I definitely gotta play more metroidvanias going forward. Metroid Prime is very good but I did have a lot of small grievances with it, the backtracking and the boss fights being the worst of it. When I say backtracking I'm not referring to revisiting areas, I'm talking about having to traverse the same pathways over and over again to get to and from a specific area. My problem with the boss fights comes from how long they take and how they aren't involved enough to remain interesting for the whole duration. None of my complaints are major enough to ruin the game or anything but they're enough for me to dock it a few points.

I've been a Metroid fan since childhood and I'd known Prime 1 was consistently ranked as the best or second best of the franchise, alternating with Super Metroid. Since I never had a GameCube, I relished the opportunity to finally get to play this. It's obviously good - it wouldn't have been remastered if it wasn't - but I have to admit it left me disappointed in several aspects that I wasn't expecting.

For context, the last Metroidvania I played before this was Metroid Dread, and I loved it. It felt like a refreshingly modern take on the classic 2D style with excellent boss fights and most of the level backtracking only coming into play with finding optional bonuses and secrets. In stark contrast, Prime is built entirely on the concept of backtracking. The core goal of finding the 12 chozo artifacts is married to the design philosophy of the player coming across something gated behind a lock that can only be unlocked with an ability that will be gained later. As a result, you're destined to have to retread the exact same rooms, obstacles, and enemies dozens of times before finally getting what you're looking for. I know the whole series is built on that design philosophy, but this game pushes it to the extreme.

My other major complaint is that the enemy respawn system is gratuitous, and this point is another reason why the lengthy amount of backtracking got annoying. You'll enter a room, kill all the enemies in it, move to the next room, realize you took the wrong exit after a few moments, return to the prior room, and all the enemies will have already respawned. This got so tiresome that I started simply running through rooms ignoring enemies in the later parts of my playthrough. Regarding bosses, they're okay for the additional challenge they present, but on Normal difficulty they feel like they have way too much HP. Fights went on for so long that I grew bored before they ended.

I'm still glad I got to play this piece of gaming history, especially as a die-hard Metroid fan, but this is my least favorite of the ones I've played. A good game that may have been a masterpiece when it first came out, but by the newer standards both of its own series and of others, it's still somewhat dated.

(One more positive thing: the ambient music absolutely slaps!)

It is pretty astounding how effortless Nintendo made it look to transition from 2D to 3D. This game feels almost exactly like playing a 2D Metroid game despite all the extra design and gameplay considerations that come with a 3D, first-person experience. There are so many amazing little touches, like Samus’s face reflecting off her visor when there are bright flashes of light (definitely startled me the first time it happened) or the x-ray visor showing Samus shifting her hand in her gun to select the different beams. Just very cool, very immersive, very engaging.

I will say, I think the back half of the game loses its shine just a bit. The scavenger hunt for the Chozo Artifacts just feels like unnecessary padding, especially because traversing the map never really stops being a little slow and clunky. If you’re going to have us scour the entire world for the last few of these artifacts, I would have appreciated some kind of limited fast travel a la Symphony of the Night, or even just something like the space jump / screw attack combo you get at the end of Super Metroid that simultaneously eases the monotony of traversal and makes you feel immensely powerful.

I know there’s an argument to be made that having no fast travel makes it a more immersive experience, but personally I don’t think trudging through those first few rooms of the Chozo Ruins or Magmoor Caverns 40 times is any more immersive than doing them 20 times. You reach a point where you’re just slowly walking through a dozen huge rooms with basically no threats, which I just found to be pretty tedious, and tedium generally ruins immersion for me.

I feel like I’m being really down on this game, so I’m gonna try to end on a positive note. The exploration is some of the finest that I’ve seen in the series. For the first few hours, the game feels absolutely bottomless, and the rate at which you acquire new items sets a pretty much perfect pace of drip-feeding you new ways to open up more and more of these giant areas. Going through the Phazon Mines for the first time was a highlight, as the jump up in combat difficulty made me actually desperate to find a checkpoint, a pretty rare feeling in an age of autosaves and scripted near-death experiences.

So yeah, maybe unsurprising, but the game did in fact pretty much live up to the hype. It really reminds you why there’s a whole genre named after this series. Check it out if it passed you by like it did for me.

Metroid Prime is the vital “mood” game. The atmosphere is what sells it, shootin’ shit is just a plus.

Straight out of the gate, boom, detailed planet in the distance whilst in the middle of space. It hooks you in with its stellar visuals and killer soundtracks, and keeps you sucked in with its atmospheric world building.

Curling up into a ball and rolling or bouncing around might be the absolute most fun thing in any game ever. Because, sure, it’s not the only game to ever have a playable ball, but it is the only one that looks, sounds, and feels like this while also racking up alien K/Ds. Bouncing off of morph ball bombs through the air, using the spider power up to roll around ceilings and walls, twisted columns, it’s so surreal.

Metroid coined the term “metroidvania,” and Metroid Prime 15 years later certainly shows why. Yep, there certainly is a whole lot of backtracking here. It’s not terrible since the goal is just collecting artifacts and the maps are extremely detailed. Colored
doors guide your way to understand the best path to advance from elevator to elevator.

Where Metroid Prime fails, though, is its endgame. Petrasyls may be my least favorite game enemy of all time. They are not fair and challenging, they are not a scary design, they are not cool to look at. They take way too many shots, and latch onto your face constantly for no other reason than to slow you down. So, when they start coming my way by the dozens after the Phazon Suit is acquired, I want to die. Especially when the final boss throws 2-4 of them at once, so you’re just scrambling to try and get them off of you.

There’s not a whole lot bosses here, since the focus is the vibe, but when you do come across a boss, it is very fun. I just kind of wish they’d had been more balanced out throughout the whole game, rather than really spread out.

Metroid Prime Remastered takes the cake of an already amazing game, and adds some icing to really boost its replay-ability. This is one of the best looking games on the Switch, the source material was already there. Thanks Reggie, you did it this time. 8/10

This game is peak Metroid. It's got all the great things about the 2D games but now in 3D remastered beautifully
on the switch.

It's open ended and has tons of fun items, enemies, upgrades, and locations to explore. The game has spectacular atmosphere and drives home the feeling of being alone on an unknown planet.

My main problems are it's a little too long and I've got a little bit of a problem with these types of games in general. I love exploring and getting upgrades but I absolutely hate getting lost and I did get lost a couple of times while playing. Also I feel like the combat is a little undercooked. It's just an endurance war between you and the enemy most of the time.

Overall a great game I've just got a couple personal problems with it.

Okay so I reviewed this only a bit in because it kind of made me realize I didn't really enjoy my first playthrough of this game as much as I thought I did. But I think it was unfair to leave it off at Phendrana Drifts. I liked the start of the game a lot so like Phendrana Drifts had to have just been a fluke and I was misremembering because of how much I despise that level. But no the entire game is just that afterwards.

This game fails fundamentally as a Metroid game, it doesn't look like one, it doesn't feel like one, and it doesn't play like one. Metroid Primes big powerups, the ones that really open up the world aren't even movement powerups, they are just beams that all need to be switched too it's really annoying, and when they are they are really boring and slow like the spider ball.
A metroidvania is meant to be a platformer action exploration game. Platforming is a huge part of it, so movement upgrades are the ones that stick out to you, not bloated weapon systems. Primes weapon systems are honestly more annoying than any of the 2D games because you switch in it so much more often. Every single door in this game wants you to use a different beam, go through an ice door, now there's a plasma door. Facing off against a wave Space Pirate, gotta switch to ice beam to open the door. This beam system also goes against one of the most fun things about the 2D Metroids, once you unlock all those beams they all become one extremely powerful beam that usually one shots everything and goes through walls. And when they don't the screw attack does it for you!

I genuinely think that Metroid Primes biggest issue is the fact it wanted to be a first person shooter. It forces combat on you, and it makes the weapons the big upgrades with all of them having side upgrades to them. I find FPS combat, incredibly boring, and the enemies in this game go from very quick to kill to complete damage sponges as soon as space pirates are introduced, and they keep adding to them, metroids also start showing up a lot and some of them are very tanky and split into 2 more of the same metroid to fight but you need to switch beams for both of them. It gets annoying the fun really just ends at Phedrana Drifts.

It sucks Prime would be an amazing exploration game if it didn't do this annoying stuff. It has such a great atmosphere, and if it was just like a peaceful, sometimes you have to shoot a couple of enemies around you kind of exploration game like the 2D ones it would have been really good.
But instead it has to stop you every 5 rooms to fight all the Space Pirates and unlock the doors, god its so annoying.

Im kind of sad that replaying this game only annoyed me, I want to like this game, I adore Metroid, it's my favorite series by Nintendo. Super Metroid is still one of my top 5 games no question. So it sucks that this game, thats is considered one of the absolute greatest in the franchise, in the genre in general, is just a boring FPS disguised as an exploration game.

A melhor transição de 2D pra 3D em conjunto com OoT. A Nintendo tem a maestria em fazer esse tipo de jogo.

Metroid Prime nos mostra a primeira aventura 3D da Samus da melhor forma possível, como um FPS guiado. É estranho falar dessa forma pois sempre que via o jogo de fora, achava que não seria tão bom jogando e meu deus eu não poderia estar mais errado.

Em questão de gameplay, é exatamente a mesma coisa q o 2D, temos todos os conhecidos upgrades e armaduras ao longo do jogo. As duas grandes diferenças são em relação ao tiro principal e ao sistema de análise. Com a perspectiva tridimensional, temos agora uma mira igual de FPS com a diferença que ela não é totalmente livre, mas ainda sim funciona muito bem. O sistema de análise é praticamente a alma do jogo, todos os inimigos e diversas partes do mapa podem ser analisadas para entender a história e se aprofundar em documentos. É muito útil também para chefes onde podemos ver os pontos fracos de cada um.

Metroid Prime eleva a franquia a outro patamar, abrindo diversas portas para experimentação e aprimoramento. Se a Nintendo fizer o favor de portar as sequências para o Switch e finalmente dar data para o 4, serei feliz.