This was a painful one for me.

I love all 2D Metroids, all Metroid Primes (Even 3! Barely!), really everything except Other M and original Metroid 2 but only because the screen was so damn small, AM2R / Samus Returns completely redeemed it. But this? Woof. When it’s good it’s good, when it’s bad it’s real bad, but most of the time it just looks fantastic but feels lukewarm.

It looks amazing, you get your choice of 4k 60Hz or 1080p 120Hz, and it’s absolutely solid in both. It’s got all the standard Prime visor graphical stuff (water drops, reflections from explosions, etc), and the general environmental design is fantastic as usual for Retro Studios. It’s easily one of the best looking games I’ve played this year, and I’m glad they pushed it to a Switch 2 title, because there’s no way it looks anywhere nearly this good on the original Switch.

Moment-to-moment gameplay feels great, but some of that is because they nailed it 23 years ago. There’s basically zero room to improve it, there’s only room to fail to meet that original obscenely high bar. So, thankfully, they did not screw this part up. Hooray. Now on to the gripe zone.

General Structure and Over-World⌗

This game is structurally the furthest we’ve ever diverged from the core promise of a Metroid game: an immense hostile cohesive interconnected world that at least gives you the impression that you could go in any direction at any time, even if it’s actually leading you down a straight-line path. To me, much of the joy of a Metroid game (and by extension most Metroidvanias) is found in seeing some giant green door you can’t interact with and then 10 hours later you work your way through a hidden passage only to come out that door, returning you to this earlier area with a significantly more advanced kit, encouraging you to explore further things you previously couldn’t pass.

There is none of that in Prime 4. None. Period. The game consists of a prologue, five completely disconnected dungeons, and an enormous vast empty void of a literal actual desert. There is no secret hidden path from $COLD_BIOME to $HOT_BIOME. You never cut your way through overgrowth in $FOREST_BIOME and pop out in $STORM_BIOME. It just straight up does not exist.

The best comparison I have for this is Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Both have completely isolated dungeons connected by a vast and largely featureless over-world which is so boring to traverse that you dread wrapping up a dungeon because you know afterwards you’re in for a completely unnecessary several-minutes-long flight. But it must be noted that with Skyward Sword, while the traversal sucked, the overall structure was fine because isolated dungeons are the point – so much so that when Breath of the Wild didn’t really have traditional dungeons (interestingly, in favor of a more interconnected world to explore) people freaked out.

The game does send you back and forth between biomes, you’ll still come across roadblocks you can’t pass as you explore, but they don’t lead you between biomes, they typically just lead to an ammo upgrade.

The Motorcycle and The Desert⌗

Kit-wise, MP4 really doesn’t bring much new to the table. Think back to the kit from Metroid Prime, yeah we’ve got basically all of those but they’re psychic now which means they can also be purple. If anything, we’re missing stuff, as there’s only really one visor, no traditional suit upgrades, and there’s no space jump or screw attack.

The only things MP4 truly adds are the basic psychic abilities (which are mostly just the scan visor but purple, with the exception of the Control Shot which is a special kind of shot you can manually drive like the Beetle from Skyward Sword) and The Motorcycle. Apart from some very specific doors (which could have been locked with anything), The Motorcycle basically only exists to make traversal across the vast empty desert engaging. They succeeded, but at the same time, the only reason I can imagine the vast empty desert is so vast and empty is because you’ve got this crazy sci-fi motorcycle and can zoom around at 900 distance-units-per-time-units. So why??! I strongly suspect at some point some team the project was assigned to thought a motorcycle would be cool, but there’s nowhere you can really let a motorcycle rip in a Metroid game, so they decided to fundamentally break the game to accommodate it.

But wait! They actually didn’t accommodate it! They chose to map “jump on the motorcycle” to the Switch’s + button. If you press it out on the over-world Samus does an awesome flip onto it and you immediately start zooming off. If you press it in a dungeon, however, you get an angry red message at the top of the screen that says it can’t be summoned here.

It’s like if you were playing Wind Waker and were deep in a dungeon, and you pressed the normal typical “start” button, and instead of getting a start menu The King of Red Lions popped up and said “SORRY LINK, YOU LEFT ME BACK AT THE DOCKS SO YOU CAN’T HOP ABOARD RIGHT NOW!” Choosing to map this to + is unforgivable. I know they had to use an “important” button and I know they didn’t have any other face buttons handy, but they could have put it on L3 or R3, or they could have put it on -, they could have done anything. But they did this. You will constantly press this by accident. You will be annoyed every time.

Linearity, Tutorialization and Mandatory Backtracking⌗

Prime 4 is incredibly linear, but that really isn’t inherently bad. Dread was linear! Fusion was linear! The thing that makes it bad is when you couple it with aggressive tutorialization and mandatory backtracking.

Imagine you are playing a Metroidvania. You know, any of them. Pick one. You get $ICE_POWER. Sick. You can now shoot ice. You know this because you pressed the attack button and it shoots a big icicle now. Sweet. You start thinking back to things you might be able to freeze, and start testing what stuff you can do with the new ability. You use your human brain to think and go play the game.

Before I explain how it works in Metroid Prime 4 I first have to explain that the game has NPCs, most notably the universally hated dweeb Miles MacKinzie, a Level 4 Galactic Federation Engineer. He is exactly as annoying as you imagine he is, possibly more. He is every single doofy engineer stereotype rolled into one and given a name.

So you finish $ICE_BIOME in Metroid Prime 4 and on your way out you finally pick up the ICE CHIP. You get a pop-up.

This An Ice Chip. It Can Be Analyzed By A LEVEL FOUR GALACTIC FEDERATION ENGINEER. Hope You’ve Got One Of Those Sitting Around.

Ugh. You exit the $ICE_BIOME. Miles immediately contacts you over the radio.

WOW SAMUS IT LOOKS lIKE YOU GOT AN ICE CHIP YOU BETTER BRING THAT BACK TO ME SO I CAN ANALYZE IT!

Miles’ “base” is a random room 4 rooms and one fast-travel load zone deep into $FOREST_BIOME. You begrudgingly hop on your motorcycle and drive over there.

WOW SAMUS IT’S AN ICE CHIP! LET ME TAKE THAT!

He snatches the chip, turns it into a slightly different chip, and hands it back to Samus to install. She has done this herself upwards of 20 times previously in literally every other game.

YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO FREEZE ENEMIES NOW! YOU SHOULD ALSO BE ABLE TO FREEZE LAVA FLOES TEMPORARILY! YOU CAN ALSO OPEN CRYO-LOCKS!

Ugh. You leave $FOREST_BIOME (another 4 rooms and a fast-travel), and set foot back in the horrible desert.

HEY SAMUS, IT’S MACKENZIE AGAIN! YOU SHOULD GO TO $FIRE_BIOME AND SHOOT SOME LAVA! BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE ICE SHOT NOW! THAT’S WHAT IT’S FOR! AND IF YOU SEE ANY MONSTERS YOU CAN FREEZE THEM! JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT!

Thankfully this doesn’t happen with every upgrade, but it does happen over and over. As I said I can handle linearity, some of my favorite Metroid games are super linear, but this feels like demeaning busy-work intended to pad the game out. It also doesn’t even make sense in-universe! Viewros is supposed to be some lost ancient alien world unknown to the Galactic Federation! Samus should be able to use all the tech here because immediately upon showing up she’s declared to be the world’s prophetic savior and becomes psychically linked to its people, she should be able to install her own damn ice chip, it should all be built for her! But no, Miles needs a reason to exist.

Combat and Particularly Bosses⌗

Combat feels off. Early game it feels like enemies are just tanky, and your standard beam and missiles just don’t do enough damage, or like you’re missing some kind of ability where now it will feel right. But then you make it through more of the game and it just doesn’t get better. Sure you get abilities to freeze or shock enemies, or to pull shields away, but even with those abilities it seems like enemies just shrug off most attacks. Like, there’s a whole fire beam, and it visibly sets enemies on fire, but they don’t seem to care? Are they even taking damage over time? Do elemental weaknesses even exist in this game? I honestly have no idea.

It’s a similar situation with bosses, but with a bonus targeting issue. Bosses also feel like an absolute slog with regards to base damage, but they also introduced “sub targeting” which can technically always be used but only really becomes important during boss fights. MP4 brings back normal lock-on targeting, but it targets center-of-mass as it always has. Bosses typically are not vulnerable on center-of-mass, instead they have weak points just barely off center. To handle this, they have a precise targeting mode where you can lock-on and then either use the stick or motion controls to “drag” the reticle arbitrarily off-center. This really sucks because enemies move! Their weak points move! Their armor shifts around! They physically dash around faster than your lock-on can keep up with! This makes this sub-targeting option worse than useless.

Personally, I dealt with this by simply not using targeting whatsoever for boss fights. I just free-aimed like it’s a normal FPS. It works significantly better than anything involving lock-on but when you combine the targeting change with how tanky bosses are, and how basically nothing in your kit seems to do any bonus damage, it just no longer feels like a Prime game. What is the point of having this kit?

Typically in Metroid games or even Metroidvania games as a whole, your upgrades have dual effects: they give you some kind of exploration benefit and also give you some kind of combat benefit. An Ice Beam might freeze enemies or outright kill fire enemies, but also give you the ability to make ice platforms or something. A stomp move might both let you crush ground-based enemies and also slam through floors. You get nothing of that here, meaning boss fights are typically just mindless beam spam, and not even charged beam spam, due to how the tracking is and that no beams are hit-scan, you really might as well just mash the button.

Quest Design⌗

My example of The Chip Situation described above was bad, but really I feel obligated to explain one more specific late-game quest. I am not exaggerating this situation whatsoever.

So you beat the last dungeon, receive your last power upgrade, and escape with your full party. MacKinzie chimes in to say “Wow all we have to do now is blow up the big force field! Meet us back at base to discuss how we’ll do that!”

Fine, so you jump on your silly motorcycle and race over there. You meet up with everybody… and they just sorta mill around? I think you’re told to go find Tokabi… but Tokabi is literally in the room with you. You talk to him and he just has a meaningless short quip to say.

So you head out back to the desert, frustrated. The only obvious thing left to do is to deal with these big robot parts strewn about the map, but you can’t do anything with them, except for one that you can zap to make its fingers wiggle. If you wander the enormous vast empty map long enough you may eventually trip over a rocky outcrop with a campfire and oh look it’s Tokabi and he’ll give you some exposition along with a teleportation chip. And what do we do with chips?!!? That’s right, back to base to be allowed to activate it, and then you’re sent right back out to pick up the parts.

This quest is infuriating, the steps are nonsensical, the backtracking is absurd, and it doesn’t even make sense in-universe. Samus is the savior figure to this world, she has been deliberately and personally tasked with opening this teleporter to teleport, why can’t she just walk in once she has all the keys? Why do any of these characters exist? What are we even doing?

In Summary⌗

To me, Metroid Prime 4 has two key categories of problems:

First, it is full of disruptive solutions to manufactured problems. We need our GalFed crew to matter, well I guess we could blow up the flow of acquiring gear so you’re forced to interact with them? We made a cool bike, but the game literally has no place for bikes, well I guess we could blow up our map and put millions of miles worth of desert in between entrances, then you have to use it!

Second, it seems to not understand what makes a Metroid game a Metroid game. Weapon choice doesn’t matter. The world is disconnected. There’s no creative use of your kit to solve problems. Combat is still based on lock-on targeting but then doesn’t want you to use it. It gives you fewer toys than usual to play with, and then doesn’t give you meaningful reasons to play with the toys you do get.

As one final jab, the Metroid staple of alternate endings based on performance are back, but even that is something they managed to ruin. Typically your ending is based on Item Collection % (high, low, 100%), Difficulty (Normal vs Hard), and Completion Time. Most Prime games were purely based on Item Collection %. But no, in MP4 it’s based on Item Collection and Scan Collection, including a bunch of completely missable scans during the prologue which you cannot return to. So you can miss out on the “best” ending in the first 3 minutes of the game because you failed to scan a Space Pirate. BUT WAIT! Nintendo has a solution for you! If you simply pay them $29.99 you can buy the Sylux Amiibo, and scanning that Amiibo will unlock the video associated with the 100% Item & Scan ending.

I cannot recommend this game.