Finished the game and there is much I liked about it. But at the same time there is a feeling the dev team was running out of time and had to make some short cuts.

It was promised for Switch1 damn it and needed to come out this year at the latest to prevent Nintendo loosing face. And they just about made it with a December release.

With more time in the oven, I'm sure they would have reworked some things. From the Enemy variety to the flow of the game. There is a lot of genius in this game, just a bit under-cooked in other areas.

I also just finished the game.

The final boss fight was awesome, especially fighting alongside the troopers. I didn't get 100%, but I checked out the "true" ending online and I do really love Samus's new look here, in fact I think it may be my new favourite face design for her:

With the game finished, I stand by my score of 8.5/10.

You can tell it had a rocky development cycle, and it has clear flaws in terms of structure and overall cohesion, but the majority of my time with it was highly enjoyable thanks to its beautiful and atmospheric world, slick gameplay feel, terrific boss fights, and just that classic Prime gameplay that no other dev/series has quite managed to nail.

It's also just good to have Retro back after over a decade of absence since Tropical Freeze. They may not be at the very peak of their game here, but they still punch harder than most.

Finished ice belt, my opinion of the game increased quite a bit. Good area, much better than volt.

Yeah Ice Belt was one of my favourite areas. (Though I did quite like Volt Forge's whole "HR Geiger's motorbike factory" deal personally)

It's got a nice atmosphere of desolation going on and the whole frozen mutant creatures thing is appropriately creepy and Alien-esque.

Having completed the game, I actually think Ice Belt was my favourite region, though I did also really like 5th one. (Which I won't spoil)

I am in the lava area and enjoying that as well.  The game definitely got better.  Though I feel like I'm missing a ton of items.  Only have 4 energy tanks.  I am not struggling though, so maybe that pace is right.  

I finished Metroid Prime 4 the other day, and I would definitely give it an 8/10. Game ran very smoothly and was a lot of fun. Areas like Volt Forge, Ice Belt, and Flare Pool were great (though I liked most of the areas in the game).

I thought the Vi-O-La part of the game at Sol Valley was kinda boring, especially with having to collect the green crystals. Would've preferred to use Samus's ship.

For the most part, the Federation soldiers were fine. MacKenzie's handholding in the game should've been toned down to only giving hints after a few minutes of wondering around instead of like 30 seconds while at Sol Valley.

I wasn't a fan of the first phase of the final boss fight against Sylux. Fighting him and babysitting the crew at the same time was frustrating at times. I did enjoy the last 2 phases, though!

I'm honestly surprised the game ended in a cliffhanger. I thought it would end more like the original trilogy, but I guess not. I'm looking forward to Metroid Prime 5 despite 4 not being at the same level as the trilogy!

Replaying it now to get 100% completion, and my opinion hasn’t really changed. If this had released 15 years ago, I think it would’ve been received much better. But after games like Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, and even DK Bananza showed how a franchise can reinvent or fully perfect its formula, Prime 4 being merely “fine” hits harder than it should. I just expected more.

You don’t revive a franchise just to land on an “eh, take it or leave it” experience. I’ve seen people say this is just testing the waters for Prime 5 but that feels overly optimistic about how developers actually work. It seems more like a case of too many cooks in the kitchen they might have tried their best but the result still feels safe.

At this point, I’m mostly looking forward to the 2D Metroid games again. Hopefully a Super Metroid remake is in the works.

I think if we contextualize it to what usually happens to games that restart development (scores in the (4-7)/10 range, often broken) a good but not great Metroid Prime 4 is fine. 

The best we probably could have realistically hoped for (despite many of us hyping ourselves up for more) was a Doom (2016) situation. That game averaged around 85% on Metacritic, depending on platform, after Doom 4's cancellation. 

Prime 4 turned out to be a good, but not great game. That's similar to what happened with Final Fantasy XV (after restarting development from Versus XIII) and Prey (2017.) Both are games with their fans who enjoyed them a lot, and others who while enjoying the games felt like there was lost potential.  

A worst-case scenario would've been a Duke Nukem Forever or Too Human. Actually bad and mediocre games, respectively, because of their rough development cycles.  

Edit: 

Who knows, maybe Prime 5 will be to Prime 4, what FF XVI was to XV.

I suspect we will see Prime 5, as all signs are pointing toward Prime 4 selling well enough to break even cost-wise, and Nintendo likes to re-use templates to release sequels. 

Yeah even taking into account the restart in early 2019/late 2018, the game still look 7 years to come out, which is an absurdly long time for a Switch 1 level title, so it's clear that even after said restart development did not go smoothly, so it's probably a miracle that it turned out to still be a good game instead of a total trainwreck.

I hope not.  FF16 was utterly trash.  The entire middle portion of the game was dreadfully boring.  My least favorite FF game