I know 3 "technically" ages better than I remember as a result of Primehack removing a lot of the waggle frustration out but I'm of the opinion that games should be evaluated on the hardware they came out on, and Prime 3 is by far the most frustrating Metroid with some good ideas I can stomach.

I think I would personally put it above Prime 3, which basically puts it at "middling" in terms of the entire franchise. I think criticism can do Retro good, since it's clear a lot of the people who worked on this are probably newer to the studio. If they do a Prime 5, I demand better.

I liked the Lamorn worldbuilding a lot more than I expected.

The actual level design is really disappointing, all the areas are just "go forward, turn power on, leave to go fight the boss". The NPCs range from "haha okay" to "shut the fuck up" but never feel particularly compelling.

IMO It's I think the most "okay" Metroid game ever made. The world is beautiful, the controls are great. Most of the boss fights are good. When the game lets you explore the areas, particularly once you're "fully powered" and hunting for the last upgrades, it feels good.

it is the perfect sequel. expects you to have played the first game and iterates on the mechanics and difficulty presented.

Yeah I pretty much have a “glass half full” mentality to the series and I’m aware of that; the lows don’t have any power over me, and the highs are so much higher that it’s really easy to just ignore or forget about the, well, more forgettable entries.

And I guess I could just play another class and do shapeshifting because PoE allows that but idk man I don’t wanna do fucking pathfinder/deadeye and try to sandwich shapeshifting into that

My only real qualm is that both of the ascendancies for Druid don’t look exactly what I want? Shaman doesn’t put shapeshifting forward as much as I want and Oracle is…………………….. something !

call me a pedant, but putting samus returns on the same list as federation force and other m is not a fair list. i understand your position that it’s mid but i think it’s unquestionably good. it’s a draw

hunters is good with a big asterisk, it hurts my hand the most out of all of the games. the prime 3 fans drive me crazy. easily the game that has aged the fucking worst of the series.

hooting and hollering over metroid pinball

? metroid fusion? metroid prime? metroid zero mission? metroid prime 2? metroid dread? they get more right than wrong. i get your disappointment in 4 but that doesn’t reflect on the series at large imo.

“oh this upcoming week we have the BIG SNACK STOCK UP” and it’s just crackers and chips. woo.