It’s been 18 years since the release of Metroid Prime 3, and the long-awaited next game in the series has been dogged by delays. Two years after Metroid Prime 4 was announced at E3 2017, Nintendo said that development duties had switched to the original Prime team, Retro Studios, and development had been restarted. Six years later, the game has finally been released – but not to universal acclaim.

At the time of writing, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is sitting at a score of 80 on Metacritic, and the reviews offer a mix of gushing excitement at Samus Aran’s return and groans of dismay at irritating design choices and uneven gameplay. Giovanni Colantonio at Polygon called the game a “disjointed effort” that “erratically bounces between pensive sci-fi and loudmouthed military fantasy,” while citing it as “the most linear Metroid game outside of Metroid Prime: Hunters.”

Yet Metroid Prime 4 also excels at times. “At its peak, the game is among the best in the series,” said Andrew Webster at The Verge. “The problem is that Nintendo added a whole bunch of stuff on top of that – including chatty companion characters and a boring, empty hub world – which gets in the way.”

Chatty Cathys

By far the most divisive element in Metroid Prime 4 is the introduction of a cast of supporting characters. Samus rescues the nerdy Federation Force engineer Myles MacKenzie early in the game, who joins her for a short spell before setting up a base camp, from where he issues help and guidance over radio calls. Several reviewers likened his messages to the incessant chirps from Navi in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In addition, Samus rescues several other Federation Force soldiers over the course of her adventure, who join MacKenzie at the base camp.

“To purists, the addition of chatty support characters to a Metroid game sounds about as appealing as a weekend with Everybody 1-2-Switch,” said Andy Robinson in his three-star review for VGC. He isn’t necessarily against having speaking parts in a Metroid game, noting that they’ve been “done well” on a smaller scale in titles like Metroid: Dread or Metroid: Fusion; instead, his issue with Metroid Prime 4 is the characters’ “clumsy implementation within an overall weak story.”

Robinson likens MacKenzie’s comedy quips to those of the much-derided Jar Jar Binks from the Star Wars universe, and dismisses the other cast members as “flimsy caricatures,” who include a “Samus fangirl who winces at the bounty hunter’s presence.” In particular, he levels criticism at some “dated” escort missions that result in a game over screen if one of your companions dies, and he laments some poorly written dialogue barks. Logan Plant, who gave Metroid Prime 4 8/10 in his review for IGN, offered similar criticism over the dialogue, saying the quips “often fall back on well-worn clichés or commentary that feels out of place in Metroid, like, ‘There’s too many of ’em!’ during an action scene.”

Robinson holds particular venom for the character of Myles MacKenzie, whom he calls a “frontline contender for most annoying NPC of the decade,” noting that his frequent radio calls telling Samus where to go next cannot be disabled. Still, as Alex Donaldson notes in his three-star review for Eurogamer, “After some initial, more heavy-handed hours, Myles mercifully fades into the background whenever you’re out of the home base.”

Not everyone boarded the MacKenzie hate train. “While some may malign dorky Galactic Federation tech engineer MacKenzie, I have a real soft spot for him,” said Oscar Taylor-Kent, who awarded the game 3.5 stars in his GamesRadar+ review. Ollie Reynolds agreed: “Honestly, none of them are even remotely as irritating as previews suggested, and I genuinely came to enjoy their presence,” he said, awarding the game 9/10 in a review for Nintendo Life. Even so, he lamented the lack of ability to mute MacKenzie’s radio chatter. “Sometimes I just want to ride around in peace, y’know?”

IGN’s Plant also acknowledged that “these characters are far less intrusive than I initially feared,” adding that they have “mostly likeable personalities and provide a few highlights that give Prime 4 its own identity.” Kyle Hilliard expressed similar sentiments in his 8.75/10 review for GameInformer: “The small cast of Federation soldiers Samus encounters is generally charming and stays out of your way after their introduction,” he said, even saying he was “grateful” that he could call on them when he wasn’t sure where to go.

But the way that help is thrust upon you is one thing that was called into question by several reviewers. “In Myles you can sense a curious push-and-pull, a hearty debate among the development team,” said Eurogamer’s Donaldson. “How much help does the player really need?”

Keza MacDonald, who gave the game four stars in her review for The Guardian, pursued a similar point: “Someone at either Retro Studios or its parent Nintendo was clearly worried that players may get lost wondering what on earth to do next,” she said, expressing relief that she was mostly allowed to “explore in peace” after MacKenzie’s chatty introduction.

By contrast, the main antagonist Sylux (who was first introduced in Metroid Prime: Hunters and was teased in the ending to Metroid Prime 3) is curiously “underdeveloped,” said Plant, noting that he “doesn’t play nearly as big a role in the story as I expected based on Nintendo’s marketing.”

Get on your bike

The other big change for Metroid Prime 4 is the introduction of a futuristic motorbike for Samus, called Vi-O-La. This was generally met with approval. “Vi-O-La is used tastefully throughout the campaign and rarely outstays its welcome,” said VGC’s Robinson. “If anything, it could’ve been used more.”

“It controls like a dream, too,” said Reynolds at Nintendo Life, “with light touches of ‘L’ allowing you to slide and turn sharp corners at will.” Similarly, Eurogamer’s Donaldson called Vi-O-La “a blast to drive.”

The bike is used to traverse a large, central desert called Sol Valley, which links several different self-contained levels, including a forest, a volcano, and a mechanical factory. Many reviewers likened the desert to Zelda’s Hyrule Field, as a large, sparsely populated expanse that connects several separate dungeons. In this scenario, Vi-O-La is Samus’s Epona.

GameInformer’s Hilliard said the desert is the “perfect size,” noting that it’s “big enough that the motorcycle feels necessary, but not so big that you are ever driving for too long.” But others criticized the way it introduces separation between biomes. Taylor-Kent at GamesRadar+ said that he felt “discouraged from revisiting areas to poke around as it’s such a slog to get back there.” He concluded that Metroid Prime 4 suffers from too much “bloat,” with the overworld acting as “padding.”

MacDonald agreed that there is too much busywork: “Especially in the later hours of the game, there is a lot of tedious zipping to and fro across this expanse, which feels distinctly un-Metroid (and unenjoyable), compared to the tight corridors and tense space-station fights that can be found elsewhere.” At IGN, Plant criticised the desert as being “repetitive,” with one section involving “mindlessly driving around the desert” to collect green crystals, something that he called “runtime-padding filler.”

But Reynolds was encouraged by the way the desert overworld evolved the Metroid Prime formula. “What Sol Valley demonstrates is that these games don’t need to be confined to dense corridors for the duration of the experience,” he said. “You can open up the world, make the biomes link together more logically, and still maintain the essence of that classic Metroid experience. I can’t wait to see how it influences the genre going forward.”

Psychic powers

The big change to the weapons and gadgets Samus collects is the introduction of psychic abilities in Metroid Prime 4. Although, as Robinson notes, in practice there’s little difference from previous games; the psychic visor, for example, is “basically the scan visor from previous games but with purple bits.”

Several puzzles involve using telekinesis to move objects, and the psychic visor allows Samus to gather lore from various items. But otherwise, says Robinson, “the psychic abilities aren’t particularly interesting and don’t meaningfully evolve throughout the story.” Many are simply “more purple” variations of previous gadgets, he said, with the exception of the Control Beam, an energy ball that players can manually guide to targets.

However, its use is typically for puzzles, rather than battles; Taylor-Kent noted that Metroid Prime 4 is a far cry from the chaotic psychic combat of Remedy’s Control. He called using the Control Beam in fights a “chore,” since it requires the player to switch visor views and then charge the beam to maximum before releasing.

One thing that was trumpeted during the reveal of the Switch 2 was the ability to use mouse control for aiming in Metroid Prime 4. But MacDonald said that the mouse controls made her wrists hurt after a while, and Plant was similarly sceptical: “I don’t see many people using them given how physically awkward the Joy-Con 2 is to use as a mouse for any extended period of time,” he said.

Still, MacDonald noted the game is playable with dual sticks – although she found it “much more intuitive” to aim by pointing the Joy-Con at the screen.

A real looker

One aspect of the game that received almost universal acclaim is the graphics. “Prime 4 is probably the best-ever looking Nintendo game, at least as far as games with semi-realistic art styles go,” said Donaldson at Eurogamer. IGN’s Plant agreed: “Prime 4 makes a case for itself as the best-looking game Nintendo has ever published,” he said. “Its fantastical art direction is jaw-droppingly gorgeous at times, with incredible lighting, beautiful backgrounds, ornate architecture, and nicely detailed environments. It sounds great, too, with dramatic choral melodies fused with electronic sounds that fit Prime’s atmosphere extremely well.”

Taylor-Kent at GamesRadar+ praised Metroid Prime 4’s “phenomenal sense of atmosphere,” adding that the higher fidelity on Switch 2 takes it to a “new level.” Reynolds at Nintendo Life gave similar appreciations of the game’s evocative visual design: “The enemies and boss characters are comfortably some of the best, most grotesque in series history, and the battles that ensue are equally thrilling and challenging,” he said.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Plant thought that rather than the new additions, the highlights of the game were the parts that echoed previous entries. “Prime 4 is at its greatest when playing into the same strengths that have defined this subseries since the GameCube: lonely, haunting exploration through gorgeous, fully-realized areas that each have their own detailed backstory to uncover.”

Donaldson expressed similar feelings. “There’s nothing planet-shakingly new here, but what is here is a very confident expression of what made the previous Metroid Prime games great,” he said. Hilliard, meanwhile, felt he was able to look past the game’s irritations: “My annoyances with Beyond are vastly overshadowed by a pristine, rock-solid science-fiction exploration experience.”

For his part, Nintendo Life’s Reynolds was almost unequivocal in his praise for the game. “Beyond is quite possibly the boldest, most well-realised Metroid game to date,” he said. “What Retro Studios has delivered might well be the studio’s finest work yet, and it’s certainly up there as one of the very best Metroid games of all time.”

Donaldson was more muted, however, giving particular criticism to the game’s denouement. “When the time finally came to trigger the end, I found it underwhelming,” he said. “I was expecting a big finale with pay-offs for what the game had built up so far – a thrilling final series of challenges to make use of all the skills you’ve acquired.” Instead, he called the ending an “anticlimax.”

VGC’s Robinson was similarly lukewarm. “Metroid Prime 4 is fleetingly moody, engrossing, and puzzling in all the ways I love previous entries for,” he said. “But as the story progresses and its full structure is revealed, it progressively becomes a shallower and less interesting game.” However, he complimented the game’s apparent timelessness: “At its core, even after 18 years, it feels like the series never went away.”

MacDonald also felt that the game’s sense of age – perhaps even in the sense of being outdated – was ultimately its strength. “Metroid Prime 4 feels, often, like an experimental game from 15 years ago,” she said. “I cannot stress enough that this is mostly a good thing. It is wonderfully untroubled by the conventions of modern game design.” She gives examples of how the game requires you to walk everywhere rather than rely on fast travel, embracing a slow, methodical, even laborious cadence.

“Ironically, the wait for Prime 4 has been so long that what would have felt tedious or archaic in the past now feels comfortingly retro.”