I played the on the Switch 2 over the course of about two weeks starting around March 18, 2026 until March 29, 2026. My playthrough took around 15 hours and I got 100% items. Article first published on April 8, 2026.
I wasn't planning on writing a lot about Metroid Prime 4. From the beginning through to the first trip through Fury Green and then through Volt Forge, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the game - Volt Forge ending with a tutorial for the bike really drives this home as the entire game up until that point felt like one long introduction section, same as the Frigate in Prime 1 or the Research Station in Super, yet 5x as long.
However I started to realize what the developers were aiming for once I entered Ice Belt. Rather than mimicking the atmosphere of its predecessors, they were instead going for something more cinematic and narratively focused, with high energy action sequences to bridge the plot points together. Throughout the first pass through the lab, there was a constantly rising tension as Samus uncovered the Greaver pods and the research notes left behind by the Lamorn, culminating in all hell breaking loose when the power generator was turned back on. From here, the game becomes an action shooter, not unlike Halo or Gears of War. From this perspective, this sort of "build tension -> release" works wholly through the gameplay.
They achieved something similar in the Great Mines. There's a tension thats built between the greavers being attracted to sound, and this being the area where super missiles and power bombs are found, as well as with how the enemies make noise - the control beam puzzles here are like playing Operation. It works extraordinarily well for what it is. Even though it's quite different from a typical Metroid game, I really appreciate this new angle and I think it still fits perfectly with the tone of the rest of the series, gameplay wise.
The narrative itself, however, did not land quite as well for me. Aside from the very "Focus M" dialogue, which I don't know at all how to unpack (I found it more silly than annoying), the story felt somewhat incoherent for how hard it was pushed. The melodrama of faking out the deaths of the federation soldiers in the Great Mine felt very cheap, then their actual sacrifice in the ending felt even cheaper. Sylux's strange presence-yet-absence for most of the game went completely unexplained, clearly setting up for a sequel but just feeling incomplete in the moment. There being 3 different MacGuffins for ending the game (temple keys, green energy crystals, mech parts) gave me the feeling that they didn't really know what they wanted to do narratively.
The new psychic power ups were okay. I think they went really underutilized, with the direct telekinesis being the most used but the least interesting. The few puzzled and enemies that relied on the control beam, for example, were fantastic, but sadly uncommon. Most of the other psychic puzzles were purely observational - i.e. did you notice there's a bomb slot too high up that you can't reach? Just use telekinesis to throw a bomb up there! These could have been anything for the most part and were just blatant lock-and-key puzzles. It makes me realize how important it is to obfuscate puzzles in games like this, to make them feel less obviously video-gamey.
I want to briefly mention Sol Desert. I didn't hate it as much as everyone else online, but it definitely felt out of place. I get the feeling that Nintendo insisted on something like it due to their recent obsession with "open world" games. Hopefully the backlash against it highlights to Retro Studios and Nintendo that it's not really something that players want to see going forward. Time will tell.
One other design aspect that I want to highlight is the scout bots. In a typical Metroid game, the player is forced to backtrack over the same areas over and over. In doing so, they're bound to notice obstacles that can be overcome with new power ups, which usually lead to the ammunition expansions. Since there's less backtracking in Prime 4, this doesn't happen, and the scout bots are necessary to replace the more organic method of item discovery. And besides, in 2D Metroid games since Super, there's a radar on the map that highlights when a map tile has an item in it, so it's not too abnormal for the series. So overall, I'm definitely in favor of these.
I don't think Prime 4 is particularly good as a Metroidvania. The level design is long and narrow, rather than wide and interconnected. Power-ups felt quite limited in scope, and each area was completely self contained, with little backtracking required for progression. The constant chatter from Samus's allies prevented me from ever feeling too isolated, as Metroid games tend to. However, I think they still did something pretty cool with this game, and I look forward to the follow up.