This will be the first time I write a review of a direct sequel to a game I have already reviewed. My very first review was for the first Metroid Prime, which I enjoyed. When I played the first game, I had just about zero experience with first person shooters. After successfully beating the game with only a few deaths, I felt more confident going into Metroid Prime 2, so I took the plunge and selected the Veteran difficulty (Ooh scary <:0 ). This was the right choice as the difficulty between the two games felt mostly the same to me, which implies I got better (yay!). Now that I am a certified veteran, I have some better-informed opinions about these games, what they did well, and how the new stuff in the sequel made the game better or worse.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes improves on the original in some ways, but retains most of its shortcomings. While I think the highs are higher in the sequel, it doesn’t quite reach the level of overall quality found in the first game.
Remember, this review reflects my experience and therefore everyone else’s as well. If you disagree with any point I bring in this post, then you should reflect on your opinion until you agree with me as I am correct and you are wrong. Thank you for reading!
Light and Dark Beam
The new light and dark beams and their unique ammo mechanic were handled quite well. When I first got them and learned about their limited ammo, I was skeptical. I was afraid that ammo would become scarce and I would never feel safe using anything other than the power beam. However, by killing enemies or boxes with one beam, you are likely to get generous drops of ammo for the other beam, which is clever. This setup encourages the player to switch between beams in combat, forcing experimentation. If you are out of ammo for one beam, you just use what you have left of the other to gain the needed ammo.
Movement
The controls for turning in Metroid Prime 1 and 2 are not great. I don’t like having to point the wiimote to the left or right to look in that direction. It makes it impossible to shoot at anything while turning and is also very slow. This may just be a limitation of the control scheme using the wiimote and nunchuck.
I also take some issue with the strafing mechanic in both games. It’s great to be able to dodge left or right quickly to dodge an attack, but you can only do so while locked onto an enemy. I feel this is a silly limitation. There is no reason to think Samus could not do this whenever she wants. Some enemies are very hard to lock on to, and this is also a problem when there are multiple enemies.
I think it is done this way because when you strafe, you don’t just go straight left or right, you go around what it is you are targeting, so the exact place you end up will differ depending on the enemies distance from you. This makes it possible to fight enemies like the Grapple Guardian by strafing a full 180 around them to reach their back. However, I think it would make sense to allow the player to strafe in a straight line while not locked on to anything. This would function like a target that is an infinite distance away.
I’m a big fan of the additions made to the spider ball in this game. By boosting while on a rail, you launch straight off of the rail with huge speed! You get so much air from this it’s crazy. There is a miniboss in the Sanctuary Fortress which employs this ability in my favorite way. You hang to a small circular rail and must avoid a security robot’s arms which follow you by boosting to the other side. This miniboss is just chaotic enough to get your heart racing while providing a good challenge.
Despite how much I loved this miniboss, I can’t even find a name for it online, go figure.
Bosses
Metroid Prime 2’s highest points are its bosses. Some of them are a blast to fight and test the abilities you’ve gained in unique ways, but others are underwhelming at best and frustrating at worst.
Chykka, the boss in the Dark Torvus Temple, is one of my favorites. This boss has several forms which test your aim, timing, ability to quickly switch weapons, and skill with the grapple beam. Near the end of the boss, there is a cool part where the ground will momentarily go under the poison water, forcing you to use the grapple beam to survive while you wait for it to come back. While this boss is too long, every phase is well made and fun.
Another great boss is the Alpha Blogg. This one is pretty simple: avoid the stuff it spits at you and dodge out of the way when it dashes. But, the timing is tight so when you do it right, you feel like you’ve only just barely avoided it. Alpha Blogg is just a quality boss that feels good to fight.
Unfortunately, there are also a number of bad bosses. The primary example being the Boost Guardian. The Boost Guardian is a crime against nature. This boss spends three quarters of the time in ball mode, during which you cannot damage it and it boosts wildly around the stage while destroying your cover. To get it to go back to being damageable, you must go into ball mode and bomb it. After you finally get it to its damageable state, a short cutscene plays, then you are immediately forced into standing mode without any input by you. There is nothing else in the game that forces you to change modes like this, so it is discoordinating. If that weren’t bad enough, right after the change, the boss immediately rushes you, which is just unfair.
Menu
The new menu system for this game is strange and bad. It’s hard to describe in words how it works, but the menu is set up in a tree. When you first open it, you have 3 options which show up as bubbles: options, inventory, and lore. To select an option, you hold Z and move the control stick in the direction of the bubble then press A which often leads you to a submenu with more bubbles. This system is not great, but it is made worse in submenus with tons of choices. The options are so crowded that you can’t even read all the labels, and not all are accessible immediately. Instead, you must turn the control stick without holding Z to reorient them before you can actually choose the thing you need. It’s slow and clunky. This disincentivizes the player from looking into lore entries, inventory descriptions, and other things.
The menus really shine in their crudiness with the clues that help you find the 9 hidden sky temple keys. To actually read any of the hints from your inventory, you must go 6menus down. That is too many for something so important; these should be immediately accessible from anywhere. In the first game, one of my favorite parts was the final scavenger hunt at the end of the game, but the menu system and the less-than-stellar clues in this game made it much less fun.
Sanctuary Fortress
The showstopping area in this game is absolutely the Sanctuary Fortress. Before you head there, U-Mos tells you about how the area was once an unbreakable stronghold for the Luminoth before their technology was taken over by the Ing. The path to the elevator is riddled with security drones, but once you finally get through, the walls are covered with bright lights, mysterious machines, and small magnetic robots. Then, you make it to the fortress itself which stands tall as a skyscraper, with disgusting additions to the structure made by the Ing. Everything in this area oozes a futuristic atmosphere with an air of evil to it.
This area also had some of my favorite enemies in the game. The rezbit is a fun, challenging enemy with one of the coolest attacks I’ve ever seen in any game. It sends a virus into your suit which completely incapacitates you until you input the reboot code to get it out! The animation for this is so good to. The first time I saw it I nearly dropped my controller. I love the terminal messages that appear on the screen after rebooting. This is such a cool concept. I can just imagine Samus in her suit holding the hard reset buttons in desperation as the rezbit begins to attack again.
Another great enemy is the Quad which requires the player to use both standing and ball mode. Boosting into it while it is spinning is so satisfying. It’s like a Beyblade battle and you’re one of the Beyblades!
Other Problems
- This applies to both games, but the map is hard to use. I had trouble getting a good look at the shape of a room I was in as the map always forced me back to the center of it. Also, sometimes seeing other rooms through the one you are looking at is really annoying. It was a bigger problem in the sequel as the map was more central to the game this time around due to the challenge of traversing through Light and Dark Aether.
- The Luminoth were underutilized in this game. One of the major differences tone-wise between this game and the first is the presence of a living, breathing race of people that you are trying to help. This would be a perfect opportunity for building the world through talking to the Luminoth. Instead, all but one of the Luminoth are either corpses, or hibernating in the Great Temple waiting for you to save them. Even U-Mos barely wants to talk to Samus despite her being their literal prophesized savior. Are they shy or something?
Score
Metroid Prime 2 offers a similar experience to the first game with new areas, abilities and enemies. Several of the bosses and areas are exciting beyond anything in the first game, but not all of the new content sticks the landing. Some bosses are unfair, and the menu is hard to use. These negative aspects keep Metroid Prime 2 from surpassing its predecessor as a whole.