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.
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.