Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is an atmospheric and challenging expansion on the foundation of the first Prime game. You'll explore a captivating planet split into parallel light and dark dimensions, solving intricate puzzles and battling fierce foes. The new beam ammo system adds strategic considerations, and the world feels more expansive and detailed. However, the reliance on backtracking between dimensions and unforgiving difficulty spikes might frustrate some players. Overall, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes delivers a rewarding experience for fans of exploration-focused shooters, but its demanding nature may not be for everyone.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is a sequel to the first Metroid Prime, developed on its engine in the span of a bit less than two years, though it apparently had to be rushed in a few areas to make that deadline (This caused it to release right after Halo 2 and right before Half-Life 2 which... ouch). Following up on the first game's success, the studio took inspiration from Metroid Fusion, wanting to make a more challenging and narratively-focused experience. The overall plot is still simple, though: Samus Aran follows an emergency message sent by a Federation ship to a planet named Aether, where she discovers the remainders of a war between the peaceful Luminoth and the Ing, a horde of aliens born from another dimension, Dark Aether. That's not to say that intended focus on storytelling doesn't come across, though. The first few hours of the game see you trying to piece together what happened to this Federation group, and the Luminoth's lore is discovered piece by piece through scanning the environment. This may be a wild guess but I feel Half-Life was an inspiration here, and it worked quite well. The Scan Visor (my beloved) returns in full force, firing on all cylinders to flesh out every part of the world, from the wildlife, to the Aether/Dark Aether war, to the fates of humans and space pirates who set foot on it.
Speaking of the worldbuilding, it's a pretty good improvement. The Luminoth are sort of akin to the Chozo, but them not being a franchise stable makes them feel a lot more fresh, and their struggle against the Ing is well fleshed out and detailed, with some interesting turns. That said, the Ing themselves are kind of boring. By this point in the franchise we already had Phazon and the X as all-devouring unknowable horror villains for the franchise, and a third one really feels a bit redundant. They also are just not that interesting compared to the more Lovecraftian Phazon and the more TheThingian X. The return of Space Pirates feels so token that it's kind of out of place, also. I love those goobers but they just don't really matter here. Same for the Metroid. Something that does matter is the art design- Aether is beautifully alien and every corner of it is a delight to look at, and much more interesting than Prime's lush but kind of standard elemental biomes. It does come at the cost, however, of a more generally drab color palette which fits the style super well but does make rooms feel just a bit more samey. As intriguing as the areas are, the fact that they're all yellowy makes entering a new one much less awe-inspiring than it was in MP1. The soundtrack, while still good, is also nowhere near the perfection of the previous game's. At least, Samus' two new suits both look fucking awesome.
Every time I begin to play a new Metroid(vania), there's one big question in my mind: What kind of world design are we dealing with? Metroidvanias come in all shapes and sizes. Some hold your hand pretty firmly (Zero Mission, Ori and the Blind Forest), some cleverly dump you right where you're going to be going next (Dread) and some just rely on you to figure things out (Super Metroid, Hollow Knight). In this case... none of those, sort of? Echoes is divided in three big areas (with a fourth, transitional one in-between), rather than several smaller ones, and instead of asking you to travel between them regularly to get more upgrades, they essentially act as massive Zelda dungeons, containing all the items you need to beat them. In paper, this is actually quite smart. It keeps the spirit of slowly unfolding a massive puzzle box, while limiting the slog of backtracking. In execution this system works really well when in place, but it is broken twice through the game (once in the second area, once in the third), and that is half of MP2's biggest mistake, in my opinion. If a player is conditioned to think all they need is in the area they're in, they will hesitate to look outside of it, wasting a lot of their time. Once they do, this conditioning will be flipped, and they will mistakenly begin to believe that they need to search the entire world for the next piece of the puzzle, despite the fact that all the ones they need are all in the same place. It happened to me, and I wasted some hours in complete confusion.
The central gimmick of Echoes' level design is the ability to travel to Dark Aether's version of the world. These areas are incredibly hostile, damaging you overtime and siccing very powerful enemies on you on the regular. It's used fairly well, getting some good mileage out of the levels while blocking off parts of them that would be unnecessary to this dark version. However this system compounds the issue I've mentioned already, because throughout the world there are several portals to Dark Aether that will be opened to the player as they gain more power-ups. Logically one would expect them to contain either a progression item or at worst some nice side thing, but in truth they contain invisible keys necessary to access the final boss. Metroid Prime's fetch quest was my least favorite aspect of it, but you could at least collect its Artifacts at any point, as long as they were accessible to you. In this game, they're invisible (Revealed only by a mid/late game item), and you have no reason to ever guess they're there before the fetch quest officially starts. What this means is that if you ever get the idea to backtrack, whether because you think finding the next plot item will require it or just because you want to check out a place you just gained access to, these apparent dead ends are likely going to be wasting a lot of your time. It's kind of baffling, honestly, making the keys not invisible would completely remedy this issue. Still, when the time for the fetch quest came around, I did at least have fun this time. The problem of incredibly annoying and tanky enemies jumping you during backtracking remains, but you do get a lot of traversal items in the late game and they let you breeze through early areas fairly swiftly. Another thing I want to praise is how almost every optional item has some very cool puzzle tied to it, rather than just being given to you.
The general discourse around Echoes is that it's much harder than its predecessor. I admittedly can't fully testify to that- I'm playing using PrimeHack, which gives the game modern PC controls. It's very fun and feels amazing, but I would assume it breaks the difficulty design just a bit (though so would the Wii's control scheme, I think). So take this all with a grain of salt, but I didn't find Echoes much harder than MP1, most of the time. Dark Aether's damage over time is punishing at the beginning but eventually becomes more of an annoyance, and almost all of my game overs were to a certain few infamous bosses. The first, the Boost Guardian, I actually thought was a really fun challenge, very frantic and tense, with no way to avoid damage over time and needing to quickly pile damage onto him after making him vulnerable. The second, the Spider Guardian, is truly awful. Essentially just a really hard Pac-Man boss, it takes a lot of time to get to and a lot of time to beat, and forces you to deal with Morph Ball physics at their absolute worst. There's a lot of Morph Ball fights in this game, actually, three bosses are fought entirely with it and about as many feature it prominently. I don't mind, it's kinda cool, just a shame that the worst one is so challenging. Some other bosses are also quite great, and while a lot of the mini-boss fights end up feeling like filler, others are actually very elaborate and on par with "main" bosses, which is always a pleasure to see (here's my tier list of the bosses btw). Well, when they don't kill you. MP2 is very stingy with save rooms.
As you can see, I had a lot to say about this game. There were very high highs and low lows in my playthrough, but I'm happy to say I did really enjoy it by the end. Definitely going to check out Metroid Prime 3 sooner than later, I've heard a few things about it that I'm quite interested to verify, both good and bad.
Speaking of the worldbuilding, it's a pretty good improvement. The Luminoth are sort of akin to the Chozo, but them not being a franchise stable makes them feel a lot more fresh, and their struggle against the Ing is well fleshed out and detailed, with some interesting turns. That said, the Ing themselves are kind of boring. By this point in the franchise we already had Phazon and the X as all-devouring unknowable horror villains for the franchise, and a third one really feels a bit redundant. They also are just not that interesting compared to the more Lovecraftian Phazon and the more TheThingian X. The return of Space Pirates feels so token that it's kind of out of place, also. I love those goobers but they just don't really matter here. Same for the Metroid. Something that does matter is the art design- Aether is beautifully alien and every corner of it is a delight to look at, and much more interesting than Prime's lush but kind of standard elemental biomes. It does come at the cost, however, of a more generally drab color palette which fits the style super well but does make rooms feel just a bit more samey. As intriguing as the areas are, the fact that they're all yellowy makes entering a new one much less awe-inspiring than it was in MP1. The soundtrack, while still good, is also nowhere near the perfection of the previous game's. At least, Samus' two new suits both look fucking awesome.
Every time I begin to play a new Metroid(vania), there's one big question in my mind: What kind of world design are we dealing with? Metroidvanias come in all shapes and sizes. Some hold your hand pretty firmly (Zero Mission, Ori and the Blind Forest), some cleverly dump you right where you're going to be going next (Dread) and some just rely on you to figure things out (Super Metroid, Hollow Knight). In this case... none of those, sort of? Echoes is divided in three big areas (with a fourth, transitional one in-between), rather than several smaller ones, and instead of asking you to travel between them regularly to get more upgrades, they essentially act as massive Zelda dungeons, containing all the items you need to beat them. In paper, this is actually quite smart. It keeps the spirit of slowly unfolding a massive puzzle box, while limiting the slog of backtracking. In execution this system works really well when in place, but it is broken twice through the game (once in the second area, once in the third), and that is half of MP2's biggest mistake, in my opinion. If a player is conditioned to think all they need is in the area they're in, they will hesitate to look outside of it, wasting a lot of their time. Once they do, this conditioning will be flipped, and they will mistakenly begin to believe that they need to search the entire world for the next piece of the puzzle, despite the fact that all the ones they need are all in the same place. It happened to me, and I wasted some hours in complete confusion.
The central gimmick of Echoes' level design is the ability to travel to Dark Aether's version of the world. These areas are incredibly hostile, damaging you overtime and siccing very powerful enemies on you on the regular. It's used fairly well, getting some good mileage out of the levels while blocking off parts of them that would be unnecessary to this dark version. However this system compounds the issue I've mentioned already, because throughout the world there are several portals to Dark Aether that will be opened to the player as they gain more power-ups. Logically one would expect them to contain either a progression item or at worst some nice side thing, but in truth they contain invisible keys necessary to access the final boss. Metroid Prime's fetch quest was my least favorite aspect of it, but you could at least collect its Artifacts at any point, as long as they were accessible to you. In this game, they're invisible (Revealed only by a mid/late game item), and you have no reason to ever guess they're there before the fetch quest officially starts. What this means is that if you ever get the idea to backtrack, whether because you think finding the next plot item will require it or just because you want to check out a place you just gained access to, these apparent dead ends are likely going to be wasting a lot of your time. It's kind of baffling, honestly, making the keys not invisible would completely remedy this issue. Still, when the time for the fetch quest came around, I did at least have fun this time. The problem of incredibly annoying and tanky enemies jumping you during backtracking remains, but you do get a lot of traversal items in the late game and they let you breeze through early areas fairly swiftly. Another thing I want to praise is how almost every optional item has some very cool puzzle tied to it, rather than just being given to you.
The general discourse around Echoes is that it's much harder than its predecessor. I admittedly can't fully testify to that- I'm playing using PrimeHack, which gives the game modern PC controls. It's very fun and feels amazing, but I would assume it breaks the difficulty design just a bit (though so would the Wii's control scheme, I think). So take this all with a grain of salt, but I didn't find Echoes much harder than MP1, most of the time. Dark Aether's damage over time is punishing at the beginning but eventually becomes more of an annoyance, and almost all of my game overs were to a certain few infamous bosses. The first, the Boost Guardian, I actually thought was a really fun challenge, very frantic and tense, with no way to avoid damage over time and needing to quickly pile damage onto him after making him vulnerable. The second, the Spider Guardian, is truly awful. Essentially just a really hard Pac-Man boss, it takes a lot of time to get to and a lot of time to beat, and forces you to deal with Morph Ball physics at their absolute worst. There's a lot of Morph Ball fights in this game, actually, three bosses are fought entirely with it and about as many feature it prominently. I don't mind, it's kinda cool, just a shame that the worst one is so challenging. Some other bosses are also quite great, and while a lot of the mini-boss fights end up feeling like filler, others are actually very elaborate and on par with "main" bosses, which is always a pleasure to see (here's my tier list of the bosses btw). Well, when they don't kill you. MP2 is very stingy with save rooms.
As you can see, I had a lot to say about this game. There were very high highs and low lows in my playthrough, but I'm happy to say I did really enjoy it by the end. Definitely going to check out Metroid Prime 3 sooner than later, I've heard a few things about it that I'm quite interested to verify, both good and bad.
My favourite of the Trilogy because it's not as easy as the other Prime games. A great selection of upgrades, enemy and boss variety with a very dark and bleak atmosphere. Unfortunately the location variety has suffered a bit at the beginning of the game with very same-y looking areas, but i don't mind it that much. They still feel all different enough for me to not ruin my love for this game. What this game improves upon immensely compared to Prime 1 is the forced backtracking. It's basically non-existent here, making the experience much better as a result.
Hated this game. Do not get the hype at all.