Fantastic. The game is able to recapture the magic of the first game far better than Prime 2. I loved how it fully leaned into the Federation side of things as a contrast to the pure isolation of Prime 1. The characters are incredibly well designed, and this is easily a worthy conclusion to the trilogy. There are a few lag and load issues, and you can tell it was made for Wii with the amount of terminals that make you use motion / trace controls. That aside, incredible game that I was happy to 100%.

One of my least favorite Metroid games.
While the gameplay is solid, it feels really undercooked. The motion controls feel better in Prime 1 and 2 when they were brought over there as nothing in those games contains gimmicky minigames you have to do with the Wiimote.

For whatever reason this game has more emphasis on story when it really would've been fine without it. There's an epic scale to it all, but the game doesn't manage to justify it.

You're given a ship with its own upgrades, but it barely does anything. Multiple planets are cool to see, but in the end the game could've just as easily been set in one world, as otherwise most of the planets seem to each have one biome.

There's no reason for most things the game does aside from the fact that it wanted to seem bigger than it is, and unfortunately I think it fails at that.

1 and 2 were already great, so things should only get better for 3, right?

Prime 3 is paradoxically the best and worst of the series. It found a way to frustrate me at nearly every turn, but it still fixes some things that the other two Prime games struggled with.

First, some good. While I really liked beam combos and the various beam effects in the previous games, Prime 3 really doesn't lose out on much by simplifying the system to a more 2D-esque standard. Power Beam -> Plasma Beam -> Nova Beam is a nice progression (though this is made slightly more complicated by Hypermode... we'll get to that) and the Ice Missiles borrowed from Fusion are nice - when they work.

Prime 3 doesn't break much new ground in terms of environment design, other than the stunning (albeit somewhat samey) SkyTown and perhaps Phaaze (you like blue?). Bryyo has some neat variation, condensing Tallon IV into a few decently interconnected areas. The Pirate Homeworld is also quite striking, though not as much as Sanctuary Fortress. Sanctuary Fortress also doesn't have an escort mission in it...

The game's small cast of Hunters is a welcome addition, though they don't nearly get enough screen time. Justice for Rundas.

One of the best changes made is the addition of the Chozo Observatory. 100% completing the previous two games is quite tedious, because there's no record of which rooms have collectibles, nor which rooms have had their collectibles picked up. Prime 3 not only lets you bookmark rooms to track this kind of thing, but the Observatory later reveals the locations and collection status of every collectible in every area of the game (as long as you've beaten or at least advanced quite far in that area). The previous games would've greatly benefited from this - if a similar system was available in all three games, then I'd have 100% completed them all.

And now, the bad. Let's cut to the chase: Hypermode. Hypermode is a truly bizarre addition to Prime 3. It's interesting narratively - Samus is quite literally corrupted by power, and using Phazon turns her into an unparalleled killing machine. But the ramifications for gameplay are dire. Hypermode consumes energy, up to a full tank if you run out the timer, so to facilitate using Hypermode, Prime 3 throws several energy tanks at you within the first couple of hours of playing. This neuters the difficulty, so what does the game do? It bumps up the health of every enemy, making non-Hypermode combat drag on; and it allows some enemies to enter Hypermode themselves, which pretty much forces you to enter Hypermode yourself if you hadn’t already.
The result? Combat encounters go one of two ways: you can either try to play the game like its predecessors, using your movement abilities to dodge enemies while chipping away at their health with your beams (or slowly putting missiles into them until they freeze, assuming that they even can freeze); or you can go into Hypermode and kill them in a few shots or with a Hyper Missile or two. You’ll probably lose the same amount of energy either way.
Most of Prime 3’s bosses are no more complex or interesting or challenging than Thardus from Prime 1, which is pretty disappointing. Most are simple “wait until I’m not invulnerable anymore, enter Hypermode and shoot me for a bit” affairs, while others are just bullet sponges. The best they really get is Ghor, who works a little like the Quad enemies in Prime 2; and Omega Ridley, who has decent phase variety and utilises the X-Ray visor in a cool way, but I’m really scraping the barrel here. It also doesn’t help that three of the fights take place in the nearly-identical Leviathan Seed boss arenas and two more take place within Phaaze (did somebody order blue?).

That was a lot. But there's more!

Ping-ponging is back, with extra obnoxiousness. Getting a message from Aurora-242 to straight-up tell you that you need to go to a different planet is ridiculous, but what makes it worse is that there are already solutions to this problem, some of which are even used within the game! Some of these hints (or directions, if we're being honest here) are presented more diegetically, like how "go to [x] room on the Pirate Homeworld" is framed as a call from Admiral Dane asking you to meet up with him and a squad of Federation troops - if the Federation are going to be made so prevalent, then why not frame the hints as points of interest discovered by the Federation exploring these planets?

Motion controls... motion controls. One step forward, two steps back. Motion aiming is great, a welcome change from the tank controls of the first two games; but the lack of direct camera control makes traversal almost more clunky. And then there are the motion sequences and the waggling. Shake controllers to break free from things. Twist the controller to remove battery cells. Pump the controller to make stuff work on Bryyo. Mime pulling a lever with the controller to make the trams run on Pirate Homeworld. Pull the nunchuk to move debris and expose boss weakpoints. I just goes on and on and on... the "this was meant to be a Wii launch title" influence is very visible.

...I think that's it. For all the complaining I've done, I honestly did still enjoy my time with Prime 3. I like the ideas it has, and I'm glad it improved on a few issues in its two predecessors. But makes a heap of mistakes in the process. If I ever revisit this trilogy, I'm not sure I'll do a full trilogy playthrough... yikes.

Prime 3 offers a lot of quality of life improvements to the formula while keeping most of the best parts from the first two games. It's not my favorite in the trilogy, but it's pretty good.

I played the trilogy through the wii collection, and gameplay wise, it plays just as good as the first two games for the most part. There was the occasional jank, mostly involving the new grapple pull technique during the more intense fights. The nunchuck just wouldn't recognize the second half of the pull sometimes which made a few fights drag a bit.

The game is much more combat focused than the first two games in general, to mixed success. Combat has never been the prime games' biggest strength, but it's alright here for the most part. Fights can drag on a little too long, if you don't rely on hyper mode. Hyper mode ended up being my "ok I'm tired of this fight and I just wanna move on feature. Fortunately, this didn't happen too often, it only ever reached that point for me when the smaller enemies started using hyper mode on me or with the enemies with annoying hitboxes. Enemies tend to move faster and in some cases a bit more sporadic than the first two prime games. This can lead to more intense fights, but it also resulted in the lock on system being a bit finicky on certain enemies (i.e., the aerotroopers). This can be annoying when the game throws endless hordes of enemies at you and you've got to re target the flying enemy while being swarmed.

The improved combat is especially true for the bosses. For the most part, all the bosses in prime 3 are pretty solid (if a little on the easy side). I don't think any of the bosses reach the heights of the best bosses from 2, but they're all much better than the huge health bar, damage sponges from prime 1.

Most of the returning power ups are at their best in prime 3. Everything just feels most fluid and fun to control. The screw attack in particular feels less stiff than prime 2, and you can course correct a bit if you take off at an awkward angle. Prime 3 keeps the improved scan visor from prime 2 and I really love the new x ray visor. However some power ups felt a little more awkward to use. The seeker missiles in particular felt more hit or miss to me than the previous games, and there were multiple instances of me targeting each object, but the seeker missiles not working just I wasn't standing in the exact right spot.

Prime 3 kind of reminds me of fusion, and not just with some of the similar power ups. The environments are a lot more linear than the first two prime games in a way that feels like a nice mix of fusions linear level design and the looping level design from prime 2. Instead of having one really large planet to explore like the first two prime games, prime 3 gives lots of smaller scale, more linear looping set pieces across multiple planets which I think worked out really well. I think the new design helps streamline the exploration and reduce backtracking (although if I had to pick, I would rather have a game structured more like prime 2 with the quality of life improvements of prime 3).

The best improvements of all though are how prime 3 handles item tracking and the final maguffin sidequest. You can unlock a map upgrade that actually shows you where collected and missing items are on each planet with saves so much time when you're trying to find those last few upgrades you missed. The final maguffin sidequest is vastly improved as well. You no longer need all of them to finish the game (but they are all still required for 100% completion) and you can get pretty much all of them through normal thorough exploration (I think I only had to backtrack to get 1 of them and it probably took less than 5 minutes).

Prime 3 does a lot of world building as well which was really cool to see. It was nice seeing other bounty hunters and members of the federation, even if they were underutilized.

There were some other things that frustrated me with the game. I really don't like the removal of being able to scan things when you're receiving a transmission. I can't count how many times I was in the middle of scanning when a transmission would come in, stopping me from being able to finish scanning everything in the room until I opened the map and watched the slow animation. There were a few times where the doors would not open for an extended period of time so the game. It didn't really bother me, until I booted up prime 1 again to get the last logbook scan I missed on my first play through and I never ran into this issue at all.

I also wish dark samus were more present in the story. She has some good lore scans and I like her boss, but she doesn't feel as prominent in the story for being the big bad, especially compared to prime 2.

Prime 3 also has the weakest soundtrack of the trilogy. It's not bad, but it focuses more on ambiance and doesn't have as many memorable melodies as the first two prime games.

The game is also really mean at times with missable scans. You really gotta be thorough with your scan visor if you wanna 100% the logbook in this game and there are a lot of instances of certain enemy types only appearing the first time you clear a room. Needing to scan the hunters before you enter the elevator on Norion is also really mean for first time players. I managed to 100% the logbook, but I tend to scan every little thing. If you're gonna go for 100% scans I really recommend using a reference to make sure you don't miss any of the permanant missable scans (use the metroid recon logbook guide and DO NOT use the wikitroid guide. The wikitroid guide list a few scans as missable when they aren't even in the logbook and I've never felt more panic than thinking I permanently missed a scan from the very start of the game when I was doing my endgame item/scan cleanup).

Overall, I really liked prime 3. The prime games are a series where you could tell me any game is your favorite and I could understand why. It's probably my least favorite of the trilogy (neither game comes close to prime 2 for me), but the least good 3D metroid game is still a really great game.

Not the best and honestly it is the worst of the trilogy, but still a pretty good experience. Bosses were pretty good and the new controls are perfect, just as you would expect them to be.

Now, it is 2023 and I played 5 Metroid games. I played Prime and Zero Mission in 2021, Prime 2 and AM2R in 2022, and Prime 3 making my way onto Super Metroid in 2023. Next year it's gonna be Other M and Fusion, with Dread being all alone for 2025:

Nintendo, you have 2 years to go. WHERE IS PRIME 4.

Metroid Prime 3 is such a great way to finish off a great trilogy. its a little more linear than the other Metroids, but its still super fun. you have ziplines you can ride on, ancient ruins to explore, acid rain to avoid, abandoned and creepy spaceships to traverse. every location is interesting and unique, more so than previous Metroids, as every level takes place on a different planet

the game also has more quality of life improvements than the previous Metroid Primes, and it takes advantage of the Wiis controls more than the previous ones as well. its such a fantastic game that i cant recommend enough

Combat felt a bit too spammy, and the backtracking was nowhere near as elegant as previous games.
But man. Some phenomenal set pieces, god tier art design and tons of smart innovations in regards to controls.
That final Phazon segment of the game in hypermode was one of the most incredible things I've ever played.

Has some of the highest highs, but lowest lows of the Prime trilogy. But even with the jumps in quality, a lesser Prime game is still a must play videogame.

Even if it's a bit too in-your-face story heavy for what I expect from Metroid, it's clearly a return to the right path after Echoes feeling like just a rushed sequel to the phenomenal Metroid Prime. It makes the most out of the motion controls in order to make this one of the most immersive games I've ever played, and its somewhat greater focus on action is cleverly balanced with some good exploration segments and ingenious (although a bit too clearly guided) backtracking. The power ups all feel unique in their own way, the same with the zones, now even on different planets, and a few curve balls here and there make up for what could have ended up being the most formulaic Metroid game to date.

Metroid Prime 3 Corruption is a very complicated game for me. It was the first Metroid game I received, around its launch window, yet here it is, the last one that I'm completing. Feels weird.

This game is pretty good, but it does so many extremly weird decisions that it can't help but feel well below it's 2 gamecube predecessors, especially Echoes.

The main issue is, obviously Hypermode. So much of the game relies on this absolutely broken mechanic that removes pretty much all the challenge. Corruption decides to take a much heavier focus on combat than Prime and Echoes, yet somehow strips down the Beam system back to what it was in the 2D games, and doubling this, make missiles feel extremly weak. So what does it do to compensate? Hypermode. Hypermode is far from a bad idea within itself, it's kind of like Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry, and the use of health as ammo is pretty interesting. Except enemies pretty much die on impact the second you pull it out.

Oh but you use health as ammo, so it's a risk reward system that gives you even more of an incentive to search far and wide the game world to find energy tanks? Right? Wrong, the game gives you every energy tank on a silver platter. Exploring and secrets are basically only relegated to find missile packs, which again, feel much less useful in this game than previously, so the whole Metroidvania aspect is severly damaged.

All this gives is a game where you're braindead just shooting at stuff. Metroid was never survival horror per se, but exploring the world felt extremly tense sometimes, Echoes was so good at this, making you carefully plot your next step, making you save ammo if you could, now that's just gone, with save points even fully healing you and remplishing your ammo now. Maybe it was a way to hope to get on the Halo trend, which was at its peak at the time, but if that's the case, I'm sorry, this dosent even come close. The simple gunplay of Metroid Prime is fine in a game that puts first and foremost exploration, but it will not stand up to games with a focus on gunplay.

So what saves the game? The World design is simply put, brilliant. Bryyo, Elysia and the Pirate Homeworld are all top tier locations with excellent music, I think this might be the strongest selection of worlds to explore in the entire Metroid series, and I am not kidding, traversing these is amazing. This coupled with great presentation and a strong sense of finality to this trilogy does make Corruption stand out, but all and all, it just can't help but feel lesser. It's "just a good game" in a series that has excellence as its standard.