I watched a stream. you guys are lucky I'm not actually playing it, cause I think I would be losing my mind, and spamming this thread even more if I was. only watching a stream, and reviews puts up a wall, so Im not as invested.
chrono tower spoilers
cutscene, into cutscene. walk 5ft,cutscene. walk 10ft, cutscene, into cutscene. boss fight, cutscene, into cutscene. boss fight, cutscene, into cutscene, into cutscene. press A to finish the game. or game over if you don't, and redo boss fight. Game over. to be continued.
end boss has our friends tag along, and you have to stop every 5seconds to use your physic healing to pick them off the ground as they get downed constantly. game over if they die. Baby sitting these clowns during the end boss. what a great design choice. then, they "sacrifice" themselves so samus can teleport away. game over. story is not actually over. also, as noted, by Skillup. its a game over if you don't press A to teleport.
streamer I watched, had seen skillups "farm green energy crystals" complaint, and thought he was ok. nope. he still had to farm green energy crystals before the tower too.
endymointv mentioning how its 343 devs hired at Rare, and how Samus is just masterchief in this. lol.
Watched that whole thing - with an open world like that on the Bike put the fire tool inside the exploration of the open part and DEFINITELY more POI's then green shit all over you have to run over. I mean holy shit. Basic game design 101 and whoever was behind this was absolutely fucking clueless - which doesn't shock me.
Watched that whole thing - with an open world like that on the Bike put the fire tool inside the exploration of the open part and DEFINITELY more POI's then green shit all over you have to run over. I mean holy shit. Basic game design 101 and whoever was behind this was absolutely fucking clueless - which doesn't shock me.
The central desert area has a bunch of points of interest other than the green crystals though. There's at least 3 underground "shrines" to boost your elemental beams, at least 2 other places to boost your bike's boosts, several buildings that you need various abilities to explore to find missile / shot upgrades or pieces of the big mech, there's a hidden save station (or at least I didn't find it until way later haha).
It's obviously a big stretch of an area specifically for the bike gimmick, and you're entitled to your opinion about the bike or whether it was necessary as an accessory for Samus (I personally like the bike), but saying it contains nothing but green crystals isn't really true. However, I do wish you could target the crystals so that you could destroy them without having to accurately run over every little bit of crystal, because I regularly have to turn around and grab that little piece I didn't run over.
I watched a stream. you guys are lucky I'm not actually playing it, cause I think I would be losing my mind, and spamming this thread even more if I was. only watching a stream, and reviews puts up a wall, so Im not as invested.
chrono tower spoilers
cutscene, into cutscene. walk 5ft,cutscene. walk 10ft, cutscene, into cutscene. boss fight, cutscene, into cutscene. boss fight, cutscene, into cutscene, into cutscene. press A to finish the game. or game over if you don't, and redo boss fight. Game over. to be continued.
end boss has our friends tag along, and you have to stop every 5seconds to use your physic healing to pick them off the ground as they get downed constantly. game over if they die. Baby sitting these clowns during the end boss. what a great design choice. then, they "sacrifice" themselves so samus can teleport away. game over. story is not actually over. also, as noted, by Skillup. its a game over if you don't press A to teleport.
streamer I watched, had seen skillups "farm green energy crystals" complaint, and thought he was ok. nope. he still had to farm green energy crystals before the tower too.
endymointv mentioning how its 343 devs hired at Rare, and how Samus is just masterchief in this. lol.
Damn, that sounds horrible. At least we're getting a Prime 5? Use the engine from this and fix everything people hated and maybe we'll get the game this should have been by 2027 or 2028. Remaster the other Primes first plox.
You need about a bajillion Green Crystals to beat the game. Even if you think you're overfarming out the wazoo, you're probably only like 25% of the way there. It sucks.
Even with my propensity for speeding through games, this is taking me days and days because I can't get motivated to play for more than a few minutes at a time. Super Metroid and Metroid 2 were my favorite and second favorite games as a kid. Oof.
You need about a bajillion Green Crystals to beat the game. Even if you think you're overfarming out the wazoo, you're probably only like 25% of the way there. It sucks.
Even with my propensity for speeding through games, this is taking me days and days because I can't get motivated to play for more than a few minutes at a time. Super Metroid and Metroid 2 were my favorite and second favorite games as a kid. Oof.
I had been driving over green crystals on my way through the desert area between worlds and it only got me about half of the crystal vessel, but once I unlocked the mega bombs it lets you destroy the big boulders and those really drive the numbers up, I wouldn't waste much time on the small crystals unless you're trying to 100% the game.
As far as I understand it, the green crystals stuff is required for a suit upgrade (I liked the red suit better to be honest, it was less bulky) but the other upgrades are for the psy-cannon and those are skippable, so you only really need the quantity you receive from the big boulders is my guess, the rest is for fluff completion.
I've got all the keys now and completed the mech repairs, I'm set to do the Chrono Tower but it's a point of no return so I'm trying to get the rest of the items now before passing that threshold.
By the way, every area has a "scout bot" that you can activate with electricity and it puts all the missing items on your map for that area, so that's a convenient to get 100% if you're interested in that.
You also unlock a crystal detector for the desert area at some point.
"I hope they never make any more Metroid games. Fuck getting any further projects involving my favorite series growing up"
That better?
They've got a whole engine here that can be used to make more games that will hopefully not make the incredibly easily-avoidable mistakes this one made. It's more likely that they'll just do absolutely fucking nothing with it, like they usually do with Metroid, however.
I finished the game today with 17 hours and 40 minutes spent, I tried to get 100% items and 100% scans but I ended up at 98% items and missed 1 scan in the final battle (make sure you scan the final boss in the third phase).
If you're going to attempt 100%, make sure to copy your save onto another slot prior to going into Chrono Tower because once you finish the game and if you save at the very end, your save is overwritten to become a new game so you wouldn't be able to go back into the world to gather missed stuff.
I'll probably pick up my backup save to go back and get those last couple items and scan, there's a secret ending if you got everything.
This video does a good job articulating why I like Prime 2 so much. Probably one of the better Youtube videos I've watched in a while, even. Especially the way it zeroes in on the soundtrack and the effect every BGM has on the player.
The video takes ten minutes or so to really get to the meat of why Prime 2 is so good, but yeah. It's one of the exceedingly-few non-Fromsoft games that I'd put on the Fromsoft tier of world building and vibe.
Me too, mostly because I feel I didn't really get into it the first time around and I wish I did because I hear great things about it, but I think at the time I was a bit annoyed / disappointed by the constant need to shield yourself from the "dark", it felt like I couldn't really explore in the way I enjoy Metroid / Metroid Prime games, but perhaps another playthrough would make me feel different nowadays.
Im assuming I'm almost done, about to get the final key. Going to say the game overall is pretty good and worth a play for any metroid fan. The guys talking to you etc. Aren't that bad and can let it slide but can add don't add to the next game.
Sand wasn't that bad, but likely be traded by just having the different areas connect directly and have a few offshoot spots in each area for the items you collect in the sand area.
To make it better, remove the people you talk to as they don't really add anything, and let what you scan tell the story. The sand hub was just a waste of space, see above for fix.
Bosses were fun, areas looked great, difficulty was on spot for normal, puzzles were fine, psychic stuff a bit underdeveloped but when used, like the ball thing with 3 spots to shoot at same time, it was fun and helped make puzzles a but different.
Give it about an 8/10 unless something in the final area really fucks it up.
I was going to plow the new Terminator 2 game this weekend, but everyone is completely sold out of it. Who knew Terminator would be such a big deal in 2025?
So I'll likely hit MP4 hard this weekend as a result. I left off in Volt Forge. Cleared Tower 1 but it looks like now I have to do Tower 2 and 3. Really like the motorcycle walkways between the towers. I'll start grinding faction green crystals early so it doesn't turn into a big slog at the end.
I was going to plow the new Terminator 2 game this weekend, but everyone is completely sold out of it. Who knew Terminator would be such a big deal in 2025?
So I'll likely hit MP4 hard this weekend as a result. I left off in Volt Forge. Cleared Tower 1 but it looks like now I have to do Tower 2 and 3. Really like the motorcycle walkways between the towers. I'll start grinding faction green crystals early so it doesn't turn into a big slog at the end.
I grabbed whatever green crystals were in my way during trips between areas, but I don't recommend "grinding" them until you unlock the crystal detector, then they show up on your radar very obviously and you can really rack them up. And once you unlock the upgraded bombs, you can destroy the big boulders at a few spots in the desert to really get a bunch of them.
Also, make sure to grab the green crystals in bags in the desert shrines (one of them is hidden behind a pillar in one of the shrines, the thunder one as I recall), and there's also a few clusters of crystals in the Fury Green area near where you started, but you probably got those during normal gameplay, doesn't hurt to check.
There's no crystals anywhere else in the other areas.
When you're done with the five keys and you need to go to Chrono Tower, and if your intent is on going 100%, you should have 100% items and 98% scans BEFORE Chrono Tower. The last 2 scans in the game are in the Chrono Tower area.
I grabbed whatever green crystals were in my way during trips between areas, but I don't recommend "grinding" them until you unlock the crystal detector, then they show up on your radar very obviously and you can really rack them up. And once you unlock the upgraded bombs, you can destroy the big boulders at a few spots in the desert to really get a bunch of them.
Also, make sure to grab the green crystals in bags in the desert shrines (one of them is hidden behind a pillar in one of the shrines, the thunder one as I recall), and there's also a few clusters of crystals in the Fury Green area near where you started, but you probably got those during normal gameplay, doesn't hurt to check.
There's no crystals anywhere else in the other areas.
When you're done with the five keys and you need to go to Chrono Tower, and if your intent is on going 100%, you should have 100% items and 98% scans BEFORE Chrono Tower. The last 2 scans in the game are in the Chrono Tower area.
Thanks for the info. Probably not going for 100%, this is very much a "finish the game and call it a day" for me.
Thoughts at the midway point (guessing I'm about a third now) - This game is held up by the incredible graphics, art design, and music. I have a feeling the soundtrack was actually made long ago, because it feels like the same person made it as the first 3 and not too long after them either. All of that stuff is great. However, the level design is pretty meh, the dialogue is meh, characters meh, not sure why Samus is suddenly a mute so that's meh.
Basically the things that feel like the old team made them are great, the things that feel like they were made by a new team are meh. And with 20 years between games, I expect a lot of people who worked on the trilogy are no longer with Nintendo, some even retired or dead perhaps.
Anyone else still playing this / working on finishing it or is it just me at this point?
It's possible Prime 2 won't hold up as well as I remember whenever they do put out a remaster. I only played through it twice (in 2004 and 2010). I remember the individual areas dragging a bit (Agon Wastes went on too long, then Torvus Bog went on way too long). Which is a byproduct of them going for fewer, larger zones compared to the other Metroid games. Other than that I was really into it.
Hunters and Federation Force were both pretty shitty, played them once for completionism's sake, not sure why either of them needed to exist or use up valuable dev time.
Prime 3 was better than the two spinoffs but it didn't grab me. Only played it once and very little of it stayed with me. Had motion controls it didn't need, what a surprise from Nintendo. Other than that I remember it having some solid moments like the Rundas fight, Omega Ridley, and the Nova Beam being awesome (technically Hyper Mode in this game is as strong as Samus ever gets in the series, outside of the final minutes of Dread)
Bit late on the reply here, but you touched on another one of the things I didn't like about the game, the zones went on for way long, overall the game just seemed like a chore to me. Agon Wastes was as miserable to play through as the name suggests, (although if I remember correctly, that first Dark Samus fight was a lot of fun,) but Torvus Bog had such a great sound track, I remember being drawn into the game for a brief moment because of the music that hits when you enter the area...unfortunately then the Ing / Dark World components inevitably had to be encountered and I remembered I was playing Echoes.
Yeah, agree with you on Prime 3, but I never even finished the game due to the control. The Wii was such a piece of shit.
Dread was cool, but I only watched a playthrough of it, probably never going to play it because the switch is always going to be a shitty tablet pretending to be a console to me.
So Prime 4 came out and unsurprisingly shit the bed, although I'm sure the legions of Nintendo fanboys probably gobbled that shit up. Haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but it should be interesting. This is the first game that also has a shitty soundtrack, the story sucks, the characters suck, the desert section lol, with an Amibo required to unlock music in the desert section. Can't make this shit up.
Have you played it / planning on playing it? I think the Prime run is finished.
The story about the Sylux / Samus beef has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
Sylux used to be a Federation trooper, him and his team are advancing on some new Space Pirate weapon along with a bunch of other military units. Sylux gets a command to stay put because Samus has been dispatched. He ignores the order and advances with his team. The Space Pirate weapon is activated and vaporizes everyone but Sylux survives by diving into a ditch. Samus shows up with some other Federation forces and they blow up the Space Pirate weapon. Samus tries to help Sylux up and he swats her hand away. THAT'S the back story.
The story about the Sylux / Samus beef has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
Sylux used to be a Federation trooper, him and his team are advancing on some new Space Pirate weapon along with a bunch of other military units. Sylux gets a command to stay put because Samus has been dispatched. He ignores the order and advances with his team. The Space Pirate weapon is activated and vaporizes everyone but Sylux survives by diving into a ditch. Samus shows up with some other Federation forces and they blow up the Space Pirate weapon. Samus tries to help Sylux up and he swats her hand away. THAT'S the back story.
Speaking of Hunters who lose their minds, I cared more about early game boss Rundas in Prime 3 with his limited screen time and awesome battle music than I ever have about the villain of Metroid Prime 4.
Prime 2's zones did go on for way too long yes, it's the only thing I dislike about it really. Only having 3 main areas (while most Metroid games have like 7 or 8) caused each one to be massive and time-consuming, and the music never changing during the 3-5 hours you spend in each area was a bit much.
This is the first game that also has a shitty soundtrack, the story sucks, the characters suck, the desert section lol, with an Amibo required to unlock music in the desert section. Can't make this shit up.
I think that's a bit harsh for some of those elements.
MP4 soundtrack was just fine for me, I especially liked the Volt Forge theme but overall they were all enjoyable I thought, though if you put the lack of music in the desert hub area as a soundtrack issue, then yes that's a point against it, even if you can unlock it without the amibio it was a stupid ass decision not to have it from the start.
I also thought the story was interesting. I didn't really care a lot about Sylux because you encounter very little of him and only get what little backstory there is at the very end, but the story about Viewros, the Lamorn, the Great Tragedy, it was all quite interesting and fitting the themes of the Metroid / Metroid Prime franchise I thought.
