Good
- the backtracking is not tedious like it was in Prime 2. The worlds are much more linear, and it's easier to get around, since you can access your ship pretty quickly
- the inclusion of federation generals and soldiers, as well as other bounty hunters enriched the narrative
- having the areas held across multiple planets made the whole game feel bigger
- the animations were well done
- the puzzles that utilized the motion controls were done very well. Twisting and moving tools around was simple yet satisfying. Using grapple to rip things off was especially satisfying.
- they gave samus a little bit more personality, when they zoomed in on her eyes in the helmet, where she showed some expression
- using samus' ship to attack and haul things was interesting
- hypermode made dispatching enemies when backtracking easy. Helped not the break the pace. The attacks were also satisfying to use.
- Elysia had a unique design as it was in the sky. I nice change in pace to the usually claustrophobic environments we usually get
- because the game didn't center around beam types, there were a lot less abundance of locked doors you had to backtrack to open.
- the phazon plot is progressing in a direction that is interesting. Possessing the pirate fleet so dark samus could take out the federation was an interesting take. Suddenly it wasn't the ridley and pirates who were the baddies, but it was this way bigger threat.
Bad
- some logic used in puzzles were too ambiguous. Like when I had to shoot normal enemies to make them fly into a vent to make it malfunction. Another was when I had to overload a creature with phazon to make it explode as explained by the scanner, but it never specified it had to done with a specific weapon. Causing me to stand there and unload a crap ton of phazon into it, and nothing happening.