I’ve spent the better part of the last two years catching up on most of the Metroid games I can. It’s a game series I can confidently say is one of my favorites, despite it being so vastly different from the other game series I enjoy. Having played all of the 2D games through various means, it was only a matter of time until I started the Prime sub-series.
At one time, I had the first “Metroid Prime” for GameCube. However, the controls for that game are some of the worst controls imaginable. Generation 6 in gaming (a topic I will delve further into at some point) is such a funny time in history because you have the PS2 and Xbox, both of which figured out dual-stick controls for 3D environments within the generation, but then you also have the GameCube which had absolutely no idea what it was doing in a 3D space. You would think that the yellow C-stick would refer to “Camera-Stick,” but much like the Nintendo Switch 2’s mysterious C-button, it isn’t ever what you expect or want out of Nintendo.
If you aren’t aware, the way in which you control the camera in “Metroid Prime” for GameCube is with the analog stick, and aiming outside of it requires you to hold the R shoulder button, then aim. Essentially, you can’t move and aim at the same time. Now, experienced Metroid fans will tell you that this control scheme is perfect for the game because there’s a lock-on for a reason. However, I’m going to tell you that this control scheme sucks and is not worth anyone’s time.
So, once I sold “Metroid Prime” for “Metroid Prime Remastered,” and completed that game without any qualms, the question for how I would get through “Metroid Prime 2: Echoes” became a concern. I definitely didn’t want to be stuck using the shitty GameCube controls, and as of now, there isn’t a re-release on Switch 2. The only other way to play “Metroid Prime 2” is with Wii-mote controls on the “Metroid Prime Trilogy.” And let me be the first to say, yikes.
The Pros of “Prime 2”
Now, I want to start with some of the pros of Prime 2, because I do really enjoy what Prime 2 had to bring to the Metroid series. As a Metroid game, it stands out along with titles like “Metroid Dread” and “Fusion,” with eerie atmosphere and world-building.
While I may have my gripes, I can’t deny that these aspects of “Prime 2” are phenomenally done, and genuinely can be breathtaking at times.
World-Building and Atmosphere in “Prime 2”
One thing that the Prime games continue to be good at is the world-building. The narrative design hidden in scanning the environment and the creatures you run into, along with the tidbits of historical information, continue to be done in such a flawless manner. The subtly of world-building is something that Prime excels at, especially when you enter an area and see a bunch of corpses scattered about, and can only wonder what took them out.
A lot of the time, the world-building is told solely through scans. It incentivizes you to scan the entire area to achieve more lore, specifically with certain doors and messages locked to a particular translation that Samus can’t read without the correct modules in place. These translation modules can incentivize you to continue on, much like the other upgrades within the game, as without them, you can’t explore the entire world. Along with that, oftentimes, you won’t immediately know how to attack a boss until you scan it, which requires quick thinking on your feet to avoid attacks while the scan visor loads. While in the scan visor, you can’t lock on to the enemy to dodge out of the way, so you might have to account for losing a bit of health during the scan sequence.
While the world-building in this game is phenomenal, the atmosphere in Prime 2 is show-stopping comparatively. One thing in particular that continued to impress me was how, in the cut-scene where you save the game, Samus noticeably slumps her shoulders forward, as though the weight of the dread that follows her throughout the game is finally relieved in a moment of reprise at a save station. Deliberate narrative design choices like this help not only with expressing the air of dread and tension within the game, but also help bring the world and characters within it alive. The stress you feel exploring Dark Aether, and the relief when you return to Light Aether aren’t feelings you experience alone, because the player character—Samus—also feels that tension.
There are a lot of aspects of Dark Aether that made the atmosphere so incredibly tense. For one, the entire world is much darker than Light Aether, so traversing around has to be intentional or else you’ll run into one of the many types of Ings unprepared. The air itself is poisonous as well, so each step has to be deliberate or else you will die. There are deceased Luminoth—native creatures of Aether—bodies scattered about that, when you scan them, will tell you that they died to the toxic air in the atmosphere. As such, the atmosphere and world-building work together flawlessly to express such dread and tension while playing.
The Intricacies of the Light World versus the Dark World
Another thing I really liked about Metroid Prime 2 is the general aesthetics of each area of the Light World and how the Dark World played off of that. There are four major areas of Light Aether: Temple Grounds, Agon Wastes, Torvus Bog, and Sanctuary Fortress. Out of these areas, it was really only Agon Wastes and Torvus Bog that felt kind of similar to areas in Prime 1, like Agon Wastes felt very similar to Prime 1’s Temple Grounds on Tallon IV and Torvus Bog felt very similar to the watery areas of Prime 1, yet were quite distinct enough that I never felt like I was walking in the same areas I already had been before.
One thing to keep in mind about Metroid games, particularly the Prime games, is that the planets you explore often tend to have a much more rustic and historical feel to them, like the areas and mechanisms within the different areas will often look dilapidated and worn down, as though no one had lived on the planet in centuries. This world-building aspects makes it incredibly easy to forget that Metroid, as a series, is a sci-fi series (despite the fact that Samus is wearing an advanced space suit and travels around in a gunship). I think it is this reason why Sanctuary Fortress completely shocked me when I first arrived, and is one of my favorite areas in a Metroid game thus far.
Sanctuary Fortress is the last area of the game, and so if you don’t want to be spoiled about the specifics of the area, I would recommend skipping to the section entitled “General Game-Play Loop.” I’m not going to be super spoilery on boss fights and upgrades obtained, but if you want to go in completely blind, then you’re free to skip.
Alright, for those who’ve stuck around, Sanctuary Fortress is essentially this high-tech fortress that the Luminoth created as a last line of defense against any intruders. Essentially, it’s a bunker. There are machine guns posted outside the doors to prevent anyone from entering the area and all of the enemies in this area are essentially robots. There’s even an enemy called the Rezbit, which is essentially a computer virus that frantically attacks you on a protection protocol, and has an attack that will completely shut down Samus’ suit, forcing you to input a code to reset. As annoying as Rezbits are, they are truly one of the most interesting enemies to fight in Prime 2 as a whole. I absolutely love games that have sequences that visually affect the screen, like I’m incredibly fond of Nier: Automata for the exact same reason.
Sanctuary Fortress is such a vastly different vibe from the rest of the areas, almost on par with the vast difference between the E.M.M.I. rooms in Dread compared the rest of the map, except Sanctuary Fortress has so many more enemies that help set the area apart from the rest of the areas in the game.
Comparatively, Dark Aether takes the mirrored versions of these areas on the planet, renaming them to make more sense to the Ing that rule over the area. For example, instead of Sanctuary Fortress, Dark Aether’s mirrored version of that area is called Ing Hive, which functions very similarly to a fortress as a centralized hub. Many of the Dark Aether versions of Agon Wastes and Torvus Bog are renamed similarly, mostly to further the tense and dreadful tone of Dark Aether compared to Light Aether.
General Game-Play Loop
Finally, the general game-play loop of Prime 2 is one of the best within the series. There’s a bit more direction and intention in Prime 2 compared to Prime 1, where you have to obtain the three Dark Temple Keys in each area, unlock the Dark Temple, usually defeat a boss, and take the energy from the Energy controller to return to the Light Temple where it belongs. It’s a simple goal to achieve throughout the game, giving you a bit of direction when in the Dark World, instead of just expecting you to explore and find the upgrades on your own.
I also felt like the Dark Temple Keys helped with the world-building within the game, because the goal of returning the energy to Light Aether is to be able to help the last surviving Luminoth from the horde of Ing in Dark Aether, and eventually destroy the Dark World. You, as Samus, are actively exploring the Dark Aether to achieve these keys in order to save Light Aether from ceasing to exist, and in doing so, the Ing are attacking you because they also don’t want to cease to exist. It helps give the game purpose and meaning outside of just being another game with Space Pirates and Ridley as the enemy, which worked for Prime 1 but of course can’t be the main enemies for every game in the series (or else it’d be boring). And while Space Pirates and Metroids are present within the game, they function as side enemies for the most part, secluded to only a small section of Temple Grounds.
I found that I would forget the main goal of the game being to collect the Dark Temple Keys while exploring, as exploring continues to be the priority of Metroid games, but one thing I did like about the Temple Keys is the size and placement of them. The Temple Keys were roughly the size of Samus, so they were never easy to miss, and on top of that, they were consistently placed in areas where, if you entered the room, your eyes would be immediately drawn to the key. While it wasn’t always obvious in how to obtain the key, it was still placed in a way so that you never truly forgot about collecting them while exploring.
This loop of opening a new area, exploring and collecting the Dark Temple Keys, gathering upgrades along the way to defeat the final boss of the area, only to be granted a new upgrade to explore more of the area and open a new area, was quite enjoyable, and gave a twist to the usual formula of a Metroid game in a way that didn’t feel too demanding or annoying. Literally, a situation where you stumble upon the Dark Temple Keys and are like, “Right, I forgot about that,” collect it and continue exploring in the way that you were previously exploring. Unimposing, I guess, would be the best way to describe it, and yet it surprisingly fits well into the Metroid formula without making the game feel overwhelmingly linear.
The Cons of “Prime 2”
While that’s all fine and dandy, there are aspects of the above sections that are mind-numbingly annoying that a lot of that atmosphere is forgotten. Like, genuinely, some of the most annoying mechanics and level design choices that still irritate me a month after finishing the game.
These are general things I’ve found annoy me about Prime 2 that are exclusive to Prime 2 (as far as I’m aware).
Save Stations and Ammo Refill Stations
My first gripe with Prime 2 is the placement of save stations and ammo refill stations. Within the four areas of Prime 2, there’s only around two save stations per area, which is pretty paltry, to say the least.
I think the work around here is that the save stations are the same in Dark Aether, so technically each area has four save stations, but I don’t consider Dark Agon Wastes and Light Agon Wastes to be the same area, and I don’t even think the game itself considers the Light and Dark World versions of areas to be the same.
With limited save stations, you end up saving in the same spots over and over again, making it challenging to remember where you planned on going when you return to the game. If you return to the game, and the save station is exactly the same one you started in last time you played, a lot of the nuance of exploration and figuring out where to go gets diminished. The amount of times I saved in the exact same save station in Light Sanctuary Temple toward the end of the game man…yikes.
And since the save stations are so spread out, I found myself rushing to the closest save station after any major boss fight just so I didn’t accidentally die and end up having to do the boss fight all over again. I missed a lot of exploration in that manner (which I talked about in my previous post, hint hint wink wink).
Not only that, but there are even less ammo refill stations. There is only one ammo refill station in each area, which isn’t too different from any other Metroid game, but the refill stations are only in inconvenient places in Dark Aether. And maybe that’s not super shocking, because I don’t know about you, but I’m never super pressed to refill my missiles or power bombs. But that’s the problem: it’s not just missiles that need to be refilled.
In Metroid Prime 2, there’s two other beams you can get in the game: light beam and dark beam (and a secret third beam that uses the power of both light and dark). These are limited like the missiles, and you only get fifty shots with either beam when you first get them. And if you play the Prime games at all like I do, you shoot as freely as you can to survive. Keeping track of how much ammo I have of light or dark beam was dreadful and annoying to say the least.
Also, if you want to go to Dark Aether to recharge, you have to use a dark beam to enter the portal. And while there is a fail-safe just in case you run out of ammo for entering portals, I still think that’s a massive fumble on the development team’s part for limiting the ammo and/or having so few ammo refill stations.
Or, if you want to refill in Light Aether, the only location to do so is Samus’ ship. That’s right, you would have to trek your way all the way back to Temple Grounds where Samus’ ship is located, recharge and save while you’re at it, then trek all the way back to where ever the hell you were before.
The Waiting in Dark Aether
Another aggravating thing in Prime 2 is the waiting game you play in Dark Aether. Now, maybe I was the only one that did this, but in Dark Aether, there are little bubbles of light you can sit in and refill your health. These are mainly here to recharge health while trekking through Dark Aether because the atmosphere of Dark Aether is toxic to Samus. You will rapidly lose health if you’re not in a bubble. In the standalone Varia suit, this goes up one point of health for every one second in real life.
And, if you’re anything like me, you cherish any opportunity to receive health.
I found that if there was an area around a portal without any of Dark Aether’s enemies—Ing—I would sit and wait in the bubble until my health was full again before trekking further into Dark Aether or returning to Light Aether. That way, I didn’t have to worry about running out of health as I crept closer to a boss fight.
However, sitting and waiting for your health to go up, point by point, second by second, is so incredibly tedious. And, if you’re health’s really low later in the game, you could sit there for a good 20 minutes.
I ended up getting into calls with my friends to chat while playing Prime 2 because that at least helped the time pass. I would sit my Wii-mote into my lap and have a laugh, while Samus spun around in circles due to the positioning of the Wii-mote when it last saw the sensor bar being at an angle.
Now, obviously, this is more optional than the save station situation. But, I still think it’s a huge nuisance that should be mentioned if someone wants to play Prime 2. You can’t tell me you didn’t sit in those light bubbles for at least a little bit at some point in the game, especially since the crates and containers containing refills gave such paltry amounts of health.
Aggravating Boss Fights
I will state right now, this section will be a bit spoilery, because a lot of the annoying boss fights within this game happen later in the game. So, if you want to go into Metroid Prime 2 as blind as you can, I would skip until the section “Do the Pros Outweigh the Cons?”
I’ll wait until the skippers have skipped.
Have you skipped yet?
Yes? Great. Let’s talk about these boss fights.
There’s a couple of boss fights that really bothered me while playing, and a few aspects of the boss fights that I found quite annoying. For one, the development team introduced these new beams—light, dark, and annihilation—but you didn’t really have to use them in the boss fights. They weren’t required like all of the beams in Prime 1. What made Metroid Prime, the boss fight at the end of Prime 1, so unique to me was the forced usage of all of the beams in order to defeat it. You had to quickly change beams when the color matched that of a particular beam in order to attack. This felt like the accumulation of everything you learned and obtained throughout the game, making for a perfect final boss of a Metroid game.
In Prime 2, the only fight you had to have the light or dark beam for was the Emperor Ing. At that, it wasn’t even needed for every stage, only the very last stage of the final boss. If anything, it felt less like a reward and more like a last-minute requirement. None of the other bosses required the use of dark or light beams, and comparably, super missiles seemed to do an equal amount of damage. At that point, I can only guess why they would decide to limit the dark and light ammo, because it clearly stopped them from requiring the beams used in boss fights.
In the same vein, the Dark Samus 3/4 fight at the end of the game also had no requirement for the dark or light beam. In fact, Dark Samus at this stage can’t be attacked by any other beam other than a charged power beam. Why? Shockingly, I don’t think there’s a reason outside of the fact that this fight happens during the escape, and the developers couldn’t guess whether or not the player would have enough light or dark beam at this point. Instead of using the dark or light beams, this fight requires you to get hit by Dark Samus’ phazon attacks in order to charge up enough phazon to attack Dark Samus with it. For the final boss fight in Metroid Prime 2, it feels like a very lackluster fight, stuck only using the power beam and echo visor without getting to use all of the upgrades you’ve achieved throughout the game.
Fundamentally, because light and dark beams are used so infrequently in the game, the annihilator beam ends up serving absolutely no purpose outside of using it with the echo visor for a couple of puzzles. Puzzles that, by the way, only unlocked a few more missiles and maybe one (1) power bomb upgrade. For all the hype that climaxed into this final achievement, the final beam upgrade, it flops incredibly hard once you achieve it and can’t really use it to its full potential without running out of both dark and light beams.
Now again, I do want to bring up that despite the flaws in the limiting of ammo, some of the boss fights were really cool, specifically the ones that had you fighting against and upgrade. These were intense and challenging, sure, but also done so specifically so that you can see how valuable the upgrade you’re about to achieve is going to be. For all of the anguish the Spider Guardian caused, it was incredibly convenient to be able to traverse that boss fight arena with the spider ball upgrade afterward. It made the challenge worth it, and incentivized continuing on, even when the timing of the Spider Guardian made you want to pull your hair out.
Do the Pros Outweigh the Cons?
I finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes on October 2nd, 2025, so as of writing this post, it’s been a little over a month. In that time, I have started playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in my quest to complete the Prime games before Metroid Prime 4 releases. Now, as a review of just Prime 2, I don’t want my opinions of Prime 3 to sour or enlighten this review (that will be for a review I write up after I finish Prime 3). However, as a sequel game, you kind of have to compare Prime 2 to at least Prime 1. And, to be honest, I think I like Prime 2 better.
Now, when I first finished Prime 2 and experienced the shitshow that was that ending (courteously, I will avoid mentioning specifics for the skippers), I had a lot of negative thoughts initially. A lot of the annoyances that I discussed in the cons section outweighed the pros, and ultimately, the game left a sour taste in my mouth. I was fully convinced that the game I had just played was quite bad comparably, that Prime 1 was much better, and I had concluded that Prime 2 was the worst Metroid game in the series.
That’s kind of harsh for this game, in hindsight. It might not be my favorite Metroid game, but it surely isn’t the worst by far.
Honestly, for whether or not the pros outweigh the cons, that’s a conclusion that only a player can make. If you play through Prime 2 and think it wasn’t that bad, then great! Rate it highly and leave it at that. However, if you have a hard time with getting easily frustrated at a game, I would say watching Prime 2 would be a better experience than playing it. Or hell, wait until a re-release comes out and then give it a shot, because that will likely be a much better experience than playing it on GameCube or Wii.
Compared to the novelty of Prime 1, Prime 2 wasn’t as enjoyable of an experience, to me. But, in hindsight, I think the atmosphere and world-building of the game brings the score of Prime 2 up for me. Ultimately, I would have to say that the pros and cons weigh evenly with this game, so while it is enjoyable, it’s not as enjoyable as Prime 1.
My General Rating for “Metroid Prime 2: Echoes”
In my humblest opinion, and basing my rating on my rating scale in my Google Sheets rant, Metroid Prime 2 is a solid 7/10 game for me. It is an easy game to recommend to people, though with some caveats that it might be a frustrating experience for others. It really truly is an experience that you have to play for yourself to fully know whether or not it’ll be a fun game for you.
I think for that reason, it’s not a 5/10. There’s too many pros that bring the score higher than an averagely rated game, but it can’t be too high because so many of the cons brought me emotional (and at times, physical) pain.
And that’s it! Thanks for reading my first review on this blog! This is the general formatting that I will use for game reviews, with specific sub-categories for each game that I review. My brain wants to write this so much more formally, but I also want to keep this informal, and I feel like that fight is kind of obvious. I’ll keep working with tone for future reviews. I’m also not sure if this exact format would work well for a book review, like pros and cons is not something you look for when you’re reading a book, so I’ll also work that out when I write my first book review (whenever that comes out).
If you have any further opinions about Prime 2, or any suggestions about my reviewing format, please leave a comment on this post!
And as always, see you next week!
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