Adding a Power Bomb barrier to the Plasma Beam without any nearby power bomb ammo spawns is an utterly unnecessary fuck-you to the players. This barrier does not exist in the original. It only exists because Retro hates even the possibility of sequence breaking, which only illustrates that they barely understood what made Super Metroid a great game in the first place. Coupled with an inferior script that attempts to patch plot-holes, while removing the techno-spiritual edge of the original, makes this the inferior method for experiencing Prime 1.
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They also jacked up the HP of Prime phase 2, AND made Meta Ridley more irritating. He gains a new shit-tier attack that he spams over and over, all the while being invulnerable. This makes their respective bouts an insufferably terrible way to end the game.
To top this all off, every time I play a Prime I feel I like the series just a little bit less due to tedium and glaring plotholes killing my immersion.
So many of the key bosses in the series are simply not fun. With tiny janky hurtboxes and time-wasting invulnerability animations where they spam the same few braindead attacks over and over. In terms of mechanical execution I'm starting to think the entire series barely deserves above a 7/10, and only coasts by so highly due to excellent world tone in 1 & 2.
Tone that rapidly begins to falter when a close examination of the full scanlog across the series reveals a slapdash unplanned story that repeatedly had to retcon itself. Tallon IV and Zebes being in the same star system especially irks me. The leviathan crashes 20 years ago in the first version of the script, "indeterminately long ago" in the Pal version onwards, until once again being retconned in Prime 3 to 50 years ago. Yet there's supposed to be a Chozo civilization on Zebes that have no involvement with Tallon IV before raising Samus and disappearing in time for Zero Mission? The original Prime 1 Chozo Lore script at least implied that they were the Zebesian Chozo and knew of Samus as the Hatchling, but that entire version of the script was dumpstered by the Trilogy version.
It's absurd that a script rewrite that was supposed to patch the "How is Metroid Prime inside the crater?" plothole not only introduced more plotholes, but also failed to even address the original fucking plothole. Phazon metroids can't phase through energy barriers. It's how they're kept in containment on Elysia. Metroid Prime had to have either come from Phaaze itself, or burrowed into the crater through a path we don't see ingame that bypasses the Chozo energy barrier. If there is a path past the energy barrier besides the artifact gate, which is plausible as evidenced by how phazon is leaking out anyways, then the initial plothole that instigated this bullshit rewrite DIDN'T EVEN EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Anyone who thinks that Metroid Prime isn't a metroid is also dead wrong. The phase 2 of its bossfight show it spawning new metroids. Prime 3 also heavily implies that phazon metroids eventually molt into primes via the hopping metroids.
Seriously though, negatively impacting casual play over paranoia surrounding sequence breaking is inexcusable.
- - -
They also jacked up the HP of Prime phase 2, AND made Meta Ridley more irritating. He gains a new shit-tier attack that he spams over and over, all the while being invulnerable. This makes their respective bouts an insufferably terrible way to end the game.
To top this all off, every time I play a Prime I feel I like the series just a little bit less due to tedium and glaring plotholes killing my immersion.
So many of the key bosses in the series are simply not fun. With tiny janky hurtboxes and time-wasting invulnerability animations where they spam the same few braindead attacks over and over. In terms of mechanical execution I'm starting to think the entire series barely deserves above a 7/10, and only coasts by so highly due to excellent world tone in 1 & 2.
Tone that rapidly begins to falter when a close examination of the full scanlog across the series reveals a slapdash unplanned story that repeatedly had to retcon itself. Tallon IV and Zebes being in the same star system especially irks me. The leviathan crashes 20 years ago in the first version of the script, "indeterminately long ago" in the Pal version onwards, until once again being retconned in Prime 3 to 50 years ago. Yet there's supposed to be a Chozo civilization on Zebes that have no involvement with Tallon IV before raising Samus and disappearing in time for Zero Mission? The original Prime 1 Chozo Lore script at least implied that they were the Zebesian Chozo and knew of Samus as the Hatchling, but that entire version of the script was dumpstered by the Trilogy version.
It's absurd that a script rewrite that was supposed to patch the "How is Metroid Prime inside the crater?" plothole not only introduced more plotholes, but also failed to even address the original fucking plothole. Phazon metroids can't phase through energy barriers. It's how they're kept in containment on Elysia. Metroid Prime had to have either come from Phaaze itself, or burrowed into the crater through a path we don't see ingame that bypasses the Chozo energy barrier. If there is a path past the energy barrier besides the artifact gate, which is plausible as evidenced by how phazon is leaking out anyways, then the initial plothole that instigated this bullshit rewrite DIDN'T EVEN EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Anyone who thinks that Metroid Prime isn't a metroid is also dead wrong. The phase 2 of its bossfight show it spawning new metroids. Prime 3 also heavily implies that phazon metroids eventually molt into primes via the hopping metroids.
Seriously though, negatively impacting casual play over paranoia surrounding sequence breaking is inexcusable.