mp4 is the most widely used and simplest video format I think it gets a lot right tbh

You know what would've helped the plot especially with Slylux?

Make Sylux also given a psychic crystal and labeled as the chosen one as well. As he lands on the planet( ALONG WITH HIS PIRATE ARMY), he become intrigued by the technology and potential weaponry in addition to the Teleporter being able to go anywhere instantly which would be a huge problem if the pirates get control of it.

With Samus and Sylux getting the chosen one label it becomes a race to see who can get all the keys to the Teleporter to not only leave but securing a game changing tool.

-The stakes are risen.

- Sylux has a purpose and regular presence in the plot.

- The Space Pirates are actually included.

To be fair, even if the stakes were bigger, it’s hard to beat Corruption’s, which was damn near about to corrupt the whole galaxy.

The Lamorn are actually pretty interesting; when they were first shown in the original trailers, I kind of rolled my eyes. 'Another long lost alien civilization?' But they actually do a lot to separate themselves from the Chozo, Luminoth, and Alimbic.

They are effectively what would happen if you took the best parts of the Space Pirates and Chozo and spliced them together. They're highly curious about nature, culture and science, and they create some truly awesome pieces of technology and art. But wheras the Space Pirates MO is to go as far as possible as fast as possible and without any regard for consequences, the Lamorn have to come to a reckoning that they themselves were the architects of their own extinction.

Their history also is displayed in their architecture. The Psychic Era is beautiful, minimalistic; if there is a mechanism or machine, it is integrated seamlessly into the locations. The Machine Era is reflected in the adornmentless, clanky, and utilitarian architecture. The  Post Tragedy Era reflects bits and peices of both, with the remaining Lamorn simultaneously trying to cling to what little culture remains, while also having to make design concessions due to the ever-dwindling resources they're dealing with.

You're kinda right on Sylux having really no connection to the plot of the rest of the game.

TBH I don't think it would be too hard to fix it either. The final level could have revelated that the central tower was now overrun with Sylux's Space Pirates who got teleported to Viros with the troopers. And that they are collecting the green crystals to use as a Phazon alternative. Suddenly the stakes are stopping the Pirates getting off the planet with the Crystals.

4:27, it's actually a little weirder than that. In the room where you can read about the Lamorns relationship with the various bosses of the game, it describes Xelios, the boss you fight in volt forge, as the head of the factory, and it's prime directive was to "do what would bring happiness to the lamorn" and instead of repurposing the factory for other better pieces of technology, it decided "nah motorcycles are pretty cool man" and just kept on making them.

The fact that you meant to make a video praising the good parts, but ended up complaining for most of the video is poetic, really

I particularly liked how the psychic powers changed the way I thought about combat. Not just with interrupting enemies with the control beam but also the fact that morphball bombs and FREAKING POWER BOMBS could now be force pulled and thrown at enemies holy shit. Like there was nothing more satisfying than finishing off enemies with a surprise pocket nuke to the face. In previous Metroid games, I rarely used bombs or even power bombs offensively that much unless I was forced to use them (like "oh the enemy is only vulnerable to morphball bombs" situation) But because now I could grab my own bomb and just stick it directly onto an enemy, I was using them a lot more often in fights just because it was pretty cool.

It’s not the backtracking I have a problem with, it’s the way it’s done. It feels clunky, most of the time you’re going all the way across the desert to open up a single door and find an upgrade. It just doesn’t have the same magic as previous entries in my opinion.

I'm glad you brought up Anthony he's actually my favorite Side Character in the Metroid Franchise and I miss him.

in my opinion Anthony is Miles done right because his humor is completely different and it works in a Universe like Metroid.

not to mention unlike all of the Characters in Prime 4, Anthony actually knows Samus because they served in the Military together, and I like that because it helps to show Dynamic Bond the two have it makes the moments you have with him more impactful.

I've always found it so fascinating that the Metroid Prime series has always had cursed development cycles for each game. It really is a miracle that they exist to begin with.
Prime 1 went through tons of design changes and devs were working upwards of 100 hours a week in the final stretch. There was also some fuckery with their dev kit (singular) and a batch of GameCube CPUs that would fail to run the game correctly.
Prime 2 was only 30% complete three months before Nintendo's deadline.
Prime 3 was just confusing. Retro had to cut a lot of their original ideas for Samus's gunship when they found out the Wii was less powerful than they thought it would be. They also wanted to have Samus do bounty hunter things, like collecting bounties for money; but Nintendo said Samus was motivated by altruism and not profit (translation: Nintendo doesn't know that the fuck a bounty hunter is).

It's pretty on point for Retro to develop games that would make ordinary people want to kill themselves with how much bs they deal with. So it doesn't surprise me that Prime 4 ended up the way it did even with the extended development time. It's part of their brand at this point.

Prime 4 is messy. I had a great time with it and I intend to replay it every now and then but you can definitely tell it went through development hell with a bunch of incoherent ideas in the mix. Still a prime game, but a very messy one.

As other comments pointed out, it's not that people have issues issues with the backtracking by itself, it's how it's done.

For one, none of the major areas are actually connected to each other in any way. If you want to switch areas, you have to travel the barren ass dessert everytime, which can get rather bothersome.

Then there is also the fact that every revisit is usually extremely short, usually only having you visit one or two rooms you couldn't before. Compare this to the first two Prime games, where you usually got to access an entirely different section of the area. It makes the revisit feel justified, instead of like going back because you forgot your car keys.

One thing I found interesting about the Lamorn plot was that their destruction was self-inflicted. They over mined resources for their bikes and they turned their own people into the Grievers by trying to give everyone psychic powers and forcing evolution with the green energy.

I’m one of those few fans that actually liked MP Fed Force. I can say that I would like this game. Haven’t been able to play it yet. But that will hopefully change soon

I thought the last battle was so cool. Fighting it out with the whole squad. Had to save all of them at least once. And then....Samus just says peace outnguys lmao.

Playing through the game a second time on Hardmode I started noticing way more interesting details of environmental storytelling that are easily missable but so well done and made the game so much richer. Like the most notable one I recall is in the isolated area of Sol Valley you land at outside the entrance to Volt Forge.

There's these two towers, one of which hides an Energy Tank you can only get until much later. However, these towers are explained to be emergency supply caches when you scan them. Stuff to help someone who finds themselves having to survive out in the desert. When Samus arrives here, where no other character you meet in the game has been yet, one of these supply lockers is already open and empty, which gives the strong implication that some poor Lamorn, maybe even a group of them, found themselves having to cross the desert--likely on foot as well--and had to use the emergency cache. These may have been workers from the Volt Forge itself when they had to evacuate during their people's crisis.

Honestly I don't have a problem with their being backtacking in the game I just think the way it's handle is worse than in other metroid titles. The best games will have you naturally loop back around to previous areas but because the areas aren't interconnected in any way, backtracking often mean travelling in a long straight line through the desert. Also when you do revisit an area you're not finding a huge new segment with it's own unique gimmick. Usually it's just a few new rooms often with a boss fight to justify the time. The elemental chips especially feels like the worst of it. Because they made it so you need to return to Myles to get the upgrade from him. So you often end up needing to make a trip back to Fury Green to do like 3 things. It feels like an unnecessary detour that could have been skipped. If they had made the areas bigger, made sol valley a little smaller and either cut out the returns to fury green or made it possible to quick travel there, then I think it would have gotten less criticism.

Volt Forge was my favorite area. The way it harnessed electricity from the raging storm was incredible. Plus it had my favorite piece of music in the whole game.

Fury Green could have had a second area to explore after getting an upgrade later. It felt the shortest and most underused place other than base camp.