the ones that are finished are sparkly clean.

Solid 8/10

Even 3 months later Metroid Prime 4 has not cracked 1 million units on either Switch 1 or Switch 2. We know this because it didn’t show up on the latest yearly financial report ending the fiscal year. Now, according to a Nintendo representative the game did manage to sell 1 million units between Switch 1 & Switch 2.

Why did this game not sell 1 million on either console alone and yet Dread reached 3 million units alongside Prime remastered which did get to 1 million units? (and pretty quickly too) Let’s find out:

The hype died:

The game was revealed 8 years before it actually released and this I believe was the single biggest mistake Nintendo could’ve made and honestly it’s probably one of the reasons why they don’t reveal things until they are CERTAIN they’ll be coming out soon. The gap between reveal and release was huge, by the time it came out, the excitement had already died, many people who would’ve been interested in this game had already moved on to other games or releases over the years, they lost interest, they moved on and all you had left were the loyal fans once the game came out. On the contrary both Metroid Dread and Prime remastered had a very short window between reveal and release. Prime Remastered was shadow dropped, and Dread came out just a few months after it was officially revealed but with Prime 4’s absurdly large gap It’s easy to say Fans lost focus on the game over the years… which brings me to my next point.

Unfocused ideas:

I’ve been playing through the game, went by ice belt, now I’m heading back to the lava place, so far from my experience? This game is solid and fun, I’ve really been enjoying it, by the end credits I’m almost certain I’ll give it an 8/10 AT THE LOWEST. Considering the crazy development this game went through scrapping the old team entirely because development wasn’t going well, building a brand new team almost from scratch because most of the retro devs left over the years, I’m surprised this game turned out as good as it did… But if there’s one thing that Prime 4 has against it, it’s that it does not have a gimmick that is FULLY fleshed out. Metroid Dread had the Emmi that was the main gimmick and it was shown on the very first trailer, and they really went creative on that idea. Prime 4 on the other hand, has the Bike, The Desert, the Psychic powers, and the Galactic Federation, the game does not have a main gimmick. Think about Breath of the Wild’s Open World riddled with Shrines and Korok seeds or the Capture Mechanic from Odyssey, or the the School in Fire Emblem Three Houses. Prime 4 does not have a focused mechanic, it has a bunch of mechanics that neither are fully fleshed out to it’s maximum potential, this is not surprising consider you had a new team with different people that didn’t know each other working with the original director, some ideas are innevitably gonna clash. When your game is about EVERYTHING you’re really selling nothing, and selling takes me to my next point.

Marketing:

Before this game came out? the marketing was bare bones, Twitter started marketing the game way more after it came out. They were not treating this game like a holiday title they were treating it like a niche series marketing it very conservatively before release and then trying to do a last ditch effort to market it close to launch and after.… The trailers also didn’t have the same amount of hype that Dread had, in large part because the game didn’t have a focused mechanic to sell people on, but even then, the marketing was not consistent and the trailers that did come out before release should’ve had more effort put into them. Only Prime 1 was released before this game, 2 and 3 are still nowhere to be found. Heck according to rumors Nintendo tasked Retro with the Prime trilogy remastered but they only finished Prime 1, if Prime 4 was gonna come out 2 1/2 years after Prime remastered was released why didn’t they released the trilogy either that same year or the year prior? Nintendo basically released all mainline Pikmin games before Pikmin 4 was released, they used that to make people interest in the Pikmin franchise, they went bold with their ideas, Infact Nintendo even mentioned during one of the financial briefings that this was part of their strategy to grow and revitalize the I.P. That was not the case with Prime 4, they simply told players that Prime 4 was a completely new story and that they could jump right into it without playing the previous ones… Out of Pikmin 4 and Metroid Prime 4 guess who sold 3.4 million units… not Metroid.

Conclusions:

You might notice I make comparisons directly towards Dread, and that’s because both are on the same system, yet even Prime 4 being on both Switch 1 and 2 didn’t sell as much. Do I think that this is the end for the Metroid Prime series? No if anything the sales of Prime remastered and Dread show us that there is still huge interest in the Metroid series and even after the even bigger critical and commercial failure that was StarFox Zero Nintendo is still giving the series another shot and in a way that looks better than ever! The Short time period between reveal and release has even worked in its favor, the game is already the best selling game on Amazon even though it’s not even out yet. Everyone is talking about Star Fox all over Twitter and YouTube. I think that right now, it’s simply time to reconsider, take a step back, get together and see how the Metroid Franchise moves forward from here. Sometimes in life the best way to learn is the hard way, and if Nintendo takes the lessons they’ve learned from this experience, I think they can approach Metroid with a different strategy that works on its favor.

Ok so I bet a lot of people are angry about this, and that’s fine, like if you don’t like the art style that is totally valid, my first reaction was to laugh when I first saw them… but TBH? It’s growing on me man, the more I look at it, the more it just makes sense. I mean we already have like SOOOO many Nintendo games where the art style is either Cartoon or Anime… So having another realistic art style in the room besides Metroid Prime is nice NGL. The game also looks to be more on the humorous side of things and that art style fits it perfectly. I’m very pleased, I genuinely am. This is awesome and I cannot wait for June 25th.