1. Awful as it is, I doubt I could have finished without the shutdown deadline. Xenoblade X took me 180 hours over two years - 30 with COVID in 2022, and 150 to get ahead of the shutdown in 2024. Maybe it was a good thing!!

2. I got really stuck in Chapter 10. I felt I had intuited combat, so I looked online for some advice. I realised I had absolutely no idea how the self-healing mechanic worked. It's easy to be annoyed when you have a moment like that, but I like it.
I don't understand why I win encounters, because the game doesn't want to tell me that. What I do understand is what to do to win, which is what the game actually taught me. Because I never managed to kill Xenoblade X, it feels more alive. Fights could always go either way, so I try my best to survive with the tools I have. I think that feeling is perfect for this game. I definitely think it's why I kept feeling tense in fights for 180 hours.

3. I was disappointed that after your mech starts flying about 120 hours in, the area themes all get replaced by a jaunty Sawano track. But I realise now that the Skell flying theme was actually a valiant, self-sacrificing hero, protecting the area themes from being zoned out by the player after 180 hours. Thank you, Monolith. Thank you, Sawano.

4. It's fascinating how good the side missions & affinity missions are. Xenoblade X's narrative is about a merc exploring a whole different planet, taking on the wildest sicko-inclined jobs, and spending time with their cool friends while nasty things happen to them. Xenoblade X is not about the main story, which is about 5% of the runtime. The moment you realise and appreciate that, you recognise how great it is to be engaging in X-Files nightmares through the cockpit of your giant mech.

5. Worth noting you only enter that cockpit after spending 60 hours on the ground earning your license. This is the true face of pinnacle.

I’m of the controversial opinion that Metroid Prime 2 is better than the first one. Not by much, mind you, but it’s really rare to see people who prefer this one (in fact, it’s much more common seeing people criticize Prime 2). This is the Metroid game I took the longest to beat - almost 23 hours! Reached 94% completion on that first run, which is an incredibly high number for my standards (without any walkthroughs), and not even for a single minute I felt the game was getting boring.

The central mechanic of light and dark worlds adds another layer to the backtracking that’s a staple of these games, because not only you gotta remember points of interest of each area as you acquire new abilities, but you also gotta remember in which world they were in and how doing something in the light world might affect the dark world and vice-versa. That does, however, make the progression more convoluted. I remember getting stuck at least 3 times in the game and having to activate the in-game hint system, but it’s not like the first Prime game doesn’t have its problems with backtracking either, having to traverse Magmoor Caverns a thousand times to get to the places you need to be.

Speaking of areas, I prefer (not by a large margin) the areas of Prime 2 over the ones from the previous game. Yes, Prime 1 areas are far more iconic, everyone remembers Magmoor Caverns and Phendrana Drifts, but there’s something more organic about the areas of Prime 2. Their themes aren’t too varied: Temple Grounds, Agon Wastes and Torvus Bog all share similar visuals, but that’s what makes them feel more connected to each other, more cohesive in the context of that world, which helps to heighten their atmosphere.

And then we have the last and best area of the game, Sanctuary Fortress. It looks nothing like the previous areas, being a highly technological complex, a true feast for the eyes. Exploring this place is a real treat, mainly because of how abundantly it uses one of my favorite abilities: the spider ball. Much to my delight, the whole game incorporates the morph ball and its related abilities (spider ball and boost ball) much more extensively than Prime 1, with this area being riddled with spider ball sections and puzzles. Hell, there’s even a boss designed around the spider ball! AND IT COMPLETELY SUCKS!

Yeah, the Spider Guardian is infamous for how frustrating it can be to defeat and it wasn’t any different for me, despite its concept being really interesting. But that’s the only boss fight that’s a dud, because that’s also something I prefer in this game over the first one, and this time it’s by a considerable margin, because the Prime 2 bosses are much more compelling. They follow the style of Metroid Fusion’s bosses, by using themselves the abilities you’re going to get after defeating them and having multiple phases, so that makes for some truly engaging fights.

Metroid Prime 2 is a bookmark example of a sequel that improves on everything the first game did. As controversial as that opinion may be, it’s a hill I’m determined to die on. I hope we get a remaster of this game in the same fashion as the Prime 1 remaster, because good lord, that remaster is one of the most beautiful games on the Switch! It gives me chills just imagining how stunning the Sanctuary Fortress will look if given the same treatment...

I've always said that one of the most core pillars of Metroid is atmosphere, and the queen of atmosphere is Metroid Prime 2, here. It takes a notably drearier tone than Prime 1's already fairly dark mood did. And that definitely suits the mood of the game in general; Prime 1 felt like the aftermath of a post-apocalyptic disaster, but Prime 2 makes it feel like the apocalypse is still ongoing, in part because you're the final vanguard keeping the Luminoth from going extinct. And while there is certainly something dark in having a big Chozo city with nothing but the remnants of a dead civilization around, there's something a lot darker but also kind of badass about stopping the Luminoth from suffering the same fate at nearly the last minute, but also should you fail, the Ing will be successful in their eradication.

I complimented how much Prime 1 supported its atmosphere by having visual effects appear on the visor, but Prime 2 doubles down on this with effects like blinding lights, the visual of being enveloped in sludge as an Ing attempts to possess you, even up to rather amusingly having an enemy that causes the suit's system to hard crash, making you Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot it.

This game's ammo system is smart, in that it forces you to balance out which weapons you use and not JUST rely on what's good. Especially since this game has a rather binary light world denizens are weak to Dark Beam, and dark world creatures are weak to Light Beam system, and both these beams really wreck the enemies they're good against. Almost too easily, but they take it as an opportunity to ramp up the difficulty a bit. Being on Dark Aether saps your health quickly, and they introduce enemies like Space Pirates and Dark Pirate Commandos (basically Chozo ghost reskins) way earlier than in Prime.

They make some really inventive dimension-hopping puzzles, only really faltered by how going through a portal means looking at a loading screen. It really feels like it pushes the Prime engine to its limit, especially with how the levels are just as, if not more expansive than the ones in Prime 1. Prime 2 also asks for a lot less between-area backtracking, the only particularly stand-out moment being going back to Torvus after getting Spider Ball in Sanctuary. But they really tone it down a lot by making it so all the areas are more conveniently interconnected, with there being a shortcut to Torvus right there in Sanctuary so long as you look for it. This also makes the end-of-game Sky Temple Key hunt far more bearable, and even then it doesn't bother me that much. You should be able to get the keys so long as you know where they are and can get to them, but you'll need Dark Visor to acquire them first. Other than that, a victory lap around Dark Aether, an area that was previously difficult and hostile to traverse is earned. Just to flex that it's your stomping grounds now.

And see like, this is why I love Echoes so much. Prime 1 was so close to being up there as one of my favorites of all time if it wasn't for the handful of faults it had, almost all of which get addressed in Echoes. Because the bosses are far more active, fun, and interesting this time around. Even the minibosses kick ass, and I don't mind that much if Spider Guardian is a bit of an asshole, I just think it's impressive that they made a boss that's fought entirely with Morph Ball.

Amorbis is the closest to being a Prime 1 boss, with it largely being three phases of the same thing But More, but they amp it up by having the worms act more aggressive when there's more of them. Chykka and Quadraxis are both awesome multi-phase epics that both almost feel like they could've been final bosses in and of themselves. Quadraxis especially asking you to act fast and figure it out, since there's no save zones in its arena. And the Dark Samus fights are just killer. And the final boss, unlike Prime 1's absolutely delivers both in challenge and scope.

Metroid Prime 2 is the ideal sequel.