u/onex7805

Just to give my credentials, Metroid Prime Hunters was my first Metroid game. I never finished it because I got stuck quite early on. I then played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I was too young to play it and didn’t understand the appeal, probably expecting it as a Halo on Wii, so I dropped it. Only when Super Metroid came to 3DS for $15 did I buy and fall in love with it. That was when I got into the series and played Metroid 2 (Gameboy), Metroid 1 (fan remake Planets), and Metroid: Zero Mission. By then, I got into the Metroidvania-style genre and sought games similar to its progression: Symphony of the Night, Arkham Asylum, the Resident Evil OG trilogy, Dark Souls, and… System Shock 2.

I didn’t play the Prime series, however, because it came across as an overwhelming giant of a series. That changed now after playing the Switch Remastered, which, as far as I am aware, is a well-received, faithful remaster that works as a modern replacement. I was enjoying the game well enough, but I kept waiting for the exact point where I understood where all the praises came from. That Metacritic score of 97. One of the greatest in the genre. And that point never came to me.

There was nothing that particularly blew my mind as much as its reputation suggested. I suppose, while I was playing it, this thought kept drumming in my mind: isn’t this just a worse version of System Shock 2? I don’t think Prime particularly does one thing better than the other games do. If you are looking for the raw Metroidvania appeal, the 2D games do better. If you are looking for the immersive quality, System Shock 2 does it better. As a result, Prime kind of sits in the middle spot where it doesn’t particularly stand out for me.

If you were to take it as a Metroid game, Metroid Prime is like Super Metroid, but everything is way more dragged out. Your movement is slow, and wherever you want to go, it takes like five times longer. In the 2D games, if you get the power-ups like speed booster, ledge grab, spin jump, it literally changes the game. Not only does it enhance the power fantasy from being nothing to a godlike superhero, it makes the latter half that largely consists of backtracking actually fun. The moment-to-moment gameplay dynamics are night and day. Jumping and spinning everywhere, looking for the powerups, trying to reach it is addicting. What were once threatening enemies become flies as you blast past them in a second. In Prime, the most game-changing power-up in terms of moment-to-moment dynamics is double jump. That’s it. If you show the first hour of Super Metroid and the last hour of Super Metroid, and then compare it to the same with Prime, Super Metroid looks literally like a different game, whereas Prime looks identical.

Scanning also slows the flow of the game. When you enter the area, you would expect the player to soak in the atmosphere and visuals of the new area. Instead, what the player does is just entering the scanning mode, which obscures 2/3 of the screen, to hunt for the yellow icon box because that is the most optimal way. This problem goes away in the second half once you have scanned most of the interactibles, but it ruins the first introduction of the new area. I don’t think it would be this bad if the scanning mode wasn’t covering the vision with the terrible UI. In addition, there are not many shortcuts or connective routes. The map often feels more like a cavern rather than a complex web. I already felt tired 2/3 into the game, but when the artifact hunt hit, I was struggling with my will to continue it. I would be fine with the artifact hunt if backtracking wasn’t tedious.

The enemy respawn is absolutely terrible. The enemy spawn system needs to have a sense of unpredictability and randomness to it, and only then, it won't feel like an artificial game design, but rather monsters that actually roam the map. Metroid Prime doesn't have that. Here, the levels keep respawning the same enemies within the same place and without enough time gap. It gets so bad when you are searching for the artifacts because the enemies appear once you are two rooms away. If you go back and forth in various places, you already know where the enemies will come from and prepare for it. Was it that difficult to make random enemies appear at random time intervals in random places? The 2D games have the same outdated enemy respawn system, but it’s not that big of a problem there since you can blast past them in two seconds and the nature of the 2D game fits better. When the 3D game that prioritizes more realistic immersion does this, it hampers the immersion.

What you ends up having is the worst part of the “3D realism” (the lack of moveset, combat options, slow pace), without the best part of the “3D realism”. Let’s take another example. While the game is undeniably immersive with diverse locations, but not in its functional gameplay. If you play the System Shock games, the true value of the level design there is that even if the levels are separated, they are not isolated places. Those games put them together to create a sense of them being enormous spaces. Items needed at the lab level are at the hospital level, and you have to go in and out of the warehouse from time to time for the necessary resources... Since everything is scattered, the game has the player keep walking around several levels, and you begin to feel all these levels are not separated, but an actual place.

Metroid Prime lacks this type of consistency that reinforces the immersion. The locations and settings may be varied, but don’t really affect the gameplay, other than being careful of the lava floor in the lava world. It doesn't come across as a living space, but a typical dungeon-type level structure for video game progression. It may be unfair to level this criticism since Metroid isn’t an RPG that has a diverse set of items, but at the very least, the power-up placements could have made more sense. The 2D games are arcadey and “gamey” that this isn’t a problem, but if you are making a fully 3D game with the supposed immersion, where the player is supposed to soak in the more fleshed out enviornments and ambience, it carries a different expectation.

With all this said, Prime is still a good game, just not the great one. It still has the well-retained Metroid appeal. The combat was surprisingly better than I expected considering this is the aspect that’s said to be the most outdated. I’m obviously playing the dual-stick control scheme introduced in the remaster, but the fundamental combat design is still that of the original: lock-on. Because the aiming is automated, the combat is more focused on mobility and dashing left and right to dodge projectiles. The player is forced to be aggressive, making quick decisions of switching to the different ammo types depending on the enemies. The combat loop is still basic, with no ammo management other than missiles and no close-quarter combat option like melee, but it is serviceable for the genre. Sprinting toward the save point with a few energy left is still tense as the 2D installments.

At the end, the game exhausted me in the worst possible way. It was not a pleasant experience when I thought I almost beat the game, then realized I had to collect all the artifacts. It was a game that loved to waste my time. I can appreciate it, and I liked it enough to beat it all the way, but I might not play the other Prime games if this is supposed to be the best one in the series.