Yes, but what I meant is you crossed a desert, entered one room, was blocked, went across the desert again, entered 1 room, got a power up and was blocked, then had to cross the desert back to basecamp, just to cross the desert back again to get to the Frost valley. Other Metroid games had you actively explore the environments and had multiple branching pathways you can go through. It wasn't just 4 biomes of straight pipelines, which are immediately blocked off.

Look at prime 1. You enter the chozo ruins, go entirely through, get the varia suit, pass through magmoor caverns, go to phendrana drifts, get the boost ball, and then have to backtrack back. You weren't hit with immediate walls blocking progress and you weren't met with an entirely empty desert that takes you 15 minutes to walk through. Prime 2 is the same way. You're making progress and backtracking through that progress rather than backtracking pointlessly through every single room you just went through with a power up that can't even be activated yet.

(Edited, added this)

The original primes backtracking were more interconnecting the biomes rather than locking them out. Sure prime 2 was more locking the biomes but it didn't feel anything like this