ITT: when your game's momentum falls off a fucking cliff

n00b

Prime 2 definitely just took everything too far. It wasn't just the sky temple keys either. I also found it incredibly lazy just straight-up needing the player to collect 3 keys for each local area. So take the fact that you're key-hunting for every location in the game, and then add to that the tedious sky temple key hunt at the end, and it's just exhausting. I never found the artifact hunt in MP1 to be a chore, but holy shit does MP2's key hunting go off the deep end.

That and the pacing of the game is pretty bad. Dark areas are tedious and uninteresting, and you get all the important upgrades in the first main area, and then basically stay at that level of equipment until right at the very end when you get the final beam and suit.

The regular temple keys were fine, in that they required you to fully scour the current environment and make use of all your newly acquired tools. The Sky Temple keys are just insult to injury, since not only are you fucking sick of keys at that point, but you're literally just one step away from the final boss. You're already as powerful as you're going to get and already scoured the entire fucking map—doing it again is just textbook padding.

I agree that the regular keys aren't as bad as the sky temple keys, however they're still lazy game design. They should've done a better job integrating progression properly in a metroid-style way, purely based on newly gained abilities, rather than just having straight-up zelda-style dungeon keys. In terms of gameplay it doesn't make a ton of difference, but in terms of presentation it absolutely matters.

It's also especially egregious when you consider that the 'translations' are basically just color-coded-keys to begin with. Did Prime 1 have these color-coded gates? It's been over a decade for me.

Wow, I totally forgot about needing to update your translator module, you're right. And no, MP1 did not have anything like that. Doors opened based on weapons and that was it.

Seethe

Yeah, I'm thinking that MP2 is not based, after all.

Attached: lost-izalith.jpg (1280x720, 298.35K)

I honestly replayed MP2 earlier this year and stopped as soon as I got the light suit and had to go do sky temple key hunting. i think i did 1 of them...? then just couldn't be arsed.
Just another poor thematic attempt of cutting the world off into 3 separate little non-connected isolated parts. As opposed to MP1's world that connected to itself in a lot of places.

Literally the only thing that stops me from replaying it. Such a terrible area.

Prime 2 only had four areas, plus dark world. Temple Grounds acted as a hub, connecting to each of the three areas, which in turn all connected to each other.
Not really sure what you're talking about here. You could always go to any one of the areas without in-betweens, unlike the first Prime. For example, if you wanted to go to Phandrana, you always had to go through Magmoor, no matter what. Prime 2 was more connected than the first.

I get the feeling that MP2 is set up more like a zelda game, where you basically fully complete an area as if it were a dungeon and then go to the next one, complete with boss keys and everything. They probably did this because all the plebs getting filtered by MP1 and complaining about "muh backtracking!!!"

I still enjoy MP2 and think it's a great game, but the first is still far superior. It's still impressive when you remember that MP2 was put together in only a little over a year's time and still ended up as expansive and polished as it was. Plus I really do love the game's atmosphere/environments/music (at least for light aether; all the dark aether segments are boring and shitty and the game would've been better without them)

>As opposed to MP1's world that connected to itself in a lot of places.
MP1 had a lot of backtracking too, especially in Magmoor IIRC. Still, you wouldn't think they'd regress between the artifacts and the STKs.

It's shit but at least when you know what you're doing, you can run through it in a couple minutes and then never come back. Plus since it's an end-game lord soul area you never actually NEED to go there or clear it unless you explicitly want to fight gwyn. A lot of people just play through the parts they want and then do invasions/pvp from there, and I like how the game grants this flexibility.

Not gonna lie though, Izalith is shit and every time I play the game I just use the Chaos Servant shortcut to skip everything and go to Bed of Artificial Difficulty and cheese that.

>all the dark aether segments are boring and shitty and the game would've been better without them
But that's a good half of the game. Thematically it really drives home the fact that you're in an inhospitable alien world, but gameplay-wise it's extremely fucking tedious, and every time you see a portal to the dark world, you're going to think "Here we go again."

Jesus christ I hate autists so much, they should be Shoah-ed off the planet

>For example, if you wanted to go to Phandrana, you always had to go through Magmoor, no matter what.
I looked up a map to prove you wrong but you're right. Never noticed that

The game is very long and poorly paced at times anyway. I'd rather just have one unique additional area rather than four different dark aether areas that are just shitty purple-hued versions of light aether areas with those lame light bubbles everywhere. Dark aether was shit. I don't care about the themes if the resulting gameplay is tedious and dull, period.

I would've enjoyed it more if the dark areas were better designed, but it's clear that they were just added mainly as copypasta filler due to how tight the schedule for MP2 was. If the different dark areas were actually made to feel distinct, and they didn't all just have the exact same boring theme to them, and the whole "take damage walking around and then sit around in a light crystal bubble waiting for health regen" mechanic didn't exist, and there were more enemy types than just the same handful of boring ing variants, then it could've been something decent.

Yea, Prime's world definitely feels better connected, but if you look at the maps and elevators, you notice that it's really not that complicated.
What sucks about Magmoor is that it feels extremely under-utilized. It's literally just a straight path with no real choices on how to traverse it. You either go forward, or back and that's it. Feels like padding or cut content.
In Prime 2, there are fewer areas, but traversing them is relatively painless and simple. I think it's better designed from a gameplay perspective, but it does feel like you're just traveling between ''levels'' instead of an entire world.

I don't mind the key hunting, shit came naturally to me. I played it for the first time recently and I just ended up writing down which room had stuff I could use for further exploration, and I returned whenever I got a suitable upgrade. I think I had to look up one sky temple key but I was kinda frustrated at that point and just wanted to finish the game.
What I fucking loathed compared to 1 is all the fucking backtracking. Jesus Christ why. Just fucking why. Prime 1 mostly felt natural in that regard (though I have to admit I played the shit out of it as a kid, but that was what, 17 years ago?) but 2 took it to a whole different fucking level. It was especially bad due to the light/dark transition and how you sometimes had to switch worlds to advance, and sometimes just couldn't go back to where you came from unless you went all around the zone again. Fuck, I wanted to play 3 afterwards too but going through 2 sucked out all my motivation to continue.

Let's not forget about these horrible bastards.
>is invulnerable half of the time because it exists inbetween dimensions—you can't fully lock on to it without the Dark Visor
>can stretch its tentacles to hit you literally anywhere on the map whenever it wants
>can randomly rush you and fuck up your vision for 10 seconds
Between these and Rezbits, I'm confident that MP2 has some of the most annoying mobs in vidya history.

3 is really good though. 2 is the outlier.

This game had a lot of potential but they stop you so frequently to have a character monologue at you that it actually kills the experience

Attached: bl3.jpg (271x377, 41.97K)

Forgot pic.

Attached: 1593092895193.jpg (644x343, 60.78K)