“Metroid’s core element of ‘increasing the amount of explorable areas by unlocking powers’ is not very compatible with the ‘freedom to go anywhere from the beginning’ of open worlds.” That line, translated from Nintendo’s comments in Famitsu, is the clearest explanation yet for why Metroid Prime 4: Beyond didn’t become the sprawling open-world some fans wanted.
Nintendo and Retro Studios didn’t ignore the conversation around open-world design — they heard it loud and clear. But the team faced a practical trade-off: give players absolute freedom from the outset and you erode the franchise’s metroidvania backbone, the careful, gated progression that rewards discovering new spaces with freshly unlocked tools. The solution was compromise: Sol Valley, a freely rideable hub linked to distinct, hand-crafted areas like Fury Green and Volt Forge. The bike — the Vi-O-La — was built to make that hub feel satisfying and to pace the adventure between focused arena-style zones.
Design choices shaped by history (and a restart)
There’s another factor behind the decision that doesn’t get as much attention: Metroid Prime 4’s long and bumpy development. The project was restarted in 2019 with Retro Studios at the helm, and Nintendo says another major pivot would have been impossible without another costly backtrack. So rather than chase the kinetic speed of modern shooters or the latest open-world trends, the team committed to an original vision that leans into exploration, scanning, environmental puzzles and deliberate pacing.
That conservatism shows up as a virtue in many places and a weakness in others. On the one hand, reviewers such as GoNintendo praised Beyond as a technical and artistic triumph on Switch hardware: atmospheric art direction, statement-making cutscenes, bold sound design and inventive new psychic powers that twist the Prime formula (a Psychic Glove, floating bombs, a time-slowing Psychic Charge Beam). Longtime series strengths — environmental storytelling, layered puzzles, and memorable boss encounters — are very much present.
Where the game sings — and where it drags
What players and critics tend to praise:
- A return to Prime’s atmospheric, first-person adventure feel with modern touches: richer visuals, updated audio cues, and new psychic mechanics that reshape puzzles and combat.
- Smart quality-of-life updates: map icons for flagged areas and Scout Bots that help completionists track missing items.
- A soundtrack and art direction with strong identity; the game leans into alien, H.R. Giger–adjacent weirdness in a way that feels earned.
- Sol Valley itself. What was meant as a connective hub ends up feeling sparse for long stretches; the bike is fun to ride, but there isn’t a consistent density of content to reward cruising between zones.
- Late-game padding. Several critics and players described a slog near the end where the story forces extensive desert back-and-forth and collectathons that sap momentum.
- Companion and AI rough edges. Federation NPCs add personality, but their pathfinding and limited health can interrupt the flow during assisted missions.
- UI and controls. Some players needed to adjust sensitivity and enable motion controls to make certain new mechanics (like the Psychic Charge Beam) feel reliable.
Where frustration clusters:
A heated reception — praise, grudging respect, and hard criticism
Reaction to Beyond has been unusually polarized. Outlets and reviewers that lean into what makes Prime distinct often praise the game as the most ambitious Metroid yet — especially on the Switch 2 where visuals and framerate feel like a clear step up. Others are less forgiving: Edge magazine’s 4/10 score ignited a familiar debate about expectation versus execution, and many players called that rating out as too harsh. Meanwhile, forums and comment threads alternate between celebrating moments of brilliance and airing frustration over pacing issues.
That split matters because the broader conversation about Metroid’s future is no longer only technical: it’s about identity. Should Samus games chase the breadth of modern open-world titles, or double down on tightly designed, discovery-first gameplay? Nintendo’s choice — a hybrid hub linking curated zones — is an explicit answer to that question, one rooted in the series’ DNA and in pragmatic development constraints.
Why this matters now
Beyond doesn’t come out in a vacuum. The launch sits on top of a stronger hardware moment for Nintendo, with the Switch 2 showing “historic” momentum in some forecasts; having a major first-person Nintendo franchise feel solid on the new hardware matters for broader third-party and first-party confidence. If you want a reminder of how the franchise teased its new direction before launch, Retro’s early footage and trailers helped rekindle excitement in the run-up to release, and those clips remain a handy primer for what Beyond tries to do next here.
For Nintendo, there’s a balancing act between innovation and brand stewardship — and the stakes are higher now that Switch 2 momentum is part of the backdrop for every flagship release. Observers will be watching how Retro and Nintendo respond to feedback: whether they fix pacing and QoL niggles with updates, or whether Prime 5 swings bolder toward openness once the team has the luxury of starting fresh again. Nintendo’s hardware momentum also shapes that calculus; the company’s recent confidence around Switch 2 sales means they can be choosier about risk-taking even as fans clamor for bigger leaps here.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is both a statement and a compromise — a game that honors a franchise grammar while nodding to player desire for scale. It’s technically impressive, narratively curious, and imperfect in ways that will loom large for some players and barely register for others. The debate it’s triggered feels very much in the spirit of Metroid itself: charting unknown territory and arguing about the right path forward.