---------------------[Playing on 'Normal Mode']--------------------
Wrapped up the remainder of items; the last missile expansion I was missing turned out to be the most obvious one "hidden" under the bridge in Transport Tunnel B. I've probably walked across that bridge almost a dozen times during my playthrough yet I never thought to check under it. But with that I'd collected 100% of items and was prepared for the final confrontation(s).
Meta Ridley was visually cool and I liked how he flew around the arena and swooped in to bombard you with missiles. However, the way the boss is paced felt unbalanced with the last 10% of his HP taking up the back 2/3s of the fight. I get it's supposed to be a "You think this is over? The REAL fight starts now" kind of thing but Ripley only has 3 different attacks and once you've got the telegraphs down it quickly becomes monotonous as you follow the procedure of: [stun -> shoot -> repeat]. It's possible to hit their weak point with a super missile but the timing is very tight and I'd already exhausted my supplies earlier in the fight so I was stuck using regular missiles which took SO long. Overall, kind of lacklustre for all the build up it received throughout the game.
The area leading up to the battle with Metroid Prime seemed unnecessary to me. It wasn't long enough for the atmosphere to sink in (the constant swarm of Metroids don't help either) and at the same time it just interrupted the pacing to have me do some basic platforming.
As for Metroid Prime themselves I'll say the boss suffers from a lack of phases to spice things up much like the other bosses in this game. It was nice how the 1st form made use of the morph ball and that you had to keep switching visors during its 2nd to keep track of it. Though despite being one of the better bosses of Prime it still felt underwhelming.
This marks the end of my 1st playthrough of this game; if I do return to Prime I'll most certainly be playing on hard. I died a total of 6 times with half of those attributed to getting stuck in a hazardous substance and just dying to reset. I had to rely on an online guide for a few of the items I was missing but otherwise this was entirely blind.
