Obviously with recent news I finally wanted to play this one.

Some really cool stuff with the story and the hunters are pretty neat, but you don’t get much unless you’re looking in the manual. I liked the general premise with the Tetra galaxy and Gorea, and all these hunters trying to get to this “ultimate power” first, but it’s very simple stuff (it’s a DS game so I can’t complain). Some of the gameplay is clever, shooting feels fine, akin to using a Wacom tablet on a PC. Jumping is awkward as hell though, forcing you to either double tap the screen or press one of the face buttons (thereby preventing you from aiming). Thankfully there aren’t too many platforming segments so it doesn’t become unbearable. What does become unbearable, however, are the amount of escape sequences. Like Jesus the time limits on some of these are not well balanced. And they happen like every time you get a new Octolith, after every boss. Speaking of bosses, they get pretty repetitive, but shooting is fun so it doesn’t get absolutely boring. Gorea is definitely the best boss, but switching between weapons causes you to look down at the bottom screen, losing focus on the actual combat. So overall the DS gimmick kinda bogs this game down. Regardless, apparently the hunters had a lot of developed lore at NST (Nintendo Software Technology) that we never learned about, including stuff about Sylux and why he’s even such a big hater in the first place.

Much of the art direction is just copied from Prime 1 with many planets just seeming like knock offs of areas seen in that game. A lot of the music just samples elements from songs like the chozo ruins and phendrana drifts, for example. And I’ll be honest the songs aren’t great. They just sound barely “Prime-like” but it’s a poor imitation.

Apparently the multiplayer is decently cool? Also it had online play and fucking voice chat? Someone play this with me.