Lost in the shadows | Metroid Prime 2 Echoes (Wise Review)

It's been a while, but we're back with the Prime Marathon. Metroid Prime 2 Echoes came out a couple years after the first because Prime 1 did exceptionally well. But this game isn't nearly as popular as it's older sibling. Is it because it's stuck in the shadow of a game people are more fond of, or because it can't reach the expectations set by one of the best games on the Gamecube. Let's find out. Enjoy!
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[@Ridley1911]

Literal skill issue.

[@kylorkirchhevel8632]

Man... that boost guardian and spider guardian.. I feel your pain

[@wantsome-zs5sq]

The game has it's flaws but it's still my favorite Prime game. My favorite part is the world itself. I really like the architecture. Games back then were only one generation removed from the N64. I honestly don't mind back tracking in games. I prefered Prime 2's world design over Prime 3. Prime 3 felt to linear and they reused to many assets. I still think it's the best looking game on Gamecube graphically.

[@Sephiroth69]

For me, better than prime 1 and i love it more however boost guardian hurts my soul.

[@espurrseyes42]

As someone who's played all the Prime games a lot: >Ammo deadass is pointless. I'm guessing it was to limit how much you use the Beams, because they are kinda good. But it's pretty easy to get ammo back (I'll have to look back, but I think the game was being stingy with you because you had almost full ammo). There's little reason to be conservative with it outside of maybe some Hard Mode situations. >Boost Guardian is a difficulty spike. He's the reason I'm not touching Hard Mode again, and I'd almost rather fight him than the Omega Pirate and his gank squad in Prime 1. But this is a Metroid game. You play it enough, you learn where things are, and you can get 5 E-Tanks before it by playing the game fairly normally. When you're not being conservative with Beams, you can easily melt its health with Light Beam and Super Missiles combined, and if you can read where it's going to stop in Ball form, you can Bomb it early to speed through that phase. It's not THAT hard. I also don't think there's a way to bait Boosts into the health pillars, but I tend to have better luck with it if I'm positioned near one. It feels like Boost Guardian is actively trying to hit me regardless of where physics says it should be bouncing, so if that it the case, going up against pillars will influence it to hit them. >Also you have Super Missiles. Super Missiles were broken in Prime 1 and they're broken here. They deal so much damage for how little they effectively cost you. Most problems you have with enemies can be solved with a couple Super Missiles. And the ones that don't usually have some other means to dispatch. Like giving Rezbits the Metroid treatment and praying the ones in Screw Attack room don't put their shield up when they get frozen. Or camping on the platforms in the first Ingsmasher room and skipping the rest. Or something else I'll mention in a later paragraph because it's kinda stupid. >Spider Guardian's stage can eat my entire ass. I don't mind the mid air bomb placing because bomb placing on the ground is easy. It's SPECIFICALLY that last part where you get screwed over by slopes and platforms physicsing you out of your Bomb Jumps. This fight is annoying as heck. And if you wanna talk about missable scans, answer this for me: How many scans does Quadraxis have? >I'm guessing Gravity Boost was supposed to be your "Suit Upgrade" between Dark and Light Suit. The problem is it's an accessory to the suit rather than a suit itself, and it's literally only used in the underwater Torvus area, as there's no other water in the game besides the Dark water you can only explore with Light Suit. There's no enough water in the game to justify Gravity Boost existing, which is why the gap in Suit upgrades feels so big. >I've never had trouble with Alpha Blogg. This isn't the first time I've heard people struggle with it. I've always been able to get it in a loop of doing its charge, shooting easily dodgeable sonic blasts, doing charge, sonic blasts, rinse repeat, effectively turning it into Dark Alpha Splinter 2. Nevermind that I usually go grab Darkburst after Seekers since there's an elevator in Agon that leads back to under Torvus Temple where you'll be heading to do the underwater segment. So provided I can get one to connect, it does serious damage to it. This is like a whole nothing boss that I never understood how anyone struggled with, let alone died to. >There apparently seems to be some kind of class structure of Darklings. Because normally, Dark Beam is ineffective against Ing and the creatures they possess. Yet for some reason, Dark Beam Charge Shot can freeze Dark Commandos, opening them up to instant kill by a missile. That doesn't help much when they become invincible like right after you hit them, but it certainly makes dispatching them with Dark Visor easy. Now how was I supposed to know this, and why would I? Why would I shoot a Darkling enemy with Dark Beam when the game and common knowledge tells me that Darklings resist Dark Beam? >I'll save my Keys complaint for whenever the Prime 3 video comes out. Because my complaints will be better when able to compare with the Artifacts and Prime 3 keys.

[@BashPrime]

Outside of the frame stutter issue (fixed when turning on ubershaders or skip drawing shaders), Prime 2 emulates really well in Dolphin.

[@thelifedragon2156]

18:15 apparently they added moph ball jumping without bombs in the trilogy. one more reason to play the trilogy over this

[@Bactaman]

That entrance tho lol

[@kylewhitaker8225]

I subscribe just because of that intro

[@aperson539]

The game emulates fine, especially the Wii version.

[@DKforever24]

You could always give randomizers a try.

[@Aegisdex]

Is it me or am I the only one who doesnt have a problem with the spider guardian? Cause my technique it to zoom in because you can zoom in to get a more precise position. The boost guardian still kills me tho….I need to get better at the quick kill

[@DarkBlade6690]

Me having all original copies of the three games 😂

[@espurrseyes42]

Oh, and as for emulating this, my 5+ year old laptop has some trouble with frame rate constantly dipping. I think I've heard that Prime 2 is more detailed or something compared to 1, causing it to not run as well, but it's not so bad that I can't playthrough the game. Might just be a matter of needing better hardware to run it more smoothly. I wouldn't be able to tell you if Prime 3 has a similar issue given that I currently don't have sensor bar to hook up to my laptop, and I could never figure out how people have been able to use the actual sensor bar on their PCs.

[@thelifedragon2156]

you could try using candles instead of a sensor bar. though ive heard they are as reliable as a proper sensor bar. but if you have no alternative. give it a shot. prime 3 is great. that being said, i dont really get how you have a sensor bar, presumably a wii remote but dont have a wii?

[@espurrseyes42]

@@thelifedragon2156 Old Wii. Still have the sensor bar from that and some remotes. Just don't know how to hook the former up so it works with my laptop so I can play with it on Dolphin. Anyways, I've played Prime 3. Plenty of times.

[@phazon4]

This guy comes off as a rage quiter type nothing but complaints the game is supposed to challenging