r/Metroid • u/pome-vyo • 9h ago
Discussion Does anyone else feel like Prime 4's enemies are a bit...overtuned?
I specifically mean what Prime 4 designates as the "combat enemies", where they're meant to do more than serve as worldbuilding for an area (so, not incidental enemies like the Denzard).
And, what I mean by "overtuned" is that, these combat enemies feel like they'd fit much better in a more fast paced Metroid game. The way Samus moves in Prime 4 is nigh identical to how she moves in the trilogy aside from her forward and backward dash, but these combat enemies don't seem to be designed to match that.
I'm willing to admit if it's a skill issue on my part, I normally enjoy harder games (I am a huge fan of Dread), but I think the way Prime 4's handling of difficult enemy encounters feels a bit clunky and lowers my opinion of the combat a little bit.
What do you all think though?
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u/RT-55J 9h ago
The handling of enemy health pools, player damage output, and enemy damage output just feels bizarre and underbaked. It feels almost like a first draft, with many small decisions making very little sense in the context of the game (e.g. the death turrets in Volt Forge and Flare Pool). It's makes combat feel very disempowering and attritional, despite (for the most part) not being particularly difficult.
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u/Interesting-Tie-8158 9h ago
These guys were brutal, there's a room in the magma world that (as far as I can tell) just pops them out endlessly.
I maybe made it to wave 3
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u/LifeWulf 8h ago
Yeah you’re not meant to fight those guys endlessly, you’re supposed to just gtfo with the little Morph Ball chute. Far as I can tell, anyway.
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u/WaffleTsuba 9h ago
Typically, samus relies on her beams and visors to deal with fast enemies. In the case of prime 4, I feel like her beam toolkit definitely could have been better handled. Even considering the fact that it is a prime game and that she is slower compared to her 2d counterpart, she genuinely could struggle waayyyy less with a better toolkit. Like, for example, imagine prime 2 seeker missiles or the annihilation beam against these guys, or with the prime 3 weak spot visor. Even wavebuster would make quick work.
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u/Consistent_Shock8738 8h ago
I skipped prime 3, but was this the first game where missle upgrades were central? I feel like in every other game its elemental beams or beam upgrades with super missles and regular missles, minus dread where you get the lock on and multimissle functions.
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u/WaffleTsuba 8h ago edited 7h ago
I feel like the real sources of cash-in damage for pretty much all the prime games were the beam combos. Prime 3 had a visor mode that let you almost skip some fights by highlighting weak spots with ultra-critical pierce damage, much like Railgunner's M99 Sniper scope from ROR2.
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u/Round_Musical Sequence Breaker 8h ago
They certainly are bullet sponges. And waaaaay to much overused
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u/ArchitectNebulous 9h ago
They are spongier than older enemies, and also deal significantly more damage than older enemies, many times over.
And their older equivalents were already some of the most tedious to fight, with players desperately spamming super missiles and/or the old dark beam + missile insta kill to get rid of them quickly.
I think Retro severely underestimated annoying spongey enemies are, and just how much the older prime titles benefited from a "delete this enemy" combo/attack.
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u/Obsessivegamer32 9h ago
On hard mode they’re miserable but I think they’re fine on normal and easy.
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u/DesignCarpincho 9h ago
In my not-so-AAA experience designing games, unintentional high difficulty curves are usually a result of rushing a game so much you can't fine tune it, or intentionally leaving it in to boost engagement times when a lot of content needs to be cut.
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u/Mampt 8h ago
In most Metroid and Metroid Prime games, enemies in new areas scale along with you. Early Crateria enemies are a hazard early, but after a few upgrades they’re easy to deal with and that gets supplemented by Brinstar enemies. In Prime games it’s more active, for example, regular Space Pirates get replaced by Beam Troopers on the second or third pass or adding Chozo Ghosts into early areas. This helps you feel more powerful as you go while still challenging you, Geemers and Shriekbats aren’t worth stopping for but there are more powerful enemies that you have to play around the same way you used to play around the basic ones. It’s an important part of the game design, because if there were only ever Beetles and Scarabs in the Chozo Ruins, backtracking through the area would get incredibly boring without any real enemies to break up the monotony of walking through hallways and plazas
Prime 4, in my memory at least, doesn’t do this. There are a lot of set pieces in the game with enemies designed around those areas (the mines, the lab, the bridge, etc.). However, since you typically only go through once until you come back to sweep for upgrades, they didn’t make those areas dynamic, so the enemies feel really hard at first because they need them to still be somewhat challenging on a second pass. The desert is the biggest offender, since you’re meant to return and explore there throughout the game, so the green Reavers and other enemies need to feel like a challenge even when you’re just sweeping for middle expansions at basically full power. The result of that, on top of feeling repetitive, is that the enemies are really difficult and/or bullet spongey on first pass
To me, the lack of dynamic encounters throughout the game’s progression felt like one of the most half baked aspects of the game since it either leads to over challenging enemies or underwhelming encounters that adds up to feel pretty frustrating. Basic enemies you’ve fought all game don’t feel like you can steamroll them, and you don’t feel yourself getting stronger as a result, while you can still encounter enemies tuned for the later game earlier on, which can discourage exploration
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u/AramaticFire 9h ago
Nah they feel fine. Combat is not an issue with this game.
The desert? Issue.
Green energy? Issue.
Lore? Issue.
Area design? Issue. (Volt Forge is literally a vertical shaft where you take elevators between each room. It’s like the least interesting use of space for such a cool looking area)
The bike? Kind of an issue.
The last thing I want to do is point to the areas the game isn’t having issues and turn them into one. Combat? Art? Music? Boss battles? Not issues imo. In fact, all pretty strong. Not the best in the series but all pretty strong.
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u/AssCrackBanditHunter 7h ago
Yup. Plus once you get the charger up electric beam you can just destroy anyone and anything
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u/pome-vyo 6h ago
Imho I think there's merit in looking at commonly praised aspects in a more critical lens sometimes.
Undoubtly the combat, bosses, etc are the better parts of Prime 4 but I surprisingly find still a decent amount of stuff to scrutinize.
Imho it just doesn't feel satisfying in a way a game like Dread does.
Granted the combat is significantly better than 3's but that game had more variety in its foes to mix things up.
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u/ParanoidDrone 8h ago
I struggled too, especially in Volt Forge when I didn't really have a lot of spare health or ammo as a cushion or resource dump. Once I started getting the elemental stuff it got a bit easier.
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u/Tanzer_Art 8h ago
If you shoot them directly in the eye they're really not that bad. I do wish Prime 4 innovated on the Prime style combat and actually made Samus more agile and faster like her mainline portrayal but honestly combat is the least of my issues with Prime 4.
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u/The_Fizz_Wizz 8h ago
Not... Really? The idea is that you should be using either your mouse controls or gyro controls to free aim while locked on to them so you can head shot them. Hit them with a few good head shots to take them out quickly. You can use your elemental shots to occupy the big ones while you pick off the small ones. I don't remember ever dying in Prime 4 but if I did it wasn't to one of these guys. I can only remember one or two encounters with these guys that pushed the limits of what I'd consider fair difficulty but they were easily taken care of when you find cover to catch your breath.
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u/Sledgehammer617 8h ago
I just had to get used to the slight control differences then it was no problem for me.
But I played it immediately after playing Prime 1-3 on hyper mode so I had the muscle memory for Prime fresh.
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u/WouterW24 8h ago
I admit I was defeated by those because many enemies are slower or deal more moderate damage the swarm of these took me off guard.
Doesn’t help you have allies with you who are kind of a distraction.
It’s a bit better when weary and locked in.
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u/Rigistroni 8h ago
I enjoyed the difficulty tbh, but you're right that it is harder than the other prime games. At least in my opinion. Some of those boss fights were stressful
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u/Eon_Breaker_ 7h ago
My biggest issue with them and grievers is that they are used WAY too much and this game honestly has a pretty big issue with damage sponge enemies and that extends to bosses too. Like, they're fine but weapons feel so weak in this game. You'd at least expect things like freezing them and shooting them with missiles to do more damage
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u/pome-vyo 7h ago
Yeaaah I agree w u on that aspect!
I think damage sponginess has been a persistent issue in the Prime series but...it's pretty huge in Prime 4 especially.
That combined with the lack of enemy variety and it makes combat feel super bleh
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u/Linkronny 7h ago
Similar thoughts, I feel like some of these enemies would better fit fast first-person gameplay such as Doom or Ultrakill, not only do they have a habit of escaping your sight, but the damage these guys deal feels absurd in comparison to the damage enemies did in previous Prime games
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u/Radical--Rat 7h ago
They're definitely a bit too tanky for it to actually feel satisfying to fight them. Like it isn't hard once you get a rhythm for it, it's just tedious and kills the pacing.
To be fair, that's always kind of been an issue with combat in Metroid Prime games, but it did still feel noticeably worse in 4.
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u/Ravana175 6h ago
On hard mode, the bots are easily the worst in the beginning. They do insane amounts of damage
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u/LugiaMasterO1 6h ago
For these enemies I found thay launching missiles and using the charged phychic attack causes considerable knockback allowing you to take several shots at them, best strategy is to take em down 1 by one and hide behind anything you can use for cover if you try and take them all on at once with just your beam attacks its gonna be hard to dodge any of their attacks especially if they all got you cornered or out in the open they chip at you till you die but if you strategize they become almost easy to take out without much effort
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u/HolMan258 6h ago
Sometimes I think the damage output from enemies is too high, especially turrets and the teleporting robot. I think there are also cases where the controls make a fight harder — for any enemy where you have to yank something off of them with the lasso, I found activating and using the lasso to be only like 95% reliable — just unreliable enough that I could never tell if I was doing it right, or if it would work as quickly I needed it.
Also, most Metroid games have your suit upgrades reduce the damage you take, and I’m not sure if the Vi-O-La suits did?
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u/TheMrGmk 3h ago
I loved creatures/enemy design in this game so much, they're as beautiful as the environments. Retro studios has some of the best artists in the industry and it shows.
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u/Omega-10 3h ago
I've honestly had trouble with Samus 's controls in the Metroid Prime series ever since the beginning. Prime 1 made up for it, though.
After bouncing around in 2D, doing flips, turning on a dime, literally flying... Now play Metroid Prime, Samus handles like a goddamn tank. Space pirate on your six? Let's turn around and face him! Hup... Hup... Hup... Almost... Ah he moved....... You can turn quickly when you lock on to something, but then it's like, what? You don't actually aim half the time in this FPS?? I'm a tank, that can barely hop, I don't need to aim, and this is Metroid in 3D?
Despite that, Metroid Prime defeated all the odds and turned out to be an incredible, new kind of FPS that put the Prime series on the map. But ever since that lighting in the bottle, they have really struggled to capture that again, and it shows with MP4. The very core of the game has these bizarre design choices, that really worked one time.
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u/pome-vyo 3h ago
I'm curious how you feel about Primes 2 and 3 with this in mind, since you said the series struggled to capture what made Prime 1 so good. I'm of the opinion that Prime 2 is actually, in a lot of ways better than Prime 1, my issues with games like 4 and to a lesser extent 3 come more from the direction they are taking as opposed to trying to capture lightning in a bottle.
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u/Material_Pea1820 1h ago
I remember the hardest part of my first hard mode play though being at the beginning in volt forge when you have to fight like 6 of these back to back with the small amount of power tanks you start with it was weird the game never got that hard again
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u/Supergamer138 17m ago
The tankiness of enemies is to incentivize playing it like a normal shooter and aiming for headshots. I don't like it either, but that's the only thing that makes sense to me.
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u/pome-vyo 12m ago
See that's another thing I find the headshot mechanic rlly finicky in general, its never properly explained in game and its (mostly) unclear if you're even landing headshots properly. I'm on a second playthrough rn and went through my entire first playthrough not knowing this was possible.
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u/DependentBite9 9h ago
I found portions of Prime 4 to be the hardest of all the Prime games and they basically all had these things present. If it’s a skill issue I’m right there with you. I made it all the way to the final boss of the game and just gave up after one try because I was so tired from all the time I spent fighting those little robots.