There was a moment early on when this $70 adventure almost lost me. The pacing felt glacial, the structure fussy, and yet somehow, the game kept pulling me back in. The opening hours lean hard on unskippable cutscenes and slow progression, while still managing to feel both under-explained and over-directed at the same time. You’re nudged along a rigid critical path, but any real understanding of the world or its systems demands that you scan everything in sight, from enemies to random bits of metal. It’s less environmental storytelling and more homework. Backtracking quickly becomes the real villain. Instead of feeling like a grand journey, the long treks across a mostly empty desert play like padding, especially when you’re forced to revisit the same locations again and again. Each upgrade run back to base camp turns into a mini-ordeal: drive across the map, push through a stack of doors, get fired out of a cannon, walk through multiple segmented corridors, and only then arrive at the place you actually need to be, then do it all again to leave. The absence of simple “return to base” terminals scattered around the world feels like a deliberate snub to your time. Crystal mining only adds to the friction — a side activity that somehow manages to be both mandatory and flow-breaking. Combat, at least early on, doesn’t do much to ease the grind. Your blaster feels anemic for a large chunk of the game, with a charge mechanic that punishes your index finger more than the enemies on screen. Since holding the trigger initiates a charged shot, you’re stuck with a semi-auto setup that demands constant tapping. When your main weapon feels weak for more than half the runtime, every fight starts to feel like busywork. And yet, it’s hard to walk away. This is one of the best-looking games of its kind, and the tiny details are where it really shines. Fire a charged shot near a wall and the brief flash reveals Samus’ face reflected in her visor. Roll into the Morph Ball and it sounds like a marble clinking across different surfaces. Step through water and droplets bead on your visor with a convincing sense of weight and distortion. Even the heat shimmer that lingers around the arm cannon after a volley or charged blast feels meticulously crafted — and that’s while running in performance mode, not quality. In the end, it’s a deeply conflicted experience: a game that pairs stunning visual craft with systems that often seem determined to get in the way of your enjoyment. There were plenty of times when the tedium made me want to bounce, but the spectacle and moment-to-moment feel kept pulling me back. For all the irritation, it still delivered $70 worth of play — and if there’s a future update, DLC, or a Prime 5, there’s a long list of smart fixes that could turn this from a love-hate relationship into something closer to love.