Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Review

[Rxmonste]

The Legend of Metroid: A Link To The Past:

After playing Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, both of which I loved, I have finally played through and finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Here are my full thoughts of the game.

Story:

Let’s talk about the story, Metroid Prime 2’s story is different than the first game with some similar elements, it takes place after Prime 1, the game starts out with Samus hired by the galactic federation to go to a rogue planet called Aether which had some marines that called for an emergency signal. Aether’s atmosphere damages Samus’ gunship, leaving her stranded on Aether, with her initial objective being to find out what happened to the marines. Samus encounters Dark Samus, essentially the daughter of Metroid Prime if you will, come to avenge her dad’s death on the hands of Samus! seriously, though, she’s just the remains of Metroid Prime. Samus then she gets attacked by Darklings who hijack all of her items, ALL of them….except for the charge beam, Varia suit and Morph Ball, the game doesn’t have any heat based areas so the varia suit is purely cosmetic. She then proceeds to find that the marine troopers have been wiped out by the same darklings that attacked her, and then she encounters a Luminoth man called U-Mos, this NPC serves as the driving point of the story, giving Samus her objective and providing a lot of context to the world in a lengthy bit of exposition. Samus’ goal now is to restore power to Aether’s energy controllers so that she can gain access to the Sky Temple and take out Emperor Ing.

Graphics and Presentation:

Graphics and animations have been notably improved from the first game on a technical level, Samus’ model is fixed, no longer does it look jaggy a bit, it now looks all smoothed out, the game now has better cinematography than ever before, not that it was terrible in the first game, but cutscenes are now fully animated, even saving the game has it’s own animation. The game now has in-game dialogue unlike Prime 1 and it actually works well within the game. Dark Aether’s has a great post apocalyptic atmosphere feel to it, I heard some people complain that it makes Dark Aether’s graphics too repetitive and boring but I beg to differ, that’s the whole point of the game and it succeeded in that part. The UI however was very difficult for me to get used to at first, Prime’s menus were much cleaner and easier to navigate through. One thing the UI did greatly improve upon was the scan visor, it now highlights scannable objects by three different colors: Blue being unscanned, red being unscanned and important to progression and green being scanned.

Gameplay:

Now let’s talk about Prime 2’s gameplay which can easily be considered hit or miss for some people. This is considered to be the black sheep of the series, it’s gameplay structure deviates greatly from the first Prime game, now much more similar to Link To The Past than its prequel, Echoes plays around with LTTP’s light world, dark world mechanic, where the game is divided into two halves, light Aether and dark Aether. The game has a lot of returning powerups and a few new ones here and there. The Dark Beam is essentially a much faster Ice Beam, it freezes your enemies, making them vulnerable for some hilarious missile kills, in true Metroid style, its combo is the Darkburst, it’s an awesome looking and very powerful powerup that shoots a dark portal that absorbs the enemies’ HP like it’s nothing. The Light Beam is super effective against dark enemies, and can disintegrate them, it’s combo is the sunburst, a powerful yet quite slow attack that I rarely use. Then finally, there’s the annihilator beam which besides using it to open its doors, the only combat scenario I used it for was against the final boss, that’s how impractical I thought the weapon was, it uses both your light and dark ammo, its combo is the Sonic Boom which I just about never use because it’s too expensive for a combo that’s not much stronger than the previous ones.

Oh, by the way, there’s ammo in this game, a traditional thing in first person shooters yet it was completely unnecessary and very unfitting in a Metroid game in my opinion, managing missiles and beam ammo have gotten very cumbersome for me throughout my playthrough. Missiles are really enough, and the Beam weapons from the previous Metroid games were personally much more interesting and enjoyable for me. In Prime 1, none of the weapons felt obsolete because you would always encounter enemies that require different guns in order to defeat. But in this game, there was no reason for me to use the Dark Beam over the Light Beam unless I wanted to open Dark Doors or do a darkburst. The exception was the Ingmasher enemy and Emperor Ing who both required switching your beam weapons constantly, besides from that, there was no incentive for me to use the Annihilator beam due to its cost except for the occasional sound wave puzzle.

The Morph Ball in this game is utilized very well and has some really fun and clever puzzles to get through, overall, the puzzle design in this game is as great as ever, and at points, feels even better than before. The dark visor lets you see stuff invisible objects and enemies, and the Echo visor allows you to detect sound waves.

The gravity boost replaces the gravity suit and instead of just allowing you to walk better underwater but also gives you an ability to hover in the air underwater; Torvus Bog is the only region with water so this power is rather underutilized. Speaking of underutilized, the screw attack comes in very late in the game that you can’t experience its greatness well enough, the best improvement is that it’s no longer just a very powerful attack, it’s used for traversing the game’s world, too, and reaching area otherwise unreachable.

I consider this game to be overall not as strongly paced as the first Prime game, which is the biggest problem for me, one that hurts the replay value greatly. The game starts out with a strong opening sequence, not nearly as strong as its predecessor’s opening but it was good regardless. Then the game takes you to dark Aether and for the first hours of play, you will find yourself taking ridiculous amounts of damage by just standing in dark Aether, the only way to avoid damage is using light energy fields which not only prevent you from taking damage but also SLOWLY regenerates your HP which can be quite boring, you can shoot the light field with a light shot which powers it up to deal more damage to dark enemies, which is a great level design technique because it encourages players to save ammo by luring enemies to light fields and powering it up, but that doesn’t increase health regeneration speed, it’s incredibly slow and boring, I’ve never played a game where I had to sit there and wait for my health to refill for potentially more than 3 minutes if you have high enough energy (HP for non Metroid players.) It’s not until a bit later in the game when you obtain the dark suit which boosts Samus’ damage resistance but also significantly decreases the damage you take from dark Aether. There’s the point where the game becomes much more fun and overall more playable than before, now I can play the game without feeling constantly feeling stressed.

Now that the game picked the pace back up when you obtain the dark Suit, let’s talk about the game’s bosses. There are a lot more of them here, there’s almost a boss for every power up obtainable, most of the bosses have a gimmick where they use your power ups against you until you defeat them. I liked most of them, with the exception of the Boost Guardian, the Alpha Blogg and Grapple Guardian. My favorite bosses and some of my favorite moments in this game as a whole were Quadraxis, the Spider Guardian (Yes, I’m serious) and Emperor Ing. I didn’t have that much trouble with the spider guardian, in fact, I beat him on my first try, and perhaps that was because they made jumping easier with the Wii controls. Quadraxis was a masterful boss, why can’t we have other bosses this good in pretty much any FPS? Quadraxis is a fun and challenging boss that is a great test of skill and everything you learned in the game, he’s more complex than the final boss of the first game, nuff said. And I won’t spoil much about Emperor Ing, see for yourself. I also loved every boss fight against Dark Samus as she uses a lot of Samus’ signature skills.

And when you reach the late game part is when the game slows down once more and gets rather tedious because of the final mission objective. Collect the 9 Sky Temple keys. Before you take on Emperor Ing, you HAVE to do this. Oh, man, this mission was boring. And it killed the game’s pacing right there, this is why the replay value is hurt for me, besides the early hours with Dark Aether damage. This time around, you acquire the Light Suit which allows you to fast travel between energy controllers, go through rays of light, improve your defense once more and of course, completely negating all dark Aether damage, as well as damage taken from swimming in dark pools which is awesome. But that doesn’t change the fact that the reward for finding 9 temple keys is finding 9 more that are even harder to find this time around. Some would argue that the same criticism could be leveled against Prime 1 for finding the 12 Chozo artifacts, but the game instantly gave you hints on how to receive at least most of them. The thing here is when I killed the Omega Pirate in Prime 1, I already had about 80% of the Artifacts I had to collect. However, when I killed Quadraxis in Prime 2, I had literally just ONE sky temple key out of nine. This part of the game is just there to pad out the game’s length whereas in Prime 1, I didn’t even feel like it was there.

The Final Verdict:

All in all, my final impressions of Metroid Prime 2 is that it did some things better than its prequel and did some other things worse. The game’s fun factor had some really strong and really weak moments scattered throughout. Unlike Prime, which remained a consistently solid experience that I never got sick of. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Metroid Prime 2, it’s the sequel to what I consider to be the best first person shooter ever made, and I still adored the boss fights, I loved how they added more of them and made them feel varied. I feared that this game would feel too samey but in fact, it changed but perhaps changed too much for its own good, when I play Prime 3, I hope it expands on what the first game offered more than I would like it to be like another Prime 2. And heck, if it can manage to be a nice blend of the first two games, then that’s great. But bring back the weapon system from the first game, please. I will be taking a break from Metroid Prime Trilogy for the time being to play some other games and do some work. But I will hopefully be done with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption hopefully in the near future. One thing very much in common between Prime 1 and 2 is that I felt very satisfied when I reached the end. As disappointing as it felt at times, I still enjoyed this game. And that's enough for me to recommend it to Metroid Fans and FPS fans alike.

Here's a link to my review of Prime 1 if you're interested http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=52669

Edited May 6, 2015 by Rxmonste

[Ishi]

Ah metroid prime 2 such a great game.

Yeah when you play 3 your most likely going to prefer it over 2 that's typically how the fan base is MP>MP3>MP2.

MP2 has the dark world which is my reason for loving it above all the others.

[Zera]

Another good review. You should edit it to include a link to your Metroid Prime review and make some of the images smaller.

I would, however, like to comment on some of the problems you mentioned, as they are either subjective or can be mitigated.

The Ammo System

Hate running out of ammo? Then perhaps you ought to know that destroying enemies with the light beam restores dark ammo and vice versa. This also applies to item containers, which are easily destroyed by both weapons. In addition, ammo drops are proportional to your "need" like energy drops, so completely running out of ammo is nearly impossible for a good player.

The Annihilator Beam

I found the Annihilator Beam to be quite useful. While it does use twice as much ammo as the Light and Dark Beams, it's extremely effective against all enemies, light or dark, and it can fire nearly as fast as the Power Beam, making it one of the strongest beams in the entire Metroid series.

[Rxmonste]

Another good review. You should edit it to include a link to your Metroid Prime review and make some of the images smaller.

I would, however, like to comment on some of the problems you mentioned, as they are either subjective or can be mitigated.

The Ammo System

Hate running out of ammo? Then perhaps you ought to know that destroying enemies with the light beam restores dark ammo and vice versa. This also applies to item containers, which are easily destroyed by both weapons. In addition, ammo drops are proportional to your "need" like energy drops, so completely running out of ammo is nearly impossible for a good player.

Thanks for the suggestion and feedback, I try to keep my writing as smooth as I can. Despite living in the states, English is not my original language, sorry for any errors and or typos.

I knew that killing enemies with the opposite beam grants ammo, but it didn't always work, maybe ammo drops in hard mode are rarer? Or maybe they did drop and I didn't notice? I dunno.

But yeah, thanks for the feedback.

But most of all, thank you for understanding, I thought I was gonna get a lot of flak the moment I started writing this review, but so far, you guys respected my opinion, I don't hate the game. I'm very busy at the moment but soon enough, I'll get smaller images or resize them if possible.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Rxmonste

[Elieson]

Hey friend, remember me!

Metroid Prime II: Echoes is the black sheep of the entire Genre; that is, until Metroid: Other M came out. I can forgive Other M for trying something incredibly different and just struggling. I'm not as lenient with Echoes, for logical reasons.

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Story:

Let’s talk about the story, Metroid Prime 2’s story is different than the first game with some similar elements, it takes place after Prime 1, the game starts out with Samus hired by the galactic federation to go to a rogue planet called Aether which had some marines that called for an emergency signal. Aether’s atmosphere damages Samus’ gunship, leaving her stranded on Aether, with her initial objective being to find out what happened to the marines. Samus encounters Dark Samus, essentially the daughter of Metroid Prime if you will, come to avenge her dad’s death on the hands of Samus! seriously, though, she’s just the remains of Metroid Prime. Samus then she gets attacked by Darklings who hijack all of her items, ALL of them….except for the charge beam, Varia suit and Morph Ball, the game doesn’t have any heat based areas so the varia suit is purely cosmetic. She then proceeds to find that the marine troopers have been wiped out by the same darklings that attacked her, and then she encounters a Luminoth man called U-Mos, this NPC serves as the driving point of the story, giving Samus her objective and providing a lot of context to the world in a lengthy bit of exposition. Samus’ goal now is to restore power to Aether’s energy controllers so that she can gain access to the Sky Temple and take out Emperor Ing.

This is a pretty accurate synopsis of the game. If you're anything like me, you'll notice something very different about this game compared to Prime, that being U-Mos itself. His existence in the "plot" changes how the game is interpreted, which can generate mixed feelings to you, the player. If you've played any of the previous installments, you'll know that Metroid and Super Metroid just threw you onto a planet with nothing but your Power Beam and your wit. Prime did this too, with a toggle-switch on the game's equivalent of a "Help!" notification. Metroid II, Return of Samus gives you a mission; Kill all the Metroids. Not too unique or intricate, but it is one of the lesser appreciated games partly because of that and other reasons like clunkier controls, etc. In terms of chronological release, Fusion came out just before Prime (Two days earlier) and introduces a mechanic into the game that leaves you following orders constantly. Metroid Zero Mission is a rehash of the original Metroid (a fantastic game in my opinion), and introduces the Chozo system which similarly, provides you with a beacon as to where to go at any point in time. In this game, it's avoidable in most cases, so it's more of an optional help.

Metroid Prime II and Metroid Fusion both function differently from the franchise in that for the first time, your hand is being constantly held throughout the majority of the game. Newer players in the series may not be too concerned with this, but a large reason of the series's popularity has always been having a gorgeously created world to explore at your own pace and own accord. Prime and Zero Mission let you disable the prompt to remind you as to where to go, and Return of Samus just has a checklist that you can grow to ignore as you're not constantly reminded of what to do. I personally took a hit in the heart with this gameplay feature, and is part of the game's Black Sheep reputation. You're not being taken to a new world to explore, you're being taken to a new world with an itinerary. That's an incredibly different feeling, but I'll cover that more in a bit.

Graphics and Presentation:

Graphics and animations have been notably improved from the first game on a technical level, Samus’ model is fixed, no longer does it look jaggy a bit, it now looks all smoothed out, the game now has better cinematography than ever before, not that it was terrible in the first game, but cutscenes are now fully animated, even saving the game has it’s own animation. The game now has in-game dialogue unlike Prime 1 and it actually works well within the game. Dark Aether’s has a great post apocalyptic atmosphere feel to it, I heard some people complain that it makes Dark Aether’s graphics too repetitive and boring but I beg to differ, that’s the whole point of the game and it succeeded in that part. The UI however was very difficult for me to get used to at first, Prime’s menus were much cleaner and easier to navigate through. One thing the UI did greatly improve upon was the scan visor, it now highlights scannable objects by three different colors: Blue being unscanned, red being unscanned and important to progression and green being scanned.

I cannot argue with this, the cinematography is more gorgeous and the Gamecube is really pushed to its limits with this game's beautifully animated scenes. Menus are smooth and the scan visor's addition of a third color allows you as the player to more easily find what's important to the game and what's important to the atmosphere, giving you the ability to prioritize your own scan policies. It's a nice touch. Beams operate nicely and the game's HUD is among the most organized in any franchise.

You're right and wrong about the appeal of Dark Aether though (in my opinion anyway). Aether and Dark Aether are similar worlds, much like A Link to the Past, but the Post-Apocalyptic Atmosphere that you described does detract from the beauty of the world because of such strong similarities between regions and areas within regions. Many of the areas within Sky Temple/Dark Sky Temple and Agon Wastes/Dark Agon Wastes are fairly similar and many areas of Torvus Bog/Dark Torvus Bog are difficult to distinguish. That's where the problem lies in the game's setting. When areas of the game lose memorability because you can't remember what makes it special, then that detracts from the ability to enjoy the world that you're in, especially when you're transitioning from Metroid Prime and with the exception of early Phazon Mines and two stretches of Norfair, have not been given the challenge of noting each area by more than just it's location on your mini-map. If the world were not coated in purple and the difference in enemies between areas been a bit more diverse, you would probably remember virtually all of the game's areas, monotonous or not.

Gameplay:

Now let’s talk about Prime 2’s gameplay which can easily be considered hit or miss for some people. This is considered to be the black sheep of the series, it’s gameplay structure deviates greatly from the first Prime game, now much more similar to Link To The Past than its prequel, Echoes plays around with LTTP’s light world, dark world mechanic, where the game is divided into two halves, light Aether and dark Aether.

Now comes the meat of the game. You're absolutely correct. The Alternate World coexisting with the Original World is an underexplored gameplay mechanic and this game does push that out there. Where the first game was all about world exploration, this game is about exploring two large worlds instead of one super large world. That being said, the environments between the worlds feel a bit more uninspired compared to the other games. Fans of the series are probably used to the Fire area, the Snow/Ice area, the Nature area, the Water area and the "Normal" area being staples of the game's worldset. Prime II provides you with a Normal area which acts more like a HUB that you realistically traverse through at any point to get from one to the next. The idea of a HUB dates back to wonderful games like Super Mario 64 where, there lie within it all sorts of unique methods of world access. Spyro, Banjo-Kazooie, even Metroid Zero Mission handle the seperation of sections better than others, or in more unique ways. Prime II falls short in this delivery because the HUB "Temple Grounds" is just plain boring. You'll find yourself getting disoriented with the segmented rooms that have two-three room hallways seperating each tunnel from one of the three worlds you'll explore (that being, the Desert world, the Water world and the City world). Going back and forth between regions? The game's near-identical hallway system makes it difficult to navigate even in its simplicity. With a less than impressive overworld management system, you're stuck relying on some strange demands as a player.

Coming from the south, you'll enter the main Hub, which brings you to the center room, and then your obvious transition from area to area. The funny thing is that each "Temple Transport A/B/C" section takes you to

The same area. From the Temple Grounds, you'll find yourself junctioning from region to region, but is this really enjoyable? You're nearing completion of the game and stoically running around to gather powerups from section to section using the primary path given to you by the game's U-Mos, and to differentiate each area from the next, you go through one barren mountain area through the temple transporter, back to the barren mountain area before making your way to the actual region you are attempting to get to. The elevator cutscenes to bring you back and forth are tedious as you need to:

Exit the area you want to leave

Return to the elevator room

Ride the elevator back up to the Great Temple

Watch the cutscene

Run from your area to another area (Not labelled Torvus Bog Transport, but labelled Temple Transport B, for instance)

Walk to the elevator through the hallways

Get on the Elevator

Watch the cutscene

Leave the elevator room

Meander around an area that looks pretty strikingly similar to the area in which you started at 9 steps ago

Hope that you remembered that you meant to follow your Mini-Map to area B or C or A correctly, otherwise you're redoing those steps and going to the other poorly named elevator shaft

It's tedious, and draws attention from the gameplay and world enjoyment when you're constantly being thrust through the same time consuming process. You'll spend roughly 3-4 minutes rushing from the base of one elevator to the other. That's a lot of time, especially when compared to other games in the franchise. It's not fun.

While the worlds are crafted nicely and add to the atmosphere of the game, their overall similarity detracts from the memorability, making the game less enjoyable simply by being not as enjoyable as what you know could have existed. Three worlds that you play through twice does not make six worlds.

The game has a lot of returning powerups and a few new ones here and there. The Dark Beam is essentially a much faster Ice Beam, it freezes your enemies, making them vulnerable for some hilarious missile kills, in true Metroid style, its combo is the Darkburst, it’s an awesome looking and very powerful powerup that shoots a dark portal that absorbs the enemies’ HP like it’s nothing. The Light Beam is super effective against dark enemies, and can disintegrate them, it’s combo is the sunburst, a powerful yet quite slow attack that I rarely use. Then finally, there’s the annihilator beam which besides using it to open its doors, the only combat scenario I used it for was against the final boss, that’s how impractical I thought the weapon was, it uses both your light and dark ammo, its combo is the Sonic Boom which I just about never use because it’s too expensive for a combo that’s not much stronger than the previous ones.

Oh, by the way, there’s ammo in this game, a traditional thing in first person shooters yet it was completely unnecessary and very unfitting in a Metroid game in my opinion, managing missiles and beam ammo have gotten very cumbersome for me throughout my playthrough. Missiles are really enough, and the Beam weapons from the previous Metroid games were personally much more interesting and enjoyable for me. In Prime 1, none of the weapons felt obsolete because you would always encounter enemies that require different guns in order to defeat. But in this game, there was no reason for me to use the Dark Beam over the Light Beam unless I wanted to open Dark Doors or do a darkburst. The exception was the Ingmasher enemy and Emperor Ing who both required switching your beam weapons constantly, besides from that, there was no incentive for me to use the Annihilator beam due to its cost except for the occasional sound wave puzzle.

You left out the new Seeker Missile, which is a pretty situationally dependent weapon powerup. The Seeker Missile is an up to 5-missile Lock On that's needed to open a handful of doors and defeat (only one) boss. It's nice in theory, but is really a tool meant for minimal world exploration and is underexplored as your missiles are so rarely needed and you cannot lock multiple missiles onto the same enemy unless they have multiple segmented areas and/or weak spots. You'll grow to love what it could have become and leave disappointed with what you were given, granted the good puzzle that you need to complete to acquire it in the first place.

You've just outlined the overwhelming uselessness of the Alternate weapons' Super Modes which highlights the frustration that the game offers you with weapons. You have 6 alternate beam weapons (Dark/Light/Annihilator+Missile variants of each) and you yourself explained how frustrating it is to use and micromanage them. Annihilator is a glorified key that hurts the final boss with Super Effective damage. Darkburst and Sunburst are neat but when you find yourself in the game, you're not going to actually use them. Bosses have more Energy than ever and prefer to be handled with better ammo management, and overworld enemies are so easy bar Hunter Metroids that you will rarely even be charging your alternate beams.

Ammo acquisition is bad because other than the few Resupply Stations scattered about the game (Three I recall, plus your ship?) You're not likely to refill your beam ammo rationally. Think of it like this: you have 100 Dark Beam shots, and enemies take say, 6 to kill, yielding 5 Light Beam shots. Usually. There are weaker enemies that are thrown into the game specifically for this that die in one hit to the alternate Beams and give back 5 of the opposite beam. What this means is that after 20 shots, you're probably refilling an empty alternate beam. The game gives you fewer Beam refills based on the amount of ammo you currently have, though, so Max'ing out your Beam Ammunition becomes a chore as you must keep using one to refill the other. It's time consuming. It's sluggish. It's not fun to sit there for 5 minutes and refill your Dark Beam because you think you'll need it ahead and you really won't.

The Morph Ball in this game is utilized very well and has some really fun and clever puzzles to get through, overall, the puzzle design in this game is as great as ever, and at points, feels even better than before. The dark visor lets you see stuff invisible objects and enemies, and the Echo visor allows you to detect sound waves.

The gravity boost replaces the gravity suit and instead of just allowing you to walk better underwater but also gives you an ability to hover in the air underwater; Torvus Bog is the only region with water so this power is rather underutilized. Speaking of underutilized, the screw attack comes in very late in the game that you can’t experience its greatness well enough, the best improvement is that it’s no longer just a very powerful attack, it’s used for traversing the game’s world, too, and reaching area otherwise unreachable.

Gravity Boost was terrible as it only helped you in Torvus Bog and gave you no additional armour like it did in every other game ever. Fortunately, you collect Dark and Light suits which do offer Armour, so it's difficult to really interpret this one way or the other. The Screw Attack can only let you traverse the world in Forward or Backwards. It is not an brilliant exploration tool because you cannot move Left/Right, and you can barely control Ascending/Descending. The Morph Ball and it's fellow powerups are always a pleasure to use, and the usefulness of the Echo visor is better than the previous installment's Xray Visor. It's worth the grab.

I consider this game to be overall not as strongly paced as the first Prime game, which is the biggest problem for me, one that hurts the replay value greatly. The game starts out with a strong opening sequence, not nearly as strong as its predecessor’s opening but it was good regardless. Then the game takes you to dark Aether and for the first hours of play, you will find yourself taking ridiculous amounts of damage by just standing in dark Aether, the only way to avoid damage is using light energy fields which not only prevent you from taking damage but also SLOWLY regenerates your HP which can be quite boring, you can shoot the light field with a light shot which powers it up to deal more damage to dark enemies, which is a great level design technique because it encourages players to save ammo by luring enemies to light fields and powering it up, but that doesn’t increase health regeneration speed, it’s incredibly slow and boring, I’ve never played a game where I had to sit there and wait for my health to refill for potentially more than 3 minutes if you have high enough energy (HP for non Metroid players.) It’s not until a bit later in the game when you obtain the dark suit which boosts Samus’ damage resistance but also significantly decreases the damage you take from dark Aether. There’s the point where the game becomes much more fun and overall more playable than before, now I can play the game without feeling constantly feeling stressed.

Now that the game picked the pace back up when you obtain the dark Suit, let’s talk about the game’s bosses. There are a lot more of them here, there’s almost a boss for every power up obtainable, most of the bosses have a gimmick where they use your power ups against you until you defeat them. I liked most of them, with the exception of the Boost Guardian, the Alpha Blogg and Grapple Guardian. My favorite bosses and some of my favorite moments in this game as a whole were Quadraxis, the Spider Guardian (Yes, I’m serious) and Emperor Ing. I didn’t have that much trouble with the spider guardian, in fact, I beat him on my first try, and perhaps that was because they made jumping easier with the Wii controls. Quadraxis was a masterful boss, why can’t we have other bosses this good in pretty much any FPS? Quadraxis is a fun and challenging boss that is a great test of skill and everything you learned in the game, he’s more complex than the final boss of the first game, nuff said. And I won’t spoil much about Emperor Ing, see for yourself. I also loved every boss fight against Dark Samus as she uses a lot of Samus’ signature skills.

The game is truly stressful to play, especially on a first playthrough, when the game forces you to trek through poison before you get virtually any powerup at all. Regeneration is slow and eventual ammo replenishment is slow. The game starts off stressful and becomes a cakewalk. This is not the essence of good game design and balance.

Metroid does its bosses well, no denying that. Boost Guardian is an exercise in time/stress management, as you're given not a time limit, but you're doing it in Dark World with no Light beacons to restore/maintain your energy. You can't afford to be reckless. In my opinion, it's fun because of how the game handles it. It's unforgiving for a first attempt in many cases, so I can't say it's a great boss fight by any means, but I appreciate the attempt behind it. It's not a nice boss to more casual players. Quadraxis is a well designed boss, and reminds me in tactics and skill of how to approach Thardus in Metroid Prime. It's too bad that the series' staple, Ridley, was scrapped from inclusion in the game.

And when you reach the late game part is when the game slows down once more and gets rather tedious because of the final mission objective. Collect the 9 Sky Temple keys. Before you take on Emperor Ing, you HAVE to do this. Oh, man, this mission was boring. And it killed the game’s pacing right there, this is why the replay value is hurt for me, besides the early hours with Dark Aether damage. This time around, you acquire the Light Suit which allows you to fast travel between energy controllers, go through rays of light, improve your defense once more and of course, completely negating all dark Aether damage, as well as damage taken from swimming in dark pools which is awesome. But that doesn’t change the fact that the reward for finding 9 temple keys is finding 9 more that are even harder to find this time around. Some would argue that the same criticism could be leveled against Prime 1 for finding the 12 Chozo artifacts, but the game instantly gave you hints on how to receive at least most of them. The thing here is when I killed the Omega Pirate in Prime 1, I already had about 80% of the Artifacts I had to collect. However, when I killed Quadraxis in Prime 2, I had literally just ONE sky temple key out of nine. This part of the game is just there to pad out the game’s length whereas in Prime 1, I didn’t even feel like it was there.

This game goes from Tedious and Stressful, to Easy, back to Tedious, and never ever becomes convenient or grants a natural flow of game progression to the player. Metroid Prime rewarded you for using your Scan Visor and exploring every Nook and Cranny with random Chozo Artifacts. Upon the end of my first playthrough, I had only missed one Chozo Artifact (the one in Norfair right near the start where you missile the pillar in the Lava room). You're absolutely right about this...we are talking about the same game right?

The Final Verdict:

All in all, my final impressions of Metroid Prime 2 is that it did some things better than its prequel and did some other things worse. The game’s fun factor had some really strong and really weak moments scattered throughout. Unlike Prime, which remained a consistently solid experience that I never got sick of. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Metroid Prime 2, it’s the sequel to what I consider to be the best first person shooter ever made, and I still adored the boss fights, I loved how they added more of them and made them feel varied. I feared that this game would feel too samey but in fact, it changed but perhaps changed too much for its own good, when I play Prime 3, I hope it expands on what the first game offered more than I would like it to be like another Prime 2. And heck, if it can manage to be a nice blend of the first two games, then that’s great. But bring back the weapon system from the first game, please. I will be taking a break from Metroid Prime Trilogy for the time being to play some other games and do some work. But I will hopefully be done with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption hopefully in the near future. One thing very much in common between Prime 1 and 2 is that I felt very satisfied when I reached the end. As disappointing as it felt at times, I still enjoyed this game. And that's enough for me to recommend it to Metroid Fans and FPS fans alike.

Prime II is a good game if you can look past the oodles of flaws in game design that made the franchise great to begin with. It was certainly different, with the introduction of an alternate plane and removing staples that have existed in Metroid since the dawn of time. Playing and beating this game gives you different feelings. With Prime you would get a powerup or artifact and be like "Oh woah cool, an artifact. That's neat." while in Prime II you would find yourself saying "Ahh fucking finally, the key". That phrase sums up the game for me and many others, and I hope that the above clarifies as to why, effectively.

I guess Ridley was too big for this one after all.

[Rxmonste]

You left out the new Seeker Missile, which is a pretty situationally dependent weapon powerup. The Seeker Missile is an up to 5-missile Lock On that's needed to open a handful of doors and defeat (only one) boss. It's nice in theory, but is really a tool meant for minimal world exploration and is underexplored as your missiles are so rarely needed and you cannot lock multiple missiles onto the same enemy unless they have multiple segmented areas and/or weak spots. You'll grow to love what it could have become and leave disappointed with what you were given, granted the good puzzle that you need to complete to acquire it in the first place.

I'm sorry, there were some parts of the game that I forgot to jot down notes for. My opinion of the seeker missiles is just about the same as yours.

You also mentioned Temple Grounds, that's another thing that was inferior in this game than the first one, I cannot for the life of me remember the amount of times I had to open up the temple grounds map! It was extremely confusing and repetitive, whereas in Prime 1, it took me TWO trips along Tallon Overworld and I never got lost afterwards, until it expanded later in the story, but I got used to that quickly, too. My biggest complaint about Temple Grounds is that the gunship is too far away from the great temple, and every time I came back from a trip from Torvus Bog, Agon Wastes or Sanctuary Fortress, I wanted to refill my ammo which means backtracking from the great temple ALL the way to the landing site. In Prime 1, the gunship was right in the middle of Tallon Overworld for crying out loud. And with Beam Ammo in this game, refills need to be done more frequently than ever before.

Another thing I also wanted to complain about was the Dark Pirate Commandos, dear lord....remember my opinion on the Chozo Ghosts from Prime 1?

The Chozo ghosts are just the worst enemies in the game, they respawn too frequently and can sometimes be a bitch to take down due to their ninja skillz, cloaking and insane warping that can be annoying to deal with at least until you grab the X-Ray visor which will allow you to go to town on these punks.

These are essentially a much worse version of them, anything other than light shots is almost ineffective against them.

[BrightBow]

Another thing I also wanted to complain about was the Dark Pirate Commandos, dear lord....remember my opinion on the Chozo Ghosts from Prime 1?

These are essentially a much worse version of them, anything other than light shots is almost ineffective against them.

I think they can still be frozen with the Dark Beam. On the other hand, those darn Chozo Ghosts could only be hurt with the regular Power Beam.

While we are on it, I don't think those reused assets were directly addressed yet. There are the Pirate Commandos, the Ingsmashers in the fortress, every single Beam Weapon is a palette swap of a MP1 weapon and the similar properties of the projectiles themselves aren't helping... well, not that reused assets are necessarily bad but I think when two totally unrelated things somehow behave exactly the same way like the Ghosts and Commandos, it's just really weird.

Edited May 5, 2015 by BrightBow

[kirbymastah]

I skimmed through the review and I agree that it's definitely done some things better than mp1, and some things worse. It's a more hit or miss game, as opposed to prime 1 which is more consistent but also plays it safer (for good reason, since it was the first prime game).

With the common notion for the ammo system, while I understand people disliking it, it is something different that retro tried out, and it works fine. It gives another depth of managing your beams, because the dark and light beam are absurdly powerful (uncharged light shot does more damage than a missile, on a dark enemy. uncharged dark shot does as much damage as a missile on a light enemy. just FYI). It's also the balancing factor for annihilator beam, since (you're wrong about this) it's easily the most powerful beam in the game, with a ridiculous amount of DPS when firing uncharged shots that also homes and is practically rapid fire. It's only weakness is the fact that it drains your ammo. Fun fact though, a charged annihilator shot does less neutral damage than a charged light beam shot :P it's pretty crappy.

The problem with the ammo system, in my opinion, is that the game gives you drops depending on your current capacity. Once you understand how drops work, you'll basically never be low on ammo. For example, if you're below 20% of dark ammo and you fire a cache with light beam, you're basically guaranteed to get a 30-ammo dark drop (and vice versa). Knowing this, ammo will never be an issue, so there's really no point in using power beam aside from using super missiles.

I also dislike the beam combos, since they're all rather impractical besides super missiles. Sunburst is way too slow to be practical, Sonic Boom is a complete drain on your ammo. The problem with the beam combos is with the ammo you use for the combos, you can accomplish way more damage with just uncharged/charged shots in almost the same amount of time. Charged dark beam will basically OHKO anything that's a light enemy and/or is a pirate. Why bother with darkburst then?

As for the areas in the game, personally this is my favorite prime game, but I do admit it's a more hit/miss. I love torvus and sanctuary to death, and they're very unique. Temple grounds is pretty cool too IMO, though agon wastes is rather bland. As opposed to prime 1, where it has more variety in its areas that are mostly equally lovable, but none of them really go far out of their way to really WOW you, compared to prime 2's sanctuary fortress.

Some people really liked the concept of the dark world, like in Zelda: LttP. What echoes does well here, is enforcing the atmosphere of danger. You are constantly in danger, constantly have to watch your health, constantly panicking (at least when you're unfamiliar with the game). Some people complain that you have to wait in force fields to restore health; this is not the game's fault. This is the player's choice to wait in energy fields until they're at full health; the game gives you caches in practically every room of the dark world for you to farm health from. What I (and most people) dislike about the dark world is that it sorta expands how big the game is, lazily, and it shows if you go out of bounds in certain rooms, that a lot of the geometry is simply copy and pasted. During my first few playthroughs, you're not exactly exploring much new :\

Anyways, that's my take on the common complaints for echoes. It's certainly a flawed game but it's still freaking awesome. I wouldn't say prime 1 or 2 is outright better than the other persay, since they both do thing better than the other game.

[Zera]

@Sara: Your post is bigger than a level 99 Wailord, I'll comment on what I read.

U-Mos steals your "lone explorer" atmosphere

I don't think U-Mos significantly changes the atmosphere of the game. All he really does is remind you of your world-saving mission between areas; you still have to explore each area on your own.

Traveling between areas through Temple Grounds

There are some rather delicious shortcuts between the areas that can cut travel time if you know where they are, so you don't always have to travel through Temple Grounds.

Keeping ammo maxed / restoring health in beacons is time consuming

Nobody says you need max ammo or health to stay alive. Any extra time you consume to refill your resources is your decision, not the game's. It's a skill vs patience decision, similar to risk vs reward.

The game starts off stressful and becomes a cakewalk

When did this happen?

@Kirbymastah: Are you the one in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TbkToNfPJo

Edited May 5, 2015 by Zera

[NinjaMonkey]

Why are we reviewing old video games, exactly? Is this some kind of newfangled internet fad that is all the rage, or something?

Edited May 5, 2015 by NinjaMonkey

[Zera]

Why are we reviewing old video games, exactly? Is this some kind of newfangled internet fad that is all the rage, or something?

Yes. We are very newfangled. Assimilate.

Would you believe that there are people who haven't played these wonderful games? Someone must spread word of their greatness, so that they may be enjoyed by a newer generation.

[Elieson]

@Sara: Your post is bigger than a level 99 Wailord, I'll comment on what I read.

U-Mos steals your "lone explorer" atmosphere

I don't think U-Mos significantly changes the atmosphere of the game. All he really does is remind you of your world-saving mission between areas; you still have to explore each area on your own.

Traveling between areas through Temple Grounds

There are some rather delicious shortcuts between the areas that can cut travel time if you know where they are, so you don't always have to travel through Temple Grounds.

Keeping ammo maxed / restoring health in beacons is time consuming

Nobody says you need max ammo or health to stay alive. Any extra time you consume to refill your resources is your decision, not the game's. It's a skill vs patience decision, similar to risk vs reward.

The game starts off stressful and becomes a cakewalk

When did this happen?

Regarding U-Mos

You're forced to have the world explained to you. This isn't a bad thing, but it's forced. Prime gave you the scan visor and the ability to completely handle access to the story. Why was this necessary? In Metroid, you're just exploring a planet and blowing up baddies because it's your job as a bounty hunter and all. Metroid II you're blowing up Metroids and ok cool, that's your mission. Super Metroid, you're given a bit of story at the beginning to explain what you missed and what's happening now and that's it. The world you explore isn't interrupted by a story about a dying world or villains. You just know that you're on a hostile planet with a mission to get your Metroid back. The game didn't even tell you "I have to follow Ridley to SR-388 and get that baby back!" You just do it. In Prime, you just arrive and go about your business. With U-Mos in MPII, so much of what you do requires you to use him as a checkpoint, so to speak. You need to talk to the guy what, more than 5 times throughout the game. Why do you need to talk to him? Why can't you just explore the world that you're in? You're limited to explore the world at the pace of which is dicated to you by U-Mos.

The "shortcuts" are still tedious to get to. Look at the map; there's one shortcut through to SancFortress. That Service Access is tough to get to for a while. They're delicious but still time consuming because of your walk speed.

I guess you can say that. However, in a game in which you're taking damage for about 3/5 of it, a player is normally going to play a bit more cautiously, because in Dark Aether, you're actually being punished for exploring recklessly until you get the Light Suit. Keeping your Ammo refilled is more of an issue because if you want to do it, it's stupidly time consuming. The game lacks an efficient way for the player to take as few risks as possible in Dark Aether. Early on, you're cautious when playing for the first time.

Considering your PoV on Super Metroid's missile tanks expansions on first time playthroughs, I figured you would sympathize with the idea of a confusing start in a game where the world eats you alive and you don't know where the heck you're going. The game becomes a cakewalk after the Dark Suit (with the exception of Boost Guardian IMO) because you can so easily maintain your health by playing intelligently, which you know how to do by now. Overworld navigation can be a bit of a pain with the complaints I've already addressed, but you become pretty hard to kill when you actually know what you're doing. The Dark Beam isn't necessary but it's generally overkill, and the Power Beam is useful enough if you are capable of firing it fast enough/maintaining a charge beam which is not a challenge.

[Zera]

You're forced to have the world explained to you. This isn't a bad thing, but it's forced.....You need to talk to the guy what, more than 5 times throughout the game.....You're limited to explore the world at the pace of which is dicated to you by U-Mos.

It's not like Super Metroid and Metroid Prime didn't have mandatory story elements. In Super Metroid, your motivation for exploring Zebes is to find the baby metroid. In Metroid Prime, your motivation for exploring Tallon IV is to hunt down Ridley and the Space Pirates. In Metroid Prime 2, your motivation for exploring Light and Dark Aether is to prevent the Ing from conquering the galaxy. See? They're not as different as you think. The biggest difference, as far as I can tell, is that Metroid Prime 2 has dialogue.

If U-Mos didn't explain the stakes and open up just one area at a time, player's might have been unmotivated, or worse, confused. The world itself (both of it) is more complex than the one in Metroid Prime, after all. I believe the story of Prime 2 only improves the game. I do wonder, though, just how different the game would be if all three main areas were open from the start.

Also, I don't recall talking to U-Mos 5+ times. You might be confusing him with the other Luminoth, represented by holograms in the energy temples.

Considering your PoV on Super Metroid's missile tanks expansions on first time playthroughs, I figured you would sympathize with the idea of a confusing start in a game where the world eats you alive and you don't know where the heck you're going.

I have no idea how Missile expansions relate to Dark Aether. You truly lost me there. But yes, I enjoyed the early-game Dark Aether. It was so unique to be on a planet so evil that even the air itself hates you. Jumping between beacons and planning my next move felt very methodical, strategic even. It was a great way to really shake things up and make the world feel more threatening. While it would have been nice if the beacons restored your health a tad faster, I feel that the Dark World concept itself was executed splendidly.

[kirbymastah]

@Kirbymastah: Are you the one in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TbkToNfPJo

Yep same guy, also the same guy that commentated for miles's metroid prime runs :P

Also to refer to the point about shortcuts, the three main areas have plenty of shortcuts/paths to take to navigate pretty well, at least in the light world. Of course, this can also be a bad thing - having too many paths can make the area seem more convoluted (which I would say Upper Torvus leans towards). The dark world is pretty disconnected though, but usually there isn't as much incentive to travel through the dark world when you're completely lost. I will say though, temple grounds can be a pain to navigate since it's basically one huge circle, where the only paths through the middle require you to go through Great Temple (and the transport access names A/B/C certainly don't help there either)

IMO you're really exaggerating the U-Mos issue. The majority of the time you're talking to holograms left by past luminoth. You talk to U-Mos about 4 times in the game - start, after agon, after torvus, and after sanctuary. Each time, he basically tells you that you need to find the next major area. I see people complain that this is just like metroid fusion, but really this is completely wrong; the luminoth pretty much never tell you exactly what to do, they basically say "Ok, go to this area and have fun and explore". I can understand if you don't like the concept of having to interact with NPCs in a metroid game, since a lot of people think it's very un-metroid-y and removes the feeling of isolation. I personally think there's plenty of isolation in the game, since you seldom talk to the luminoth anyways, and there's still plenty to scan to learn about the world around you.

I also think it's a little unfair to make a direct comparison about the dialogue with metroid prime. Echoes needs some sort of explanation about the dark world and your goal; otherwise players will be like "wait, why am I taking damage in the dark world? What is this dark world I'm suddenly thrown in?" Is it too much? That's sorta up to opinion, but IMO not too much at all. If you think this is bad though, you should not be looking forward to Corruption since that game takes the dialogue too far :P tl;dr while disliking the dialogue in the game is sort of a valid criticism (though again, down to opinion), I do think you're exaggerating it.

As for keeping your ammo replenished, why would it take stupidly long? There are caches in practically every room in the game. Just shoot it with light/dark beam. Done. If you're not getting that many drops, well that means your ammo count is already high, and that's on you for trying to keep it so full. That's not the fault of the ammo system; if you're claiming that's a fault, then you should be claiming that it's a fault of the game to not give you missile/power bomb drops the same way as well (which, by the way, is harder to keep full than beam ammo). Drops in this game are more likely if you currently are low on that corresponding ammo.

Edited May 6, 2015 by kirbymastah

[Zera]

Yep same guy, also the same guy that commentated for miles's metroid prime runs :P

Excellent. It's nice to have someone with in-depth knowledge of the game comment here. By the way, am I the only person who dislikes the Alpha Blogg more than the Boost and Spider Guardians?

.....let’s talk about the game’s bosses.....Quadraxis was a masterful boss, why can’t we have other bosses this good in pretty much any FPS? Quadraxis is a fun and challenging boss that is a great test of skill and everything you learned in the game, and he’s more complex than the final boss of the first game.

[spoiler=My Opinion of Quadraxis]

You should try Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. Basically, every single boss is as good as Quadraxis.

[Elieson]

Yep same guy, also the same guy that commentated for miles's metroid prime runs :P

IMO you're really exaggerating the U-Mos issue. The majority of the time you're talking to holograms left by past luminoth. You talk to U-Mos about 4 times in the game - start, after agon, after torvus, and after sanctuary. Each time, he basically tells you that you need to find the next major area. I see people complain that this is just like metroid fusion, but really this is completely wrong; the luminoth pretty much never tell you exactly what to do, they basically say "Ok, go to this area and have fun and explore". I can understand if you don't like the concept of having to interact with NPCs in a metroid game, since a lot of people think it's very un-metroid-y and removes the feeling of isolation. I personally think there's plenty of isolation in the game, since you seldom talk to the luminoth anyways, and there's still plenty to scan to learn about the world around you.

I also think it's a little unfair to make a direct comparison about the dialogue with metroid prime. Echoes needs some sort of explanation about the dark world and your goal; otherwise players will be like "wait, why am I taking damage in the dark world? What is this dark world I'm suddenly thrown in?" Is it too much? That's sorta up to opinion, but IMO not too much at all. If you think this is bad though, you should not be looking forward to Corruption since that game takes the dialogue too far :P tl;dr while disliking the dialogue in the game is sort of a valid criticism (though again, down to opinion), I do think you're exaggerating it.

As for keeping your ammo replenished, why would it take stupidly long? There are caches in practically every room in the game. Just shoot it with light/dark beam. Done. If you're not getting that many drops, well that means your ammo count is already high, and that's on you for trying to keep it so full. That's not the fault of the ammo system; if you're claiming that's a fault, then you should be claiming that it's a fault of the game to not give you missile/power bomb drops the same way as well (which, by the way, is harder to keep full than beam ammo). Drops in this game are more likely if you currently are low on that corresponding ammo.

I thought that was you again. You're really relevant in the community, man!

I feel like in Fusion, the game is held together differently because of the dialogue and orders in which you're given. The game is centered around the dialogue in...well I'll wait until the Fusion review comes out to support it. Prime II introduces what are essentially dialogue-driven checkpoints into a series which never really had them before. X telling you "Go there and get me Keys!" "Good Job!" "Now go over THERE and get me Keys!" is a real change. It could've been condensed to one conversation telling you all that's happening, and everything that you needed to do in short. "Get Keys, Do X with them.", or exploring the area and scanning something with your visor that tells you how the planet operates and reading journal entries that would cover the same explanation. Prime introduced story elements that way and it was a hoot, but it was so entirely optional that if you didn't care, you weren't impacted by it, and if you did care, you solved the story yourself. I dunno I think I'll just need to agree to disagree here

The idea of a "poisonous" dark would could've and kind of was conveyed in earlier cutscenes. It was confirmed through dialogue but would've taken the player roughly 2 seconds to figure out that walking in Dark Aether is bad for your health, just like walking in Lava is bad for your health. Super Metroid never told you that walking through Water was going to be a nightmare. You just played the game and ended up finding the Gravity Suit, then Bam, you're good to go. Metroid Prime didn't predicate the Wrecked Frigate with the idea that you needed the Gravity Suit to get through. You just did it. You scanned everything in the Metroid Labs to find out that the Space Pirates were the bad guys. The game didn't have to tell you, you figured it out yourself on your own accord. My beef with the game's dialogue is that because dialogue is given to you beyond one or two instances at the beginning, it's already crossing the line of what made the franchise. In a series where you learn about your environment by exploring it, you can pretty easily learn what works for you and what works against you. Perhaps I am exaggerating in my concern, but I'm sure you can/do agree that the flow of the game is impacted under a standard playthrough by needing to talk to the various Luminoth and collect translators which serve as keys and such. It's a concept that exists in dozens of other games, and I just feel that it's out of place in Prime II, simply by being mandatory.

I'm also terrible and have never played corruption though I lack a Wii to play it sooooo :(

Considering the ease of being able to easily restock your ammo within seconds at multiple areas built into the previous game's installments; you're probably right in that I'm being hard on the game. What I mean more is the insecurity of a first-time player wanting to have 100% stock in everything, when the game limits your ability to pick up the veritable tons of ammunition at about 80% capacity. It's different but yea, I'm probably just being biased on this one.

Excellent. It's nice to have someone with in-depth knowledge of the game comment here. By the way, am I the only person who dislikes the Alpha Blogg more than the Boost and Spider Guardians?

I'll agree with this

[Rxmonste]

It's also the balancing factor for annihilator beam, since (you're wrong about this) it's easily the most powerful beam in the game, with a ridiculous amount of DPS when firing uncharged shots that also homes and is practically rapid fire.

Sorry? I said that the sonic boom was not much stronger than the other combos to justify using, it's just an ammo drain. I didn't complain about the power of the Annhilator Beam, just its ammo consumption.

@Sara:

I think U-Mos actually added to the game for the same reason Zera thinks so, if it weren't for U-Mos, the player would have ZERO motivation for stopping Emperor Ing and restoring power to Light Aether. You mention how Metroid Prime didn't use dialogue to give you motivation, but it didn't need it. The cutscene made it crystal clear, Ridley's going to Tallon IV, he's doing bad shit with the space pirates, stop 'em. And later on, you get a bigger goal, stop the Phazon infection by killing Metroid Prime.

Overall, I think adding U-Mos was the developer's way of dodging plot holes and giving the player motivation. So I have to disagree with you, sorry.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Rxmonste

[Zera]

If you rated Metroid Prime 2 on a scale 1-10, what would you rate it? I'd give all three Primes a 9.

[Rxmonste]

Metroid Prime was the game I reviewed when I quit using review scores. But if you insist:

Metroid Prime: 10 Classic! Pinnacle of the FPS genre and the Metroid series (I only played Super prior so maybe that's too quick to judge).

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: 8.9 Great, very close to excellence.

I'm gonna get a week off soon, hopefully enough time to play through Prime 3.

Honestly, I was expecting to review the whole trilogy in one article, but Prime 2 at least proved me wrong, there is definitely more to talk about.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Rxmonste

[Elieson]

MPI - 9.80

MPII - 8.65

MPI had more better music :(

^{more better implying, a greater variety of good music}shots fired

@Sara:

I think U-Mos actually added to the game for the same reason Zera thinks so, if it weren't for U-Mos, the player would have ZERO motivation for stopping Emperor Ing and restoring power to Light Aether. You mention how Metroid Prime didn't use dialogue to give you motivation, but it didn't need it. The cutscene made it crystal clear, Ridley's going to Tallon IV, he's doing bad shit with the space pirates, stop 'em. And later on, you get a bigger goal, stop the Phazon infection by killing Metroid Prime.

Overall, I think adding U-Mos was the developer's way of dodging plot holes and giving the player motivation. So I have to disagree with you, sorry.

The game doesn't halt for a 5 minute cutscene to tell you that "Metroid Prime is a baddie! Better go blow it up!" though. You just tell using your instincts; these things are a problem to the galaxy, so you instinctively do something about it. Samus didn't need her hand held through Tallon IV, and unless she suddenly needs motivation given to her time after time, she doesn't necessarily need it on Aether. All it would've taken is the initial cutscene of U-Mos telling her "Look this is what's going on. Our planet, and the galaxy, is in peril. Please help us." and boom, you know what to do. Scan-visoring the rest of the way through the game wouldn't have been an awful thing.

I can see why it was done and respect that it was added in to try something different and expand on the story. I personally was quite content with Prime's method of storytelling, in that you learn as you go, at your own discretion, and that you could just play the game without it if you weren't interested in it as you continued replaying the game. I can agree to disagree, as long as you can too~

Edited May 7, 2015 by Sara.

[Zera]

MPI - 9.80

MPII - 8.65

MPI had more better music :(

^{more better implying, a greater variety of good music}shots fired

The game doesn't halt for a 5 minute cutscene to tell you that "Metroid Prime is a baddie! Better go blow it up!" though.

You use a 1000 point scale? Wow, that is precise. Are you sure Prime 2 isn't an 8.67?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM9vyhkqGl4

BTW, the cutscene is only 2:48 long. Way to waste a couple minutes, game!

[Rxmonste]

I can agree to disagree, as long as you can too~

No, of course. I just wanted to give my two cents on your opinion about U-Mos, since Zera already gave you his two cents.

Another note, I also preferred Prime 1's dialogue free story, I just didn't mind Prime 2's is all I'm saying. We'll see if I change my mind after playing Prime 3, I heard that one had a lot of dialogue.

You use a 1000 point scale? Wow, that is precise. Are you sure Prime 2 isn't an 8.67?

LOL! That's quite funny.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Rxmonste

[Elieson]

You use a 1000 point scale? Wow, that is precise. Are you sure Prime 2 isn't an 8.67?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM9vyhkqGl4

BTW, the cutscene is only 2:48 long. Way to waste a couple minutes, game!

8.67 rounded to the nearest 5 brings it back down to 8.65 :). I'll save the unrounded scale for the upcoming review of Zero Mission and/or Fusion, don't worry

Edited May 7, 2015 by Sara.

[Zera]

So it's a 200 point scale then. I use a 10 point scale. Less precision means more accuracy.

[Elieson]

Totally explains why you like all three games equally when they're all 9/10. Less clarification means more confusion.