Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

The dark/light world is a neat idea that unfortunately makes exploration feel cumbersome a majority of the time. Bosses have some of the jankiest hitboxes in any action game I've ever played making shots at weakpoints feel like luck 50% of the time (looking at you Grapple Guardian). The sub-optimal GameCube controls don't help either. Knowing where to go feels much more cryptic this time around as well. Pacing the game into mostly standalone areas that progressively unlock over time should've done a good job at preventing some confusion, but it ultimately doesn't. The level design and map layout doesn't feel nearly as polished or precise either.

Almost all of the new additions make this game worse than Prime 1., but at it's core it's still a Prime game and everything that made the first game so good (and revolutionary) is still present here - at varying degrees of course. The atmosphere is much more interesting this time around, the story and Luminoth deliver plenty of intrigue, and Dark Samus is just so damn cool.