YMMV / Metroid Prime: Hunters

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Noxus and Spire are generally accepted as the least villainous of the rival hunters, yet they still come into conflict with Samus in the race for the Ultimate Power. Given the lack of in-game dialogue interactions, this opens up plenty of interpretation:
  • Spire's reasoning for going after the Ultimate Power is to find out the fate of his race. Thus, he may feel that Samus and the others are going to rob him of that chance.
  • Noxus wants to keep it out of the wrong hands. One suggestion is that he just sees Samus as another ambitious and amoral hired gun, and he may not know much else about her beyond being the bane of Space Pirates. Another is he doesn't find the Galactic Federation as a government entirely trustworthy (and he might not be far off, given that some branches of it have tried to weaponize known alien threats for their own use in chronologically-later games) and he's wary of any mercenaries on their payroll, regardless of how noble they may be in comparison. Alternatively, Noxus is often painted as a fanatical Knight Templar due to his monastic background, a claim of fighting lawbreakers and evildoers with no specifics, and for opposing Samus during the game; this seems to stem from a Nintendo Power Magazine article (which have a reputation for being fallacious) that called the Vhozon "fanatical".
• Anti-Climax Boss: Gorea is built up to be an immense Eldritch Abomination according to the lore, but he's actually one of the easiest bosses in the series, and can be easier than some of the bosses preceding him.
• Complete Monster: Gorea, the Big Bad of this Gaiden Game, is a formless, ancient alien that crashed on Alinos within the Alimbic Cluster millennia ago. In the form of a perverse imitation of the Alimbics themselves, Gorea sets about massacring the entire race to drain their life energy and empower itself, scouring entire planets of life, turning the Alimbics' own weaponry against them, and devastating the Cluster. Fully intending on continuing its rampage to the rest of the galaxy for the sole sake of power, Gorea's actions wipe out the Alimbics before it's finally sealed away in the Oubliette. Craving freedom, Gorea initiates the entire plot of the game by tempting bounty hunters into the ruins of the Alimbic Cluster towards its seal — and, upon breaking out, drains the power out of all the other bounty hunters before turning its attention to Samus Aran.
• Contested Sequel: To this day, fans are divided on whether it's a bold attempt to diversify and expand the Metroid franchise or a cheap Follow the Leader cash-in that plays fast and loose with the series name.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sylux is far and away the most popular of the bounty hunters introduced in this game. It's got a cool design, cool weaponry, and a cool boss fight, being the only hunter to summon their gunship for support. The enigma surrounding who he is, where he comes from or if Sylux even is a he (the in-game manual only refers to Sylux as "it") compared to the other hunters, and its Easter Egg appearances in the 100% endings of Corruption and Federation Force have led to many hoping its arc will be resolving in the upcoming Metroid Prime 4.
  • The runner-up for popularity out of the hunters might be Weavel, due to having an interesting backstory involving Samus and the Space Pirates and his cool, knight-like design that bears some resemblance to Master Chief.
  • Trace also seems to be one of the most popular hunters due to how fun he is to play as in the multiplayer mode, thanks to his invisibility and sniping abilities. In terms of story, many also like that he is one of the most clearly evil hunters, along with his species the Kriken seeming to be a Shout-Out to the Irken from Invader Zim.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Noxus's physical resemblance to Rundas from Prime 3, as well as sharing ice-themed weaponry, has caused many to speculate that their two species (Vhozon and Phrygisian, respectively) are related in some way.
  • Sylux is referred to in the game manual by gender-neutral pronouns, raising suspicion that Sylux Is A Girl (or robot or other rumors).
• Fridge Brilliance: The six enemy hunters each represent a main colour on a colour wheel. Look closely at the oppositely coloured hunters. Blue Sylux is the hunter with the most selfish and malicious intentions (sheer hatred of Samus and the Galactic Federation), while orange Spire is the one with the least (he just wants to find others of his race). Green Weavel is a scarred veteran of the Space Pirates, while red Trace is a youthful Kriken full of ambition and promise. Purple Noxus is a member of the very lawful Vhozon race, while yellow Kanden is a mindless psychopath.
• Fridge Horror: In the game's Bad Ending, Gorea's Sealing Sphere explodes and takes the Oubliette and the hunters (Samus included) with it. However, second-form Gorea is practically invincible; there's no guarantee this explosion killed it, which means there's now an Eldritch Abomination loose on the universe and nobody around to stop it.
• Good Bad Bugs: The Missile Push. Running backwards into certain corners or crevices, and using a charged explosive (either Missiles or Magmaul) to launch yourself into the wall. Useful both in progression and combat. For progression, it can be useful to bypass or skip certain parts of the game altogether, such as the infamous Piston Cave. In combat, you can launch yourself into the wall and shoot at enemies that are stuck completely unable to see or shoot you. However, this is considered cheating in Multiplayer matches.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The campaign's storyline is rather by-the-numbers and the gameplay linear, but the multiplayer is a lot of fun and allowed for Wi-Fi matches across the world. Sadly, the servers for it were taken down with the release of the 3DS, so one's only hope is local multiplayer.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus on the singleplayer campaign is that it's a decent and admirable attempt at translating the Metroid Prime gameplay to the handheld Nintendo DS, but it is held back by its linear and repetitive structure. It's not bad by any means (as long as the player can adapt to the control scheme) and has even been Vindicated by History after more controversial games were released, but it is very by-the-numbers and doesn't stand out when compared to the rest of the series.
• That One Boss: The Fire Spawn can really catch a first-time player by surprise. It comes immediately after an ambush by three Guardians with zero warning and few healing drops in between. The room where you fight the Fire Spawn gives you little room to maneuver without falling in lava, and its projectiles come fast and are very damaging. What keeps it from being this entirely is the fact that it's completely crippled by the Judicator, and the fight becomes easy once you figure out the Fire Spawn's pattern. The difficulty really comes from lack of preparation and warning.
• That One Level: Generally speaking, the game's single player story doesn't have many tricky segments, but some sore spots stand out.
  • The second part of the Celestial Archives as a whole. First, there are a lot of enemies that can royally screw your visor; second, the area is split into three parts before the boss, two of which are full of Bottomless Pits which, unlike the main Prime games, kill you instantly; then comes a Goddamned Boss in the form of the Slench 3, a flying bastard with erratic movement, ramming attacks, and Volt Driver projectiles, which can once again screw up your visor, as well as turrets that also shoot Volt Driver shots. Once you're done, you have the Escape Sequence, where you have to go all the way back in eight and a half minutes, having the misfortune of engaging three Guardians on the way back. This is the only Difficulty Spike in the game, and it shows.
  • The revisit to Alinos is this on two fronts.
    • The first part's a Marathon Level that, while not incredibly difficult, just takes a very long time to get through, even if you use the first teleport pad as a checkpoint. It also has the Fire Spawn.
    • The second part, after unlocking the second teleport pad, is much shorter, but also much more difficult. The Piston Cave is a Morph Ball passage consisting of large boxes pushed by pistons and narrow bridges over pits of lava. Ironically, getting pushed into lava by the pistons is preferable to what comes next: crusher pistons that instantly kill Samus if she's caught by them. Not only is the camera placement awkward in the first segment with them, making it difficult to judge where you should stop when you're safe, but in the second segment, you have to move forward through lots of crusher pistons completely blind, and getting past some of them requires very precise timing. And the cherry on top? Once you enter the cave, the door locks behind you. Fortunately, it's possible to skip this entire area and grab the artifact at the end with the Missile Push glitch.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The campaign has a number of changes to the Metroid formula, most of which nerf Samus considerably compared to Metroid Prime for the sake of multiplayer balance:
  • There's no Lock On feature, and although missiles do have a homing effect, it only applies if the cursor is aimed directly at the target when firing and can very easily miss if the target is moving.
  • Bottomless pits and crushers will kill Samus instantly instead of just reducing her health. Instant death hazards that ignore your energy are normally avoided in the Metroid franchise.
  • The Space Jump is absent, but instead Samus can walk off edges and make a single mid-air jump. Combining that with fatal bottomless pits and awkward controls make the platforming sections very frustrating.
  • Samus not only takes fall damage, but can be hurt by the explosions of her own attacks, neither of which are true in any other game in the franchise.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The six hunters all have compelling backstories and motives, but these character traits affect nothing in the game itself. They're just obstacles who all act exactly the same. The only one among them whose motivations—as little as we see of them—avert Gameplay and Story Segregation is Sylux, and even then they've been constrained to Easter Eggs.
  • Story designer Richard Vorodi shares this sentiment, wishing he could've done more with characters such as Weavel. However, both the scope of the project and Nintendo's guidelines constrained the team from doing so.
• Vindicated by History: When it was first released, Hunters generated a Broken Base due to its more linear structure and focus on shooting as opposed to the exploration of the main Metroid titles. Fast forward to 2016 with the controversy over Federation Force, many who didn't hate the concept of a shooting-focused Metroid spinoff in itself gained a new appreciation for Hunters, as Hunters emulates the art style of the Prime games as opposed to a chibi style, has Samus playable along with other rival bounty hunters with appealing designs and personalities, and has far more substantial and varied multiplayer.

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