After replaying all the classic 2D Metroid games and completing both the new 3DS Metroid games,
Samus Returns and
Federation Force, it was time to revisit the
Metroid Prime Trilogy in early anticipation of
Metroid Prime 4. When the anthology was originally released for the Wii in 2009, I cleared all three games with 100% scans and items on Normal Mode. My goal now is to clear the remaining Veteran and Hypermode difficulties and to collect the rest of the Credits in order to unlock everything in the gallery. The latter is only relevant to
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, so with the first two games it will "simply" be about clearing the higher difficulties.
Why bother with Veteran Mode and not just jump straight into Hypermode? Well, the
Metroid Prime Trilogy takes note on your save files, what difficulties you've already beaten. In a save file there are these little circles on the left border of each game slot and they will be only filled after beating the corresponding difficulties. This doesn't work its way down, so clearing Hypermode doesn't count as clearing Normal or Veteran Mode, even though they are the same thing with different damage values. But for me clearing Veteran Mode first is a nice way to familiarize myself with the games again, before I take on the highest challenge.
In case of
Metroid Prime I also activated the Fusion Suit during Hyper Mode, which I jokingly called
"Fusion Mode", because it pretty much was the same thing as in
Samus Returns. And all that without scanning any amiibo! Well, to be fair, to unlock the Fusion Suit in the original version on the Nintendo GameCube you had to link the game with
Metroid Fusion on the GameBoy Advance via a cable...
But overall the approach of beating Veteran Mode first as a practice paid off a lot in this case. I rarely died in both modes, but I actually died more often on Veteran, figuring things out. Only
Meta Ridley gave me a lot of trouble in both modes... I even started to call him "Metroll Ridley", because the second phase of his battle seemed like pure trolling. You can easily wear him down to about 10% of his health with only a few scratches, but that's where he starts to wear you down, while taking little damage himself. My mistake was that I always tried to dodge his ram attacks, instead of shooting him with a charged shot in the mouth right before this attack. The constant ramming at the end then cost me my life a couple of times. Frustration pure. But it's not so hard, once you know ALL the tricks.
It's similar with the
Omega Pirate, who surprisingly gave me very little trouble. I only died on my first try on Veteran, but then never again. The tricks here are to use Power Bombs to destroy his Phazon armor and then to ignore the Space Pirates by jumping around, while spamming the Omega Pirate with Super Missiles. It's doable.
Practicing on Veteran also helped a lot with the time later in Hypermode. It was quite the disaster during my Veteran Playthrough, taking above 11 hours.
Navigating the world of
Metroid Prime can be annoying, because it's a maze with no real shortcuts. Especially if you miss stuff and have to cross the same hard-to-navigate areas multiple times, it can be a little frustrating. For example I went into the sunken Frigate Orpheon without the Gravity Suit, because I misremembered its location. I thought it was down there, but then I had to get all the way back up without it, which wasn't much fun. I couldn't even just load my last savegame, because there is a Save Station down there, which I used without hesitation. It was still interesting, because the enemies are different at the time (no Aqua Pirates, but tentacles on the bottom).
Another wrong turn for me was missing the Artifact of Spirit at Phendrana's Edge, so I had to go back through that area, where you actually find the Gravity Suit, three times in total. On top of that this game has lots of
platforming for a First Person Shooter with many vertical areas, where you often find yourself in rooms that are shaped like a tube. Around the same area in Phendrana it's easy to fall off somewhere and drop down all the way into the water, while Flying Space Pirates are still shooting at you. Experiencing this in First Person Mode isn't much fun, it's usually quite disorienting.
But things went much, much better in Hypermode, when I knew all the locations of every item and could plot a quite efficient course through the game. Plus, I had the practice for all the platforming areas and I could traverse the various rooms much quicker, so in total I was able to shave off about four hours of my time. It's still far from any world record, but my personal best and that on the highest difficulty.
Overall I have to say that replaying this game felt similar to
Super Metroid, where the throne was shaken quite a bit. I always regarded both
Super Metroid and
Metroid Prime as the best Metroid games, but I'm not so sure anymore. Unlike
Super Metroid, however,
Metroid Prime isn't in need of a remake. The game still looks, feels and plays amazing. An HD remaster would be more than enough, if Nintendo ever wanted to touch this game again.
The problems lie more at the core here. One example would be the aforementioned platforming, which doesn't suit the First Person playstyle all too well. And this was already toned down heavily in the sequels, if I remember correctly. Some of the fights also don't work too well in First Person, especially with bosses that try to push you in a corner or ram into you. The most annoying enemies are probably the War Wasps in the beginning with that silly Hive Mecha fight...
But the biggest gripe I have is about the
visor and beam switching. When compared to the sequels it's just not that good. The Thermal Visor doesn't even feel like a real upgrade, because the game forces you to traverse those disorienting dark areas after acquiring it. Both it and the X-Ray Visor limit your view quite a lot and both it and the X-Ray for the most part are only there to target otherwise invisible enemies, which isn't good game design to begin with.
It's similar with the
beams, where the game turns into a massive "shoot the right color" puzzle. It's not strategic like in
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, where the beams consume ammo and you want to use them at their best potential. The only ammo here are missiles and they are rarely ever worth it. If
Federation Force got one thing right, then it's missile power, because they feel relatively weak in
Metroid Prime, where at the end you might only consume them for the beam combos like Super Missiles or to shatter frozen enemies.
Well, Ice and Plasma Beams offer a significant boost in power, but otherwise it's really just about matching the color of doors and enemies over and over again, which is very simple minded. They even have a Metroid variant that's about switching to the right beams, the Fission Metroid, while Metroids overall are much weaker in
Metroid Prime than in any other Metroid game.
And of course there are the various
Beam Troopers, which feel somewhat incomplete, because they don't really fire the corresponding beams at you, it's just all power shots. Ironically the Power Troopers are the most dangerous ones, because they can't be stun-locked like the others and they fire really fast. This got me bad in Hypermode on my way to the Power Bombs through the Phazon Mines. The Power Troopers in the Ore Processing did so much damage in a short time that I had to heal by changing from Elevator Access A to Elevator A many times to farm health orbs from the explosive crates and the Scatter Bombus. It even feels like a relief, when the Metroid haunt the Ore Processing and the troopers are gone...
Getting to the Power Bombs can be quite tough, because it's a long way without any Save Stations in between, but the part afterwards is even more so rewarding, where you backtrack through the entire world, collect all the hidden items and Chozo Artifacts, before you dive down into the Phazon Hell again and phase the last three bosses.
The final boss is then the pinnacle of all the switching, where in the first phase you have to switch to the right beam and in the second phase to the right visor... Very original. What's even worse, the game gives you the cool looking Phazon Suit only to introduce the red Phazon shortly after, which acts exactly like Phazon before. And I hate that room, where you have to do some platforming above a sea of red Phazon that endlessly spawns those annoying Fission Metroids. The final boss isn't something that you want to try again because of this room alone. It's like the whole ending of the game is a concentrated culmination of what's wrong with it...
But I don't just want to complain.
Metroid Prime is still a prime game. If
Super Metroid is the equivalent to
A Link to the Past, then
Metroid Prime is the
Ocarina of Time of the Metroid series. It beautifully transformed the greatness of
Super Metroid into a First Person Shooter/Adventure. Diving down in the world of Tallon IV is still amazing even at today's standards, where I especially like the Chozo Ruins. This place is absolutely magical and lets me immerse into the game every single time.
But still I'm happy that I'm done with this game for now, because I'm really excited to dive into
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes next!
