I want to go on about how perfect everything else in this game is, but you need to experience this for yourself. The title is an amped version of the original Metroid Prime, making an epic experience even better.
It's like Metroid Prime, but better. If Metroid Prime is already a 10, this is a 11. Challenging game with lots of puzzles and exploration, graphics couldn't be better, creative boss fights, platforming, and deep story.
I doubt Echoes will bring too many new players into the Metroid fold, but if you are an addict like myself, you will enjoy each and every frustrating minute. [Jan 2005, p.126]
Despite the addition of a middling and somewhat unnecessary multiplayer component, Echoes stands shoulder to shoulder with its predecessor, delivering absolutely everything you'd want from a new 3D Metroid adventure.
The save system is also a major weakness. Unlike so many games now that allow the gamer to save at any time, Echoes employs the save-point method that only allows saving at specified locations that must be reached.
True, nearly everything in Echoes was also in its predecessor, but the merit in maintaining that game's superb balance whilst still making careful additions (Echoes bears the burden of flawlessly updating the screw attack into 3D with great élan), giving nearly every interface a new lick of paint (dig the sleek new menu design) and imbuing the game with its own uniquely foreboding atmosphere (with a moody synth score that's equal parts John Williams, Kraftwerk and Joy Division) cannot be understated.
The constant scanning slows down the game, and the generic soundtrack does little to create any drama. But Metroid fans just want to play as Samus. And what's thrilling for those folks is the multiplayer action.
This game takes every aspect and element from the first Prime game and improves it's formula in every single way. One of the greatest games ever created.
I wrote a review for Metroid Prime Remastered recently, saying it is my least favourite in the trilogy. I immediately take that back after revisiting Prime 2. This is my least favourite playthrough of Prime 2 (my 3rd playthrough) and it reinforces my feeling that as I keep revisiting older games I start to notice I like them less and less as time goes on.
Metroid Prime 2 is a good game. I think it's the worst in the trilogy (I'll play Prime 3 afterwards but I don't think it will change this time around) but it's still fun. 2 however comes with the most problems:
If I was complaining about Phendrana Labs in Prime 1, well, the underwater section of Torvus Bog blows it out of the water completely. It's so much worse. And in general Torvus Bog is just really bad and really boring.
The constant 10 second transitions between Aether and Dark Aether, the multiple encounters with invisible enemies, far before you get access to the Dark Visor in order to deal with them (also they close the doors during several of these encounters to force you to defeat them), the cumbersome beam ammo management, the multiple poorly designed boss fights. Oh, how I hate Boost Guardian so much. Chykka, Amorbis, Alpha Blorg and many others aren't much better tbh. The final boss battle against Emperor Ing is so painful to go through.
Thankfully, Sanctuary Fortress is really good. It almost makes up for how bad Torvus Bog is. Fortress is honestly one of the best locations in all of Prime, it's really fun.
Prime 2 is still bogged down by a lot of annoying little things and this last playthrough of mine really disappointed me, but I still recommend the game although like I said it's easily the worst in the trilogy imo.
In time for Metroid Prime 4's announcement I decided to warn people about this game.
As a long time fan of the Metroid franchise it's frustrating that this game was designed for a narrow audience that likes their games brutally unforgiving. Nintendo typically makes games with a balanced difficulty to challenge the player. I've completed every Prime & mainline Metroid game to this date. I've only given up several times one the NES original for being unfair & frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind hard. I've defeated the Unamed King in Dark Souls 3 & felt rewarded. In Prime 2 we get leeway to ease the challenge only by collecting every hidden upgrade in the game. That's fine but this game punishes for exploration. When you revisit sections you have to battle enemies who like to run around at top speed, that lock you in rooms, which then go invisible, & take way too long to inflict damage upon. Not till the end of the game when I combined light & dark suit power into my inventory was I able to cope with exploration. There are some boss battles that require you to switch between ball & suit. It becomes so riddled with difficulty spikes that I wanted to actually smash my controller. I had not been that angry while playing games in years. Every time a boss got too hard, I would dread back tracking to get better items because it's so easy to get lost. Not only that but the dark world drains health by roaming in it. By the time I got to the end, the boss fights became more and more unforgivable. They would place me in long winded battles depleting health bar after bar. When I died, I got sent all the way back to a save station. Had to hike back to the boss, watch cutscene, & face trial while experimenting to find weak spots during battle. When I fought my doppelgänger, the boss was impossible. It turned invisible & required pin point timing to inflict a small amount of damage on. The biggest slap in the face was before I got to end game. Just like other Prime games you need to find every hidden artifact possible. First game was mellow by comparison. I mean, the sky keys are like finding buried treasure while being blind folded. This game is overrated to no end. As a positive I wouldn't mind replaying this game if they ended up remaking it with less frustrating bits. Under the difficulty lies a gem. It **** to hate this game over a programming decision like that. But then again how did Nintendo not think they would alienate a lot of fans by choosing to go this route?
PS. The Prime series had some moments, but I've never seen any enemy from the original except for Ridley. In 2 we don't even get that. No basic enemy types are familiar. We never got Mother Brain once. Just some odd looking thing at the end of 3 that needed to be shot in the back of its head while pointing up with a Wii remote that couldn't detect off TV motions.
Finally finished Metroid Prime 2 today.
I give it a 4/10, but please read why.
I enjoy exploration in video games but it has to be rewarding. It seemed like the items in Prime 2 were nothing more than elaborate keys to get to other locations. Most items were literal keys. While I get that's kinda the point to exploration games, in Super Metroid the grapper had utility on top of swinging around. The hookshot in Zelda had hella utility besides going from point A to point B. The Screw Attack is the worst, as in Super, and pretty much every other metroid ever, the Screw Attack turned you into a spiral of invincible destruction. In prime 2, again, basically another key. It let you "jump longer" and had virtually no utility outside of that. But the worst part was, that each time you obtain a new "fun" item such as the morph ball, bombs, ect, they LITTER the area with doors and areas you can't reach until you get a DIFFERENT item. Like, haha, congrats you got this piece of **** bomb ball. Betcha wish you had spider ball tho don't cha? Guess you'll be back HERE again, won'tcha **** My final rant just deals with the lazy "get behind them" combat that is common with 90% of bosses and several VERY annoying enemies. It leads you to holding L to lock on, right or left on the stick to strafe behind them, and attempting to double-tap jump to quickly dash to the side. Problem #1: You can't see where you're dashing to. You take damage, fall off cliffs, hit walls, ect. Horrible. Problem #2: As you double tap jump, often times you simply JUMP up in the air, which actually SLOWS your strafing down causing even more frustration. Problem #3 is that it's hardly telegraphed whatsoever if you're far enough back behind the enemy to hit that precious weak spot, and if you miss, you'll take another 30 seconds to charge up another shot and by this time they've done their little 180 hop and are facing you again. Another problem is that the enemies rarely drop anything worth value (no exp) so by the end of the game when you have enough HP and armor, you're basically roaming the halls of the game going from point A to point B taking tiny amounts of damage the whole trip, completely ignoring enemies. Quality gameplay.
That being said, the graphics were pretty and samus wasn't some crying whiny "I'm just a girl" sex object. She was samus. Seriously the art design and detail made up half of my 4/10 rating.
SummaryThe sequel to Metroid Prime puts you in the role of bounty hunter Samus Aran once again. Your mission is to locate federation troopers who are missing on Aether--a planet torn into light and dark domains. To help you travel through the depths of light and dark, you'll have all-new beam weapons, a screw attack, and power-ups. Eliminate yo...