Design-wise, Aether lacks Tallon IV's environmental diversity and outside of Sanctuary Fortress, the landscapes are rather samey. The Temple Grounds are mostly barren stone and the Agon Wastes are little different. Torvus Bog differentiates itself with water and wood but is an altogether dreary place. Dark Aether coming in on top of all this is, perhaps, a bit much. Colorful Sanctuary Fortress comes as a relief. If I could make a change, it would be to Torvus. Too bad it hadn't been visualized more akin to Tallon Overworld, or envisioned as an alien cypress swamp.
Echoes, with its twin-world element, is a triumph of environmental puzzle design, from simple observational and memory challenges to grand, multi-tier, inventive thinking extravagances. Echoes is the game for those of us who love a good mental exercise, who enjoy playing the detective. It is also a love letter to the Morph Ball fan; there are at least 31 substantial Morph Ball courses and Spider Ball tracks. Unlike Prime, the majority of these are quite involved, putting the gamer's skills and thinking to the test. I also counted around 41 puzzle rooms. Well and truly, Echoes maxes out the cerebral experience in the trilogy.
This is what I call a very crunchy game. Adventure tasks are densely packed and extremely varied. However, all of this content acts as a double-edged sword. The world is very complex, which is fabulous for meticulous exploration, but frustrating when all you want to do is quickly travel from one point to another—and with the Dark Aether element, everything seems to take twice as much walking to accomplish. Even though the different regions of Aether are much better interconnected than they were in Tallon IV, they are slower to work through. The different locales are also much more maze-like, especially the gnarled paths through Torvus Bog. I probably spent twice as much time looking at the map in Echoes as I did in Prime, just to orient myself from room to room. For the less patient gamer, this could lead to tedium and frustration.
Also slowing travel down are the enemy encounters. Mostly Samus runs into low-threat but highly persistent foes. Splinters seem to be the most annoyingly common beasties... until all the War Wasps show up, that is. Also, some juncture points see constantly recurring Ing-possessed Pirate Commandos which are tough to deal with until you get the Dark Visor. Then of course, there are the grenchlers in Torvus Bog. These nasties are like the baby sheegoth, only more intimidating and aggressive. Things certainly don't get friendlier on Dark Aether. The Ing make regular appearances in all their myriad forms, harassing Samus as she travels through their bizarro dimension. At least all of these enemies can be dispatched with only a few hits from the right weapon. Some encounters lock Samus in the room with her attackers, although most encounters can be run from and rooms may even supply convenient short cuts and escape routes. I really enjoyed the imaginative cast of enemies in Echoes, which is the most diverse in the trilogy, but I think I would have preferred that they cut down on the encounter rates a little bit, particularly of the nuisance enemies like wasps and Inglets.
The bosses in Echoes are another matter. The temple guardians are simply magnificent. I am especially fond of puzzle bosses, that is, boss enemies that require multiple steps and tools/abilities to take down. My favorite boss is Quadraxis, a mechanical monstrosity that requires some creative combat approaches to finish off. I also really enjoyed the Morph Ball bosses which required Samus to roll up into ball form and tackle them through indirect means. And of course there is Dark Samus, an evil twin of sorts who Samus runs into throughout the game. Fights with the Dark Hunter are always furious and fast-paced.
A curious addition in Echoes that goes against Metroid norm is beam ammo. Traditionally, Samus' beam cannon could be fired endlessly; only missiles and the potent super bombs needed ammunition. I'm all for new and experimental ideas, but this one didn't come off as compelling. Running out of Dark or Light ammo was never disastrous. All it did was force me to spend time shooting inanimate objects for ammo. Running out of preferred ammo in a boss fight just made the fight drag out without much benefit to challenge. It felt like a weak component, one that probably looked better on paper than in execution. Ammo management works well as a strategic element for games which focus on the combat, but it seemed tacked-on in a Metroid game. I wish they'd just left it on the cutting room floor.
One final task we see returning from Prime is the key hunt. Each temple requires three keys to open and the final temple takes a whopping nine. I was fine with seeking out the keys for the first three temples, as they are picked up during regular progress through the game, but the nine Sky Temple keys tested my patience sometimes. During regular travel, I'd come across dead Luminoth Warriors; without knowing their significance as I did not on my first playthrough, I'd move on without noting their locations. Not until the end portion of the game do I learn these aliens were key bearers, and somewhere near them is a key needed to enter the final temple.
Simply relocating the key bearer is not enough, however, as the key itself is in the Dark Aether equivalent of the Light Aether room. So now I get to detour to the nearest portal and work my way back to that room's spot, collect the key, then return to the light world and do it all over again seven more times. At least in Prime I could collect some of the keys earlier in the game; but in Echoes, there is little point in trying to collect them until the end when Samus has the Light Suit. This final suit upgrade makes travel though the dark world much easier, and must be obtained before Samus can safely enter dark water, where a few keys are hidden. As a result, the key hunt tends to take up the final portion of the game. It wasn't awful, but it did feel like a lot of walking for little reward, and an artificial way of extending the game time to completion.
Complaints aside, Echoes is an amazing game—but one that I figure is an acquired taste. After my first playthrough, I rated it below Prime, but each replay sees my estimation of Echoes rise. Echoes is a game of highs and lows, and I find it the most intense game in the trilogy. I wonder what thoughts went through the collective mind of Retro Studios when setting out to design the sequel, Corruption. Apart from the directive of showcasing the Wii's pointer function, it appears as though Corruption were designed to be the anti-Echoes, not necessarily a good thing.
Check back tomorrow as I revisit Metroid Prime: Corruption.