Metroid Prime Remastered

Honestly, I don't know how anyone played this the first time round without the hint system. I was lost for a good chunk of my playtime and I had a vague sense of where I should be headed.

I genuinely think I would have given up if the hint system wasn't there.

I thought the hint system was in the original.
Or did they introduce it in Prime 2 or 3?
I'm sure I remember those alerts popping up and highlighting a zone on the map.

All complete!

Absolutly brilliant, almost...almost a perfect game for me. Just a few niggles and felt bad rushing it for zelda.


Completed it at 86% in 16 hours
Missed just one energy tank
200 missiles

Just got the power bomb ball upgrade. How far in am I? Also, what kind of fucking dick decided to put about 847 enemies and turrets between two save points at the power bomb upgrade? Oh and a stupid annoying puzzle??!! Apart from that I'm enjoying it except the infuriating bits like going deep deep down under water in the space shop only to be told I didn't have the gravity upgrade so I have to climb back out for 100 hours and work out wtf I missed. It's great but it gives me rage so I'm not sure of the final score yet. It's not hard, it's annoying.

You can do parts of the artefact hunt now if you want...
Be a lowdown cheater like me and check out a guide to see which ones you can get with your current equipment, and save yourself from excessive re-visits to places.

The backtracking for the artefacts reminds me of the Triforce Shard hunting in Wind Waker.
(I'm not sure it's quite that bad!)

I read somewhere in one of the guides that it absolutely is padding.
Nintendo were worried it was too short so added in the artefacts.

It was definitely a part of that era where games had to be longer or they weren't seen as good value for money, etc...

This x100

I was head over heels for this for around 6/7 hours but I lost progress several times at different points, after dying before reaching a save room and I just couldn't face that prospect again. I hope to feel compelled to go back to it as its clearly a magnificent game but I have to agree that design choices like those should remain in the past and unfortunately it does sour the experience when you are accustomed to more modern systems. When gaming time is limited I don't want to spend it repeating sections.

I do think the save points could be better placed, but I do think saving anywhere would ruin the experience. Part of the game’s appeal for me is going from one point of the map to another, knowing I have to get their in one piece.

Fast Travel as well would just ruin the flow of the game for similar reasons. Metroid is all about navigating and surviving within a maze. That gets completely eroded by changes these elements.

Still, I’d rip out the artifact hunt entirely as that is just unsatisfying padding. Especially considering half of them cannot be collected until late game and they are just technically parts of a key. If they were genuine and necessary abilities or upgrades, that would be a different story.

I basically agree, but I think this system imposes limits on the size and structure of the game. Imo, why it works so well in the SNES & GBA games is A) they're not that large, B) they have a very interconnected structure with lots of small branches, and C) traversal is pretty fast.

Let's take a look at Samus Returns for example. That game is so huge that even with its fast travel it can be pretty tedious, and without it it would be downright horrible. Just how much is too much of course depends on the individual player, but I think at some point you're reaching a point where you can't do without fast travel anymore. Prime isn't quite as bad, but I do see it as a borderline case somewhere between Samus Returns and Super. I found it still somewhat palatable, but often I did feel like some limited fast travel would be nice.

As for point B, in Prime I feel like I'm spending the majority of the time in relatively linear main "tubes", as opposed to moving around in the more intertwining small branches of Super. I found that made the backtracking too repetitive, again making me long for some way of skipping e.g. the same few long paths in Magmoor that I've been through 100 times already.

And C, Prime is just a lot slower. It has no speed booster and it likes to put repetitive lengthy fights in your way whereas in Super you can just rip through enemies most of the time, especially in the late game. Another thing that made progression and backtracking more tedious than I'd have liked.

So yeah, while having a fast travel system can be detrimental to the experience, I do think not having one can be as well, depending on the nature of the game. And I do feel like Prime suffers more from not having one than the SNES and GBA games do.

Btw, shoutout to AM2R for getting fast travel in a Metroid game right: It's only unlocked in the late game, and it's some sort of "morph ball pneumatic mail" just providing a few two-way connections between major areas, rather than teleporters that let you just beam to any other teleporter at will. It fits organically into the setting and still requires some on-foot traversal.

Prime is definitely too long! I 100% agree with that. I think many of its faults/annoyances could be addressed if it were shorter. But to change anything else would make it feel less like a Metroid game, I think.

I think part of the reason I wasn’t a big fan of Prime 2 is because of its length. With the repetition of a light/dark world theme it feels even longer. It would take another remaster for me to play that one again.

That YT channel has a LOT of them