Saw the DF this morning. So enticing. I'm guessing it's 60€ which will make me pass hard atm. =/(
It's 40€.
Am I the only crazy one playing with pointer controls? Feels the most accurate and responsive
For some reason dual sticks feel stiff and not the greatest responsiveness even at max sensitivity. And adding gyro isn't having the same effect as Splatoon for example.
Pointer controls is absolutely the best option. You get lock-on + free aim, the best of both worlds, and it's faster and more accurate than twin sticks.
On the Switch the default pointers option needs frequent recalibration, but if you disable the "free aim while locked on target" option it gets much more reliable. Stable lock-on is a must anyway, the game was made around it. Some bosses benefit from free aim (Flaaghra is a good example), but the second-to-last boss fight is a nightmare without lock-on.
I'll counter this, especially since you ranked 3 ahead of 2, which is almost inconceivable, given 3's atmosphere-destroying antics and Halo-esque presentation.
And while you're right that Prime 2 doesn't lay new ground, it simply doesn't need to because it completely improves what Prime gave us:
While I liked Prime 2 immensely, I think it's missing something that was there in Prime 1. I'll discuss some of your points:
90% of the time, Metroid Prime 2 makes backtracking a lot more refined and enjoyable because of how intelligently designed its world is.
- Intelligent shortcuts also help create better pacing overall throughout the game.
The game's world is still enormous though, and it opens up completely only towards the end. What Retro did with Prime 2's map is endlessly amazing, but backtracking is still quite the pain. Especially when you throw in the dark world and its non-interconnected pieces. Going back to clean up those early sections always makes my head spin. There's also a lot of dead ends that are pretty far from everything else, and almost all of them hide something.
Prime 2 is all too happy to close doors behind you as you progress to not make the world map seep too daunting, but in doing so it doesn't help the player understand its connections until much later. I always hate how beating the Grapple Guardian changes the configuration of those rooms completely, preventing an easy return when you inevitably need to come back to get something you can't access the first time through. And there's that moment when you need to find the Seeker Launcher that somehow always leaves me stumped for a while. One wrong turn in Prime 2 leads to a lot of backtracking, shortcuts or no shortcuts.
I also didn't much care for the need to return to the great temple every time you beat a major boss.
Metroid Prime 2's bosses are a thrill to fight, whereas I cannot say the same for half of Metroid Prime's bosses.
- Quadraxis and Emperor Ing are absolutely incredible S-tier enemies.
My Hard-mode Quadraxis fight will always be one of my most precious gaming memories. It's by far the best boss battle in all of Metroid, and one of the best in gaming period. Prime can't really compete there except for the final battle, which is fantastic (if quite formulaic, and a bit too long).
One thing that's pretty horrible in Prime 2 is all those bosses named like "Item-X Guardian". I still can't believe they couldn't find proper names for them.
Better platforming, courtesy of the Screw Attack.
I'm not really fond of that thing. Its timing is a little finicky, and it's pretty much only used to get a bunch of items. Not really feasible as a traversal tool, with a few exceptions.
No need to fire a shot to charge your weapon.
Yeah, but on the other hand, having finite special ammo raises resource management concerns that, while not as extreme as in, say, Doom Eternal, still break the game's flow a little too often in the earlier parts. It's nice to have powerful, quick-shooting weapons after the Wave Beam and the Ice Beam though.
Better scanning.
- Color coded and with a percentages reference.
Dunno about that. When you have several scannable elements close to each other it gets confused more easily than Prime's.
Equally memorable soundtrack.
Disagree. Prime 1's OST is etched into my brain permanently. Prime 2's is sort of "just there" for me.
Back to the remaster, I can say that the boss of the Mines was a cinch using Power Bombs to quickly get rid of its minions, and that was in Hard Mode. Probably the easiest he's ever been for me. The final battle was a little tense and certainly too long, but I did it. I got 100% scans and 100% items. Oh, about that: your scans are not deleted if you start a new game on the same save file, so you'll only have to worry about the scans you may have missed the first time around.
There were some missile tanks I had completely forgotten about after all these years, and I had to look up a guide for a couple of those. I thought I had Phendrana completely wrapped up - turned out it was the region where I'd missed the most stuff!
The only downside to this remaster is that they've somehow made Samus ugly (and she wasn't really the looker in the original, too). She looks nothing like the magnificent high-res scan you can get in the extras. Apart from that, this is still one of the best games you can play on any system from any era of gaming. There's really nothing like it.