You have views like that in the second game as well. When in Sanctuary Fortress you look down upon an impressive luminated city. And there are glass walled corridors where you look down upon Temple Grounds.

1. I don't get this complaint at all.  If you could just easily navigate the dark world, what would be the point of flipping back and forth between the two?  There are differences between the worlds to make it interesting.  It would be a "bland extension of the light world" if they were the same, not the other way around.  Same with light/dark worlds in Zelda.

2. I believe you are talking about near the end of the game where you are helping the Federation Troopers attack?  Yeah, I thought that segement felt very un-Metroid-like.  I did like the other bounty hunters.  Everyone went on their own path, and that kept it feeling like a Metroid game.

3. I could not disagree more.  I loved using the grappling beam.  It felt great.  The other uses for the motion control were all simple and intutive, and greatly increased the immersion for me.  I largely feel the same for Skyward Sword.  The one place that game failed with motion controls, was with the puzzles where you needed to spin the oddly shaped key in the correct position to make the door open (I think this was only at the boss doors in dungeons).  This was an unintutive puzzle, which the motion controls made that much more frusturating.

1) The artificial blocks I'm talking about are the Ingworms; there will frequently be a completely blockaided section of territory that is totally invulnerable to all weaponfire. Ideally, the difficulty of navigating the Dark World should come from having more fearsome enemies and a dangerous environment, not because the game will occasionally decide to throw an unpassable roadblock in front of me.

To illustrate, take the Sky Temple keys fetch quest. Instead of being able to jump into the dark world once in Temple Grounds and navigate my way around it looking for keys, I have to go to enter a portal, look for the temple key in a small, cut down, dark world chunk of the Temple Grounds, then exit via the aforementioned portal and go off looking for the next portal so I can repeat the process twice more. It's incredibly time consuming and makes transitioning around the dark world, particularly at the later stages of the game, a chore, and it also makes the dark world feel like it was stripped down just to force the player back into the light world. 

3) Then, at the very least, the option should still exist for players who don't find that immersive (and there are quite a few) to turn them off. Personally, for me, the games I get most immersed in are the ones where I almost find myself forgetting that I'm even holding a controller, and consisntently forcing me to waggle the wii remote back and forth to shake off Gandrayda or pump some fuel cell doesn't help that cause. It certainly wouldn't have taken any more effort on the developer's part; just make pressing the "Z" button an automatic grapple beam usage and have the silly pump action energy cell stuff go on its own once you press the A button.

1. That is exactly what I was talking about too.  If you could navigate the same areas in the light world and dark world, then what is the point of the dark world?  Might as well get rid of it altogether.  The way they did it made me actually have to think about the way I moved about the world.  It made things a bit more maze-like, instead of just being able to take the same paths I did through the light world.

3. So you would rather these be done by context sensitive button actions, which, for most games pops up a button icon on the screen.  The single most immersion-breaking thing that can be done in a game.  Any game with a half-decent control scheme has me forgetting about the controller.  A button icon on screen is the easiest way to remind me of the controller in my hand.  Which, to be fair, still happens in the Prime games.  But they did some damn cool things with the motion controls that I wish would find their way to more games.

1) The point of the Dark World is, as mentioned before, having a familiar environment that is more dangerous and "fear inducing," so to speak. Ideally, a dark world is creating a more oppressive, twisted version of places you've already visited. Navigating should be made more difficult by the more dangerous enemies and hazardous environment, not by setting up artifical roadblocks.

3) A context sensitive button pops up whenever you interact with context specific motion controlled actions outside of grapple beam (which I would leave the same as is; just press a button whenever you see the symbol), so that point is moot regardless.

Since immersion gets broken either way; it's more about the degree to which immersion is broken. I'd much rather a quick, momentary break in immersion rather than seeing the same button, and then having to wave my hands back and forth (and, by extension, extending the immersion breaking process for another 5 or so seconds).

Ideally, none of these things context specific actions would exist in the first place. I get the sense (considering they're unique to Corruption) that they exist for the sake of showing off the Wii's motion control abilities, which is a shame.

Actually, that's how most games do it with alternate worlds (ALBW, ALTTP). There would absolutely be no use of having two worlds if they were exactly the same. You'd never need to go to the light world with your suggestion. That's just bad level design.

...except for...you know...all of the upgrades that you can only get in the light world, and the boss battles that can only be fought in the light world, and the temples that can only be accessed in the light world, and basically every single objective that is limited to the light world, along with the fact that some areas may be blocked off by certain powerups within the dakr world (i.e. super missile door or spider ball track or something). The player should be going to the light world because they need to do so to get something there, not because they need to navigate around an obtusely designed dark world.

I think the entire Trilogy is a masterpiece, but does anyone else thing MP2 Echoes is by far the best game? The atmosphere, aesthetics, enemy variety, locations, bosses, etc. are all just sublime. I would pay hundreds of dollars to have a remastered HD version of it (and the entire triology, but especially Echoes). I always see it being viewed as the weakest but I don't understand why. It was the perfect sequel. It's easily in my top 10 games of all time. 

You just said you were against artificial roadblocks... What do you think those are? It's a rather straight forward design anyway. A Link between Worlds and A Link to The Past did the same. And it made them better games for it. It adds to the exploration.

I think it's the perfect sequel, but I think Prime is better. I think MP3 is the weakest, with MP2 significantly ahead.