Yeah so heads up this post might contain spoilers so stop reading now if you plan on playing the game, the title pretty much sums up my feelings about this game.

Also I know that technically this isn’t a Nintendo game since it’s made by Retro studios and is just a Nintendo IP. I played the Switch 2 edition.

I’ve been playing Nintendo games since I got my first NES christmass 1988, so I have played my fair share of Nintendo games and thus have the authority to make this statement.

I might be late to the party but I just finished this game moments ago. I did not read any reviews of it (or anything at all) before playing it, since I wanted go in with a ”untainted mind” (my choice my misstake).

Initial impressions

So the game starts off with this assult on some base and you fight along side some other soldier types in a run of the mill combat game. I really didn’t care about this part but thought ”hey this is Metroid it’s just an intro”. And I was right soon you get thrown into the starting zone of the real game that is this lush djungle that looks really nice with mysterious ruins in it and really felt like a good start to a Metroid prime game. But fairly quickly (actually allready noticed in the initial combat section) the control scheme starts to show an ugly face, but more on that later.

The game world

After the djungle part the game world falls apart quick and becomes samey and repetetive, you have electricity spacebase, fire spacebase, ice spacebase and a mine. Now given it is a metroid game it being just a bunch of spacebases isn’t a problem in itself self. The problem I have is that they are too similar and could be made more varied. Also you get the area map for each almost immediately and that map shows every passage available so there is basically no exploring. If you wonder if a room might have a secret morphball passage, just look at the map no need to search for secrets everything is on the map. Exploring becomes a chore and boring.

To top this off everything is connected via an ”open world”, an open world that is literally an empty desert that serves no other purpose than artificially prolong the game. And it’s not even prolonging the game that much since you get a motorcycle early on and just zoom across it fast making it serve absolutely no purpose at all other than being a boring chore when you have to backtrack.

The game world is just uninspired and boring (but pretty at times).

The cutscenes 

Fuck you Hideo Kajima, fuck every one that want a ”cinematic” experience in games. Learn to read and go an read a fucking book instead. Fuck you all!

Way too many cutscenes all the time, cutscene after cutscene. Most frustrsting was in Chronos tower where there is a cutscene and then you literally walk 3 steps and get thrown into another cutscene.

Now this is not the only game with this problem, but I get even more annoyed with them since the game already frustrates me.

The NPCs

WTF, this is a Metroid game, you should feel isolated and alone, not having a troop of soldiers chatting around you all the time. But the worst part is that you have to keep them alive otherwise you ”die”. This culminated in the final bossfight afainst Sylax (or whatever he is called) and I was not far from just shuting the game off to never play it again nor finishing it.

The bosses

This is probably the only positive I have to say about the game. The bosses where fun and the boss fights felt organic with the exception for the final boss.

Finalboss is just a boring bullet sponge with the added frustration of having to keep the NPCs alive for the first 1/3 of the boss fight.

The controls

How could they mess up gyro aiming this bad? I mean how is it possible? Also some bosses in particular the Z-aim will lock on to the wrong point (that you can not damage) and you have to wrestle the control (or entire console if playing hand held) to get it to unstick and enable gyro aiming. It’s just plain bad, and no I will not play with ”mouse controls” in the living room sofa or while on the toilet.

Another thing they manage to mess up is to change the jump button between normal mode and morphball mode. YOU DO NOT CHANGE WHAT BUTTON YOU USE FOR THE SAME ACTION!

Just those two things mentioned above make the controls feel way clunkier than they could be.

Where are the Metroids?

Yeah, WTF’s up with that, there are some Metroid in the initial space base combat mission in the game intro, then there are no Metroids to be seen for the entire rest of the game. BOO!

Final words

This game has killed the Metroid Prime franchise for me. If there ever is a number 5 I’ll probably skip it. I just hope they can keep ot togheter with platformer Metroids (Dread was great). But for me this game was a franchise killer for 3D-Metroid.

EDIT:// The enemies

Guess my final words where not my final words :P

One big disappointment to add to the pile are the enemies. Through the game there basically are only 3 types of enemies you fight (aside from bosses):

-Spider like robot

-Humanoid robot (sometimes with a shield)

-Some alien creature that crawls in the ceiling and spits acid and always comes in 3’s

I enjoyed it, but I have seen many gamers being very disappointed with it. I hope they get to try again and listen to the fans more this time.

It's pretty bad yeah

Dropped it after a couple of hours

But there are worse games. Like anything from Pokemon mainline in the last 10 years

That is certainly a bold take :P

Would I call it disappointing? Yes, especially compared to the earlier games in the Prime sub-series. Would I call it the worst Nintendo game ever? I wouldn't even call it the worst Nintendo-published game of 2025.

There are definitely flaws. Things are a little too scripted. The inclusion of chatty NPCs cuts the tension. The game often can't decide what sort of genre it wants to operate within.

But there are also some exceptional things: music, art direction, boss battles (as you mention), combat in general. In fact, I think the moment-to-moment gunplay in Metroid Prime 4 is superior to that in Prime 1-3 + Hunters.

Just for information I added an edit to OP

It's only $44.99 right now on Amazon for the full Switch 2 version and I'm still hesitant to bite based on all I've heard about it. I will probably get it eventually but I'm certainly in no hurry. Never thought I'd have that attitude about a Metroid Prime game.

Just would like to say that Pokemon is indeed terrible, but technically it's not a Nintendo game; it's a Game Freak game.

This is how i felt when i played yoshis story for the first time. I remember thinking "what in the ever living fuck is this shit"