BorkBork said:
Monotonous Complexity: I think a lot of the frustration came from my feeling that there was a lot of detraction by addition. It didnt need to be that complicated, and I get the sense that Retro was trying to go bigger and badder without realizing that approach may not always be a good thing. Prime struck a great balance between a big cohesive world and a navigable one. I was obviously fine in the beginning in Echoes, but as the game went on, it got less and less managable, until I just gave up and looked at the map all the time on where to go instead of intuitively learning the paths, something I do well in Super Metroid and in Prime.
This sounds like an individual thing. Personally, I think the way they streamlined the overall layout of the game in Prime 2 helps me a lot. In Prime, sometimes you really have to plan your routes far in advance. For example, the first thing you want to do when you get the ice beam is go into the wrecked ship. Then you find out you're stuck and you need the gravity suit. Well crap, what's the fastest way to get to Phendrana Drifts, the area on the whole other side of the world? Which elevators do I take? There's like a billion different paths! I never felt like the world in Echoes was really much more complicated. Sure, you don't have anything like Magmoor where it's basically a single corridor, but every area was manageable I thought.
Risk vs. Reward:I honestly cant believe what they did in the second half of the game. I would get a powerup and be totally eager to test it out on the last place I remember. On more than one occasion, I would access a new area only to be blocked again by another required powerup. I got nothing for my troubles, and would have to sit there and rethink where I needed to go again. Again, exercises in frustration through poor pacing.
I can't remember any specific areas like this, except for the sheer number of times you run into power bomb areas before you can eventually get it.
Another issue is that the reward often does not justify the investment in time and effort. There are a lot of instances where its literally a ten minute puzzle and all I get at the end is a missile expansion. Another one where I had to endure probably 5 loading portals back and forth to get one powerup. But then an energy tank sits right in your path. Weirdness.
I can't think of any 10 minute puzzles. The most extreme is in the S shaped room in Sanctuary Fortress, and I think that's probably more like a 4-5 minute puzzle at the max.
Keys: A lot of people bitch about the keys, and I think its justified. It doesn't help that you basically need the light suit in order to get anywhere on the quest, whereas in Prime, you can pretty much start picking stuff up half way through the game. The clues were not as retarded either. On a tangent: I know I'm in the minority in this, I really really hate the inventory system in Echoes.
I agree that being able to start the quest earlier in Prime is great. But some of the artifacts in Prime 1 are really out of the way. For example, you have to do the whole bottom portion of the Phazon Mines all over again to get that one artifact. And one thing that people don't mention is that you can't get all of the clues at once in the first game. That was a real annoyance for me the first time I played through the first game.
Equipment: I dont even want to get into the equipment. Every piece of equipment in Prime 1 was used to great effect. Enemies had weaknesses to beams, visor use was strategic on more than one occasion and boss fight. I cant say that for Echoes. Why did they even put the annihilator beam in? To ping sounds and to open like two doors? Because thats all I used it for. The dark visor is a cheap limiting version of the x-ray visor, and the sonic visor is annoying to use, ugly to look at, and next to useless outside of one boss fight. (Final Dark Samus fight could have been using the Dark Visor with no difference in strategy)
I felt the color coded enemies in Prime were a weak point. The explanation is that they reverse engineered your beam weapons, but in fact they all fire the same power beam? I think it felt totally arbitrary. The dark visor is actually pretty useful for some enemies, most especially the phasing space pirates that pop up about halfway through the game. I actually like the dark visor better, because the red highlighting is better for exposing hidden objects and enemies. Plus, I think it's easier to see the game with it than with the x-ray visor.
Storyline: Many people already stated this, but the Luminoth/Ing saga are completely boring. It had potential, if the Luminoth werent such a bunch of idiots and the Ing had some sort of evil intelligence (it would have been cool to read their logs). Isnt it sad when the most entertaining bit were logs concerning the Space Pirates, who are pretty much non-existent in the storyline after the first few hours? Heck, most of the fun details are completely dropped in the second half. I also felt the Phazon portions were really awkwardly shoehorned in, but whatever.
I agree, but I don't play Metroid for the story.
Despite my rant, there were individual elements that really really impressed me. The music overall was great, many non-Ing creatures were absolutely stunning (the grenchler is probably my favorite beast in the Prime trilogy), and the boss fights were fun for the most part. But as a cohesive gaming experience, Echoes falls short, which is doubly disappointing given the pedigree of its predecessor. Hate to be harsh, but Im not sorry I gave up on the game 5 years ago.
And I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even if you have small complaints about individual elements, like a single tough morphball puzzle or a boss, I think that saying that Echoes "sucks" or is on a completely different tier from the original is overreacting. The graphics were better. Art design was better. The overworld made more sense. Some of the best bossfights in the series (had some of the worst too, but the trilogy rectified that). Better enemy design. Scanning was improved. Expansions are easier to find. While I wouldn't go so far as to say Echoes was better than the first game, I just wish people didn't focus so much on the negatives. There's a lot to like about Echoes and I don't think it makes sense to sweat the small stuff.