It's not a true Metroid Prime game if there isn't something to collect before you can face the final boss. Not that it matters much when you're going for 100% anyway... In any case, there is a lot of sand to see, before heading into the mostly disappointing finale. Endgame spoilers incoming, so read at your own risk!
Scans: 100%
Items: 100%
The Chozo Artifacts in Metroid Prime, the Sky Temple Keys in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, or the Energy Cells in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption... You either love this type of stuff or you hate it. I personally love it, but I also enjoy backtracking through the entire game world once I have all abilities unlocked. It's simply fun to discover new things and to complete everything, to check off all those mental markers, where looking for the belated MacGuffins goes hand in hand with this.
Of course, I can also understand the other side very well. If you don't care for completion and just want to beat the game, then this is an unnecessary detour. And in case of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond you were already looking for the Teleporter Keys as the main goal of each area, where now the game throws some more requirements on top. In order to break through the force field of the Chrono Tower, MacKenzie wants to reassemble the MK-99 Golem, so you'll have to search for a total of six mech parts.
However, this isn't something where you're supposed to backtrack all that much. Instead, this is mainly here to make you engage with the Sol Valley, in case you have only been speeding through it, because that's were five of the mech parts got scattered.
There is even a whole new boss here for you to fight on your bike, which is nice enough, but certainly the most lackluster boss in the game when it comes to mere challenge and gameplay. Like the Twilit Bloat in Twilight Princess, which only exist to give Wolf Link a fight.
Only one of the mech parts has you return into one of the areas, the Flare Pool. That's where you'll encounter another unique monster to fight, which feels like a boss, but doesn't get the same treatment with a health bar and all that:
The "Behemoth". Creative naming really isn't one of the game's strong suits, isn't it? If Sylux hadn't been introduced in Metroid Prime Hunters already twenty years ago, they probably would have named him "Psychic Man" or "Power Suit Dude".
Curiously, when you're backtracking through Magdrahda Volcano Flare Pool, there will be an unopened door left on the map:
It's from these tram lines, where now I'm wondering if you could have activated this door properly by fully going in a circle, before completing the other tasks. It's where it will ultimately crash and you won't be able to return there. Not that it matters much, but it's a bit annoying that they are keeping this icon there, because you will be scanning the map for orange icons once you've activated each area's Scout Bot.
As for these, I remembered their locations after all, except for Fury Green... But otherwise it's not so hard to figure out, since they have to be in some large, open space and there aren't that many in the other areas.
Curiously, in the overview trailer you could see how there is a Psychic Boost Ball track going around one of the towers, but I don't think that this has made it into the final game. Either that or I missed that and it's only a shortcut.
Well, even when you have collected all the mech parts, the game won't allow you to proceed just yet, because there is one more thing to keep you busy in the desert... collecting the Green Energy crystals.
Lots and lots of crystals... You need to fill the altar once, because you need the "Memory Fruit". Interestingly enough, the Galactic Federation soldiers remember this task better than I do, but it's essentially like the Life Tree Seeding from Skyward Sword... except that it plants memories of the Lamorn and turns into a suit upgrade for the time being.
So, you get four things from this overall: the other three being an upgrade to your normal beam at 25%, an upgrade to the Control Beam (where it flies faster, just like the Beetle again) at 50%, and the Green Energy Crystal Finder at 75%. The latter shows any remaining crystals on the radar as green dots... And this invites you to collect all of them. Don't worry, you don't need all of them for the 100% and the Memory Fruit, but you can go up to 200%, which unlocks some concept art in the gallery.
I didn't care about the reward, but turning all the green things in this game into not-green things just triggers my inner compulsions, so I was going to do it anyway... And it's a silly grind, which is only bearable when you have the radio unlocked via amiibo, because the Vi-O-La and Volt Forge tracks are absolute bangers. It's like Hyrule Warriors – it doesn't matter how dull and repetitive the gameplay sometimes can be when the music slams. Even cleaning your apartment will be fun with this soundtrack (I speak from experience).
My problem isn't the task itself, but how many there are. I think it was perfect in the beginning of the game, where it was somewhat engaging to collect them all, but after the two green rain showers it just became completely exorbitant. It's also annoying how the crystal heaps might leave a small rest behind, which is easy to miss without the radar.
Though, it's super satisfying to eventually clear it of all those green dots, no matter how small they might be. But this can also be where the next problem arrives, when the mission menu happens to look like this afterwards:
It doesn't truly equate to what you have collected, so you might only be missing a single crystal somewhere. In my case it has been three. There were still some left at the one spot in Fury Green, where these were simply hard to see against the grassy underground. And the rest was some leftovers inside the shrines:
Too bad that you can't see those on the map, so you have to re-enter each shrine individually and check the radar, once you have the Green Energy Crystal Finder. I think the amount you get from the shrines and the large ore deposits that require the Power Bomb may even score you enough crystals for the Legacy Suit, so you don't have to bother with the stray crystals in the desert all that much, unless you really care about the gallery.
The Legacy Suit itself is a beaut. They were trying super hard to outshine the Light Suit with this one, but as amazing as it looks, it doesn't really offer that much of an upgrade. You can now create a barrier shield at the cost of Missiles, which is certainly useful during the final battle, but I couldn't tell, because I completely forgot about that feature once I got there. But there is no overall damage reduction, which is unusual for a Metroid game.
Still, I will push hard to get the Legacy Suit as early as possible in my inevitable Hard Mode run, simply for how nice it looks. I even regret that I have smashed almost all crystals before I returned to the temple and delivered them for the suit. The visual change would have been appreciated during the grind.
But enough grinding and collecting! With 100% items and 98% scans it was time to head into the big finale, to bring this game to a closure and finally face Sylux. With the whole team in tow...
And this is where one disappointment followed after the other. I liked parts of the finale, in particular the last phase of the boss, but overall I have a lot to complain about. Let's start with the Chrono Tower itself. You got here in the beginning and it's absolutely beautiful – some truly magical alien design unlike anything else in the series. Coming back here is a stark reminder how interesting the whole Lamorn psychic stuff can look like.
Where was all that during the rest of the game? Why do the installations at the Ice Belt, Flare Pool and Great Mines all look like they were left there by either the Galactic Federation or the Space Pirates? The "lore" speaks of an industrial age and a psychic age, where the Chrono Tower obviously got created in the latter, but the Ice Belt was part of their late stage as well... I just wish that the rest of the game had more of this magical design in it.
And I wish that the tower now had Metroids in it. They initially made it a big plot point that Sylux stole the eponymous enemy from the Galactic Federation (in the secret ending of Federation Force) and found a way of mind-controlling them, which could have made him an incredible threat. But all the Metroids did in this game was serve as weak points on larger creatures that otherwise wouldn't have had any...
And the Chrono Tower could have been the moment, this game's own Tourian! It didn't have to be many, but some Metroids as a final threat in the way would have been perfect, where you try to take them out as a team. You even have the Ice Shot in the game, which isn't all that useful any longer, but they could have made it useful with Metroids for the classic freeze and smash combo.
It's just generally disappointing, since the Metroids were a big deal and this would have been the perfect opportunity to make use of them. Instead of some soldiers talking about how the place looks like. But it's not as big of a disappointment as this guy:
The Power Suit Man. Introduced in Metroid Prime Hunters in 2005, teased as the next major villain at the end of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in 2007, which got solidified in 2016 with Federation Force. The mysterious bounty hunter with a grudge against the Galactic Federation and Samus, who possesses a stolen suit similar to that of the legend herself. And who also has psychic powers, just like Samus in this game. 20 years in the making. The one and only Sylux.
Believe it or not, I was actually one of the few believers out there, who were excited for this character. Who had some trust in Kensuke Tanabe, that he has an interesting vision and knows where he is going with this character. But after all this time all we got is a villain, who mainly shined with absence.
Well, he appears throughout the game, but not in person, but by controlling Psy-bots and making them look like him via holographic projections. Now it turns out that he has been regenerating in a "Psychic Healing Pod" during this entire time. You can scan one of these things and it explains that the patients are given access to the tower's functions. Since Sylux is somehow psychic himself, where it never gets explained at any point how he had achieved this, he was able to hijack the system and use the tower's army against you.
The Lamorn are by far the dumbest species in the entire universe, probably even dumber than us humans. Not only did they create their own demise by poisoning their lands with this green energy stuff, they give full access to their technology who comes by and happens to be psychic, even though most of their psychic people turned into ravaging monsters... I guess their systems must have confused Sylux with the Chosen One, because his suit is so similar. At this point I wouldn't be surprised.
But it also looks like Sylux makes use of the green energy himself, where even his suit might be powered with it (hence all the green lights), which never gets explained either. The game shifts its focus so heavily on the Lamorn and the Grievers that it completely forgot about its main villain.
At least the boss fight is pretty badass. Kenji Yamamoto went wild with the guitar riffs and they really turned Sylux into an impressive threat, even though the dragon heads felt a bit random. It also gets very tricky, because not only do you have to care about your own health, but that of five teammates.
I previously thought that they can't die, but they actually can... When you don't heal them fast enough, it will result in a Game Over. "Critical mission failure. Federation trooper killed in action."
You can only heal them when they are down, however, so you can't preemptively get their health back up. And when two are down at the same time, this puts you at an immediate risk. This is especially bad during the phase where Sylux summons the lightning dragon heads, which electrifies parts of the floor. This does a ton of damage and your comrades don't exactly watch their step... At least they join when it's rope jumping time, more or less successfully.
Yippie! Luckily, the game isn't completely evil, and it's not trying to be Silksong. Once you've somehow made it past this stage, it will create a checkpoint and the second phase gives you plenty of healing opportunities. But most importantly, Sylux will drag Samus through a wormhole, so they can battle it out in privacy. This alone makes the fight already so much easier.
Here is where things get more classic, as you know Sylux from Metroid Prime Hunters. He finally makes use of the Lockjaw, which even gets its own logbook entry, just like back in the day. But it's much more of a gimmick this time, basically like a Morph Ball mini-game. He will try to steal an Energy Tank from you and you have to steal it back with the Boost Ball, or else he will heal himself with it once he returns back to normal.
By the way, the main gimmick of his weapon, the Shock Coil, was that he could siphon your energy to heal himself. I don't think he's doing this any longer here, except for maybe that one attack where he shoots this tractor beam in your face. But I was too busy shooting back at him to notice any healing...
Your best tool in this fight is the super charge of the Thunder Shot, effectively mimicking the old Shock Coil, just without the vampiric mode. I told you that he really didn't want you to have this weapon and for good reason. The super charge is homing and causes ridiculous amounts of damage. It's busted, like the Wave Buster used to be in Metroid Prime. And you're having so much ammunition at this point that you can just keep using it...
So, the first phase is really the difficult part and the rest is basically just fan service, giving you the Sylux fight that you desire. The interdimensional stage was also visually impressive, as if you're walking on a planetary ring... Or a huge vinyl playing rock music.
Back to the Gal Feds, you immediately notice that Sylux isn't done yet... Because the game is still letting you interact, instead of just playing a cutscene. Something still had to happen and I was worried for a moment that this might lead to a fourth phase. But it's just some slightly interactive cutscene and probably my least favorite part of all this.
I already didn't like what happened in the Great Mines, how everyone was willing to throw their life away, just to buy Samus some time. It was all just for laughs back then, but the game had to get serious at some point. And I fully expected that at least one of these soldiers is going to sacrifice themselves in to save the others... But all of them to send only Samus back? That's just wrong.
The game even lets you hesitate and then just kills you off, where you have to repeat phases 2 and 3 again. But in that moment I really wanted to save everyone. That's what Samus would do! She goes on missions to save people, not the other way around. Sylux was already pretty much finished, so she could have taken him out and then they could have figured out a way to repair the teleporter. Together. This ending just feels wrong to me... It's painful.
The secret 100% ending doesn't really make things better. This was another moment I truly looked forward to, because they always have teased the threat of the next game: Dark Samus, Dark Samus again, and finally Sylux. And maybe this here does the same, but if that's true, then we're looking at one more game focused on Sylux, at least. And to be fair, this game leaves more questions about him than it answers.
Well, the secret ending doesn't even play automatically, you can only find it in the gallery (it's also what you can unlock prematurely with the Sylux amiibo). During the game Samus catches glimpses of Sylux's memories in a psychic connection, where the secret ending shows us the whole scene, what's apparently his origin story.
And it's stupid. Absolutely stupid. Sylux used to be a Galactic Federation commander and he wanted to obtain some powerful Space Pirate weapon, but received the order to wait for Samus. He ignored these orders, the pirates activated the weapon and killed most of his squad, and then Samus saved the day by destroying the weapon. She offered him her support, but he refused in anger... probably now blaming Samus for what happened, or being mad that she has destroyed his chance of getting that weapon. Something like that.
So, that's the big backstory of a villain twenty years in the making? He's just some narcissistic asshole? Really? That's the best they could think of...? Even Bowser gets better character motivation and development than he does!
Some small tweaks could have made this scene already much more impactful. He could have obeyed the orders and it's actually the arrival of Samus that causes the Space Pirates to activate the weapon in panic, which then kills his whole squad, leaving Samus and him as the sole survivors. Now THAT would be some proper motivation for him to leave the Federation and develop a grudge so big that it opens wormholes.
However, there is something very off about this scene: the timeline of the events. There are lot of Federation Golems utilized in this battle and they were not a thing before Federation Force, where they had invented these mechs to battle the Space Pirates. And Tanamaar only had one of these for defenses in the opening sequence, just for good measure. You can also briefly see Samus's gunship, which is the one she uses in Prime 3 and 4, as well as Federation Force, but not before.
However, Sylux had stolen his suit long before the events of these three games. Metroid Prime Hunters takes place before Metroid Prime 2. And producer Kensuke Tanabe had always been very diligent about such details, where you can clearly tell that Hunters took place between the first two Prime games by the ship and suit designs. Such details always have been very intentional. So, this can't just be a blunder.
And if it's not a blunder, then this means that we're potentially dealing with some time travel plot here. It could even be that Samus isn't actually seeing some memories, but having a precognition, just like the Lamorn did. Maybe the events we see here take place after Prime 4 and they will make Samus try to stop Sylux in this battle, which ultimately causes him to become the villain we know. That could be interesting...
Time travel was even something that Tanabe originally wanted to do in Prime 4, but that probably got scrapped with the game's first development attempt, before Retro Studios took over. But with how much criticism Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has received, it may take another twenty years before we get to Prime 5. And as little interest there was in Sylux before Prime 4, there won't be any left after this. They can't just make us wait this long and then give us so little.
The Sylux amiibo functionality only adds insult to injury. Literally. When you scan him, he will taunt you once per day... Wooooooow! Nintendo actually makes you pay 20€ for a figurine, so you can interact with the game's villain beyond the final battle. Awesome!
Imagine if this was actually a thing in the game... If Samus and Sylux had a constant psychic connection and he uses it to haunt her. Instead of MacKenzie telling you to go to Ice Belt for the thirtieth time, you could have received psychic messages from Sylux, telling you to burn in hell instead. At least that would have been something.
Well... Mission Complete, I guess... The credits were worrying as well, because they have hired a hundred external studios to make this game happen. Next Level Games made sense to be involved, because they previously had developed Federation Force, but they had a lot of other studios work on the graphics.
I don't want to know how much it has cost Nintendo to make this game, because this won't bode well for potential sequels. And despite all the flaws this game has and despite the disappointments at the end, I want to know where this is going next. If this is meant as the start of a new trilogy, I want that trilogy, because at its core this is still a very beautiful game with super smooth gameplay. And I want a new Metroid Prime Hunters as well, because I love Arena Shooters.
Eventually, I will play through Beyond again in Hard Mode, but not right away. And there is one last complaint here, probably my biggest pet peeve: you can start over in your current save file, but this doesn't do you any favors. With Corruption and the Metroid Prime Trilogy they had introduced this excellent New Game+ feature, where all your scans are carrying over, which makes them easier to complete if you haven't already.
I have been scanning everything! Every little thing! I've turned everything from green into not-green, expecting that in my second playthrough everything would already be pre-scanned. That I would not feel the urge to scan anything in this game ever again. But they took it all away... It was all for naught. Nooooo! I cannot ever forgive Nintendo and Retro Studios for this, so I will travel through time and space to make them pay! Hahahahaaa! *Sylux laugh*
Luckily, I copied my savegame before the finale. Maybe they will patch this, because this truly is a setback. At least this is something they could actually patch, unlike the rest of complaints about this game...
See you next mission, given that there will be one.
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