Metroid Prime 4 Reviews Are In: Great Game, ‘Disappointing’ Score? Fans Clash Over 8/10 Average

After nearly two decades without a new Prime entry and years of development drama, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has finally landed on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 — and the verdict is… complicated. Critics are broadly positive, with averages hovering around the 8/10 mark, but parts of the Metroid community are acting like the sky has fallen because it’s “only” an 80-something.

On Reddit’s review megathreads, you can see the split in real time: some players are calling it “one of Samus’s greatest adventures”, while others are crestfallen that the series has gone from near-universal 90+ scores to “just another strong release”. Throw in a controversial open desert hub, a chatty NPC called Myles, and debates over handholding, and you’ve got one of the most divisive Nintendo launches of the year.

Review scores at a glance: strong averages, noisy discourse

As reviews go live, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is settling into a “strong but not legendary” place on the aggregators:

• OpenCritic: ~82 average, with the majority of critics recommending the game.
• Metacritic (Switch 2): low 80s, with no negative reviews and most outlets rating it “generally favourable”.

In isolation, those numbers describe a very good game. The problem is context: every mainline Metroid Prime before this sat in the 90s, and even Metroid Dread reviewed like an instant modern classic. Going from “always 9+” to “around 8” feels like a downgrade to long-time fans, even though most critiques still describe Beyond as a high-quality, polished shooter–adventure.

What critics are loving: atmosphere, level design and Switch 2 tech

Despite the noise, a lot of reviewers agree on one thing: when Metroid Prime 4 is doing classic Metroid things, it can be brilliant. Across outlets, the positives repeat:

• Classic labyrinth design: maze-like environments, locked-off routes, and the satisfaction of circling back with new upgrades to open previously blocked paths.
• Boss fights and combat: many reviews highlight some of the best boss encounters in the series, with responsive aiming and snappy gunplay.
• Art direction and atmosphere: dense alien biomes, eerie corridors, and that signature Metroid feeling of scanning strange ruins and putting the lore together yourself.
• Switch 2 enhancements: on Nintendo Switch 2, Beyond supports enhanced visuals and frame rates, with a quality/performance mode and even mouse-style control via Joy-Con 2, turning it into a kind of hybrid console–PC shooter.

In other words, when you’re deep inside a self-contained Prime-style area, it often feels exactly like the game fans were dreaming about during those long, quiet years.

Where it stumbles: Sol Valley, Myles and the open-world experiment

The friction points called out in critic reviews and Reddit threads line up almost perfectly:

• The open desert hub (Sol Valley): the new bike-based desert overworld is meant to tie the main zones together, but many reviewers and fans describe it as visually striking but mechanically thin — big, empty stretches punctuated by shrines, green crystals and a few mini-bosses rather than dense Metroid-style exploration.
• Handholding and the Myles problem: Myles and the Federation troopers are there to welcome newcomers, but for veterans who associate Metroid with isolation and quiet tension, frequent radio hints and Marvel-style banter can feel like someone talking over your favourite album.
• Story and pacing: several reviews note an uneven rhythm, with brilliant dungeon-style stretches broken up by slower, less engaging fetch quests or exposition-heavy sequences near the end.
• Difficulty and optional challenge: normal mode is widely described as easier than Prime 1, and the higher difficulty being locked behind a second playthrough frustrates players who want that classic unforgiving feel from day one.

None of these issues are deal-breakers for everyone, but they create a clear pattern: when Metroid Prime 4: Beyond sticks close to the original trilogy’s formula, it shines; when it leans into “modern AAA” trends, the magic wobbles.

Why an 8/10 feels “disappointing” to some Metroid fans

If you only look at the numbers, an 81–82 average is comfortably in “strong recommendation” territory. But for long-time Metroid fans, there are a few reasons the score stings:

1. Historical expectation: the Prime trilogy and Dread all reviewed in the 90s, and are often cited among the best games of their generations.
2. Development saga: fans watched Metroid Prime 4 get announced, vanish, restart, and slowly crawl towards release. After that much drama, the dream was “instant classic”, not “pretty great but flawed”.
3. Review-score inflation: in 2025, anything below 90 on aggregators can feel like failure in discourse, even though statistically it’s still top-tier.
4. Comparison to Nintendo’s giants: people openly compare it to how a mainline Zelda or Mario would be treated if it only scored in the low 80s.

The result: Reddit is full of comments calling an 8/10 “bad for a AAA Nintendo series” and worrying about Metroid’s future, even as reviewers write things like “I couldn’t put it down” and “I immediately started a second playthrough”.

Handholding, companions and the fight over “modern” Metroid

One of the loudest flashpoints is how Metroid Prime 4 tries to onboard new players. Multiple reviewers and Reddit users mention:

• Myles and the crew being present for roughly a quarter of the game, travelling with Samus in certain segments and returning as a kind of base-adjacent upgrade vendor later.
• Radio hints that nudge you if you wander “too long” in the wrong direction, sometimes pointing out doors or pickups you haven’t found yet.
• No simple toggle to disable hints and chatter, unlike some earlier Metroid Prime entries where you could turn off the “hint system”.

For some players, that’s a dealbreaker: they wanted an almost wordless, lonely expedition, not a sci-fi road trip with a chatty squad. For others — especially new Metroid players — it’s reassuring, helping them stay on track in a dense 3D world.

The bigger question is philosophical: how do you make Metroid approachable without losing what made it special? Right now, Beyond feels like a compromise that satisfies many people but leaves the most hardcore fans wishing there were a “this is not my first video game” setting right in the options menu.

Is it still worth playing if you loved the original trilogy?

If you’re coming from Metroid Prime Remastered or you grew up with the GameCube originals, the pattern across reviews and community impressions is clear:

• You’ll probably love the core biomes, dungeons, and classic scanning/exploration loops.
• You may tolerate or actively dislike Sol Valley’s open desert and the time you spend listening to Myles and the Federation troopers.
• On Switch 2, you’ll get what many describe as a showcase title, with cleaner visuals and higher frame rates that help the art direction sing.

For a more traditional review breakdown, outlets like Nintendo Life have praised Beyond as one of the boldest and most well-realised Metroid games yet, even while agreeing the open map and pacing aren’t perfect.

And if you’re interested in how fan expectation shapes big releases in other worlds too, you can also read Swikblog’s coverage of high-pressure football showdowns like the North London Derby build-up, where hype and reality often collide in a very similar way.

So what should players take from an 8/10?

Strip away the console-war tone and score drama, and the message from both critics and many players is surprisingly calm: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a very good game that doesn’t quite become the once-in-a-generation masterpiece people imagined.

If you wanted:

• A polished, atmospheric sci-fi adventure with classic Metroid exploration and modern controls — you’ll almost certainly get your money’s worth.
• A flawless reinvention that outshines Prime 1 and Super Metroid on every front — the reviews say you might come away a little disappointed.

In practice, most of us don’t live or die by aggregator scores. The real question is simple: does a moody, slightly old-school Metroid adventure with some modern rough edges sound like your thing? If the answer is yes, then an 8/10 is far from a warning sign — it’s just a reminder that even legends like Samus Aran are allowed to have “great” outings, not only perfect ones.