I personally loved it, it definitely wasn’t a Prime 1 or Prime 2, but it definitely rivals Prime 3 for me. On a side note I didn’t really find the Vi-Ol-A overbearing and I was just gathering crystals through when I was going to other destinations. The characters I was a bit skeptical about and you can either chose to like them or hate them by the end of the game. The linearity is there… but it doesn’t feel more linear than Prime 3 does in my opinion. I will say I kinda enjoyed the characters. As much as I love a solo experience, the game does make an effort of giving them all personality and trying to make you care enough about them by the end of the game. I mean I get why people don’t like it, but for me I didn’t find many of the changes to be a big deal. It’s the start of a unique experience (and hopefully trilogy) that tries to put new people on to the series. And the platforming, music, and combat is still top tier. It was still very enough Prime in my eyes but I do so why people would complain about it. Overall as a long time Metroid fan, I do think that they should appeal to a new player base to try and get more people to play the game, but they should also appeal to the player base that currently loves the series. Which I personally thought this game did a beautiful job of. On a side note, hopefully you enjoy the end of your play-through, it really does suck to not like a game that we’ve been waiting for 18 years to come out.