YMMV / Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • There's considerable leeway in theorizing how in control Rundas, Ghor, and Gandrayda, and Unit 313 were of their own actions under Phazon madness, and if any of them became sane before they died. The same can also be said for the moments the corrupted hunters help Samus out. Are they simply mocking/toying with Samus before they try to kill her (which includes killing pirates that are supposed to be their allies), or did they temporarily regain their sanity and use those moments to genuinely help Samus before the Phazon kicked in again?
  • In Gandrayda's death scene, she ends in the form of Samus herself, reaching out as Dark Samus absorbs her. It makes you wonder how much of that act was Gandrayda. Was it her old self, taking on the form of a hero who is the strongest person she knows in an attempt to get away? Or was it the corruption taunting Samus and showing that just like Gandrayda, she would eventually succumb and become one with Dark Samus too?
  • The art booklet included with Prime Trilogy suggests that the planet Phaaze was like any other organism in that it sought to reproduce itself. Seeing as its reproduction involved corrupting planets and their wildlife, though, it raises questions about if Phaaze had omnicidal or predatory motives or if it was just another animal like the Metroids that the Space Pirates turned into a weapon.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • AU 313. While Dark Samus is a thrilling battle, the following one is not so much. The pace is slow and the boss attempts to drag the battle out as long as possible, all while trying its hardest to waste the valuable time you have. It is generally agreed to be a good boss in its own right, but as the conclusion to the Prime trilogy, it is considered a major letdown.
  • When fought normally, the Metroid Hatchers are That One Boss. However, the Nova Beam and X-Ray Visor allow for one-hit kills. You'll face at least one armed with this combo, but if you're willing to wait, you can even kill all three of them this way.
• Awesome Music: Despite the game's shift to a slightly more cinematic and less melodic soundtrack, there are still a handful of bops courtesy of Kenji Yamamoto, once again in top form.
  • The Gunship piece has a nice small rendition of Super Metroid and Samus' theme.
  • Rundas' theme is dramatic and mysterious. Meanwhile, his battle theme conveys the sadness of fighting a former ally with its melancholy choir in the first half, before devolving into electric guitar and synth string madness in the latter half to show the horror of Phazon corruption. If you listen closely around the 1:30 mark, it might sound like a warped voice is saying either "don't cry, Samus" or "run away, Samus".
  • SkyTown's theme is beautiful and elegant, with a slight tinge of sorrow, as you explore the abandoned city above the clouds.
  • Omega Ridley's theme is another remix of Ridley’s classic theme, but more brutal and oppressive than ever. It's borderline frightening at times.
  • Dark Samus' battle theme from Echoes gets a nice remix that's much more imposing and intense, fitting for her promotion from rival to main antagonist.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The Meta Ridley battle in the beginning of the game is generally agreed to be the only thing capable of topping his fight in the original Prime. It's timed, but not so short that you don't have some leeway, it's challenging because of the angles and the way the fight progresses, and it should be mentioned: You are falling down a 17000-meter shaft to a planet's core trying to kill one another. To make a fun fight even more amazing, the positions switch: it starts with Ridley falling below you, then Ridley gets up-close and personal to grab, slash, and blast you in the face, and then he ends up falling above you for a time before diving back below you after another round of close-quarters grappling.
  • Even if having to fight them is heartbreaking, Rundas, Ghor, and Gandrayda provide both epic battles and epic music, Rundas having creative use of his ice powers, Ghor being fast-paced with weapons and bull-ramming tactics, and Gandrayda transforming into previous bosses in between her own acrobatics.
• Common Knowledge: Many fans claim that Omega Ridley disintegrated into Phazon dust upon his defeat, and therefore wonder how Ridley (Joker Immunity and Foregone Conclusion aside) was able to recover from that. However, unlike the other Leviathan seed guardians, Omega Ridley's defeat is off-screen. Since the audience doesn't actually see him turn to dust, then it didn't necessarily happen.
• Contested Sequel: Suffers a similar case of this to Metroid Fusion. Many like how this game kicked up the story telling to provide an epic conclusion to the Prime trilogy. Others dislike the greater focus on story telling because it ended up making the game very linear, probably being one of the most linear games in the Metroid franchise. Many point out that's incredibly easy to get 100% on this game, with many managing to accomplish it on their first playthrough without use of a guide. The much more linear Metroid: Other M releasing afterwards and putting much greater focus on story telling didn't help, either.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: All three of the hunters fit into this, but Rundas definitely applies the most. While not showing up often, he left a big impression from his refreshingly relaxed personality, the moment where he saves Samus from dying with Meta Ridley, a great boss fight in Bryyo, and an incredible battle theme.
• Fanfic Fuel: The Aurora Units and their possible connection to Mother Brain. A pre-release trailer briefly showed a blueprint for a "Future Aurora Complex" that looked almost identical to Mother Brain's chamber in Super Metroid, and the Final Boss is an Aurora Unit converted into the control unit of Phaaze much like Mother Brain was the control unit of Zebes, all of which imply that their presence here is related to her reappearance in Super. Furthermore, a Dummied Out scan log mentions that Aurora Unit 242 is nicknamed "Other Brain" by G. F. S. Olympus veterans, indicating that the Federation characters are well aware of the Mother Brain similarities. But the series has never fully clarified the connection even as more AUs have appeared, with fans tending to assume that the Federation based them on Mother Brain prior to the AI betraying the Chozo.
• Fan Nickname: Japanese fans like to call Rundas "big brother" (兄貴) thanks to his Big Damn Heroes and Establishing Character Moment where he saves Samus from hitting the bottom of the energy shaft after her duel with Meta-Ridley on Norion.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Samus starts the game with the Command Visor, but can't use it until the Federation authorizes her to. It wasn't a problem in this game because this happened very early in the game, there were no opportunities to use the Visor prior to this point, and it was the only instance of authorization in the entire game^note in fact, in a cutscene prior to the authorization, Samus is seen issuing commands to her ship remotely, implying that she wasn't overly concerned with following authorization protocol to begin with. However, Metroid: Other M would make Federation Authorization the main way of obtaining power-ups, which the fanbase found immensely contentious.
  • Previous games had limited voice acting (grunts from Samus, cut narration, and background lines from Prime 2's troopers) but Prime 3 was the first game with fully voice-acted dialogue. Reception overall was positive, but it was the second stage of story creep that started with Metroid Fusion and then became divisive in Other M.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Phaazoids show up after destroying the Leviathan in each world. They're immune to normal attacks, thus requiring you to burn an Energy Tank to blast them apart in Hypermode. They launch huge energy waves that piece through terrain and deal surprisingly high damage. They split into two when destroyed, and each Phaazoid half splits into two more Phaazoids that explode on contact for enormous damage and can't be shot down. If you want to get all the Gold Credits, you are going to have to fight through large numbers of Phaazoids to find and destroy the Red Phaazoid that might appear when the Phaazoids split.
  • Phazon Metroids take the annoying factors of the standard Metroids and combine it with their ability to turn intangible to dodge your Ice Missiles and hide in the walls. Fortunately, their AI is easy to exploit, and once you obtain the Nova Beam, they become significantly less of a threat.
• Goddamned Boss: The Metroid Hatchers, under normal circumstances, have a three step process into defeating them. First, you must force their tentacles to retract by shooting at their tips repeatedly. Second, once the tentacles are retracted, you must shoot them in the mouth to stun them. Finally, while they're stunned, you must rip off their tentacles with the Grapple Lasso. Rinse and repeat until all four tentacles are gone. However, not only are Metroid Hatchers airborne, they move around a lot, the tips of their tentacles are small targets, they'll likely spin to the other side of the room (how annoying it can get depends on the layout of the room) before opening their mouth, and you can only tear off one tentacle at a time. Also, as their name indicates, they can spawn Phazon Metroids. The good news is that there are only three of them, they can be killed in one shot if you have the Nova Beam, and two of them are optional to fight (only the one on the Valhalla is mandatory to fight, and you absolutely will have the Nova Beam by that point), but one of those two Hatchers is on a convenient shortcut from the Pirate Homeworld's Research to Command Center (and you'll likely be taking that shortcut right after getting the Hazard Shield). It's recommended that on Hypermode difficulty, you wait until after you get the Nova Beam before you go after the optional Hatchers to save yourself the trouble of dealing with their weakspots' increased hitpoints.
• Good Bad Bugs: During the second anti-air turret fight (during which the cannons base is sealed by a pillar and held in place by lever-operated clamps), the endless waves of Pirate Aerotroopers trying to stop you might inexplicably get interrupted, allowing you to finish it in one go without having to pull the levers again and fight off the pirates.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A hidden audio file (accessible by entering Samus' gunship and putting a code inconspicuously provided in the hidden area of planet Norion) has then-Nintendo President Satoru Iwata lament that no one seems to believe he's taking his role as head of the company seriously, as he doesn't appear to be physically affected by the stress of the job. Fast-forward to 2015, where Iwata died due to surgical complications with a bile duct growth. In the months prior to his death, fans could see him physically deteriorating in each new Nintendo Direct as a result of his tumor and the stress of running Nintendo during a financially rough period.
  • Inputting secret codes into the transmission console of Samus’s gunship unlocks secret messages from various Nintendo higher-ups, including the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata. The translations of these messages can be found here. What did series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto have to say? “Have you been enjoying Metroid Prime 3 Corruption, the final episode of the Metroid Prime trilogy? You have been enjoying it, I hope? Samus’s missions will still continue outside of this series. Please keep waiting for them. So, please look forward to the next Metroid.” Three years later, this game was followed by the incredibly divisive Metroid: Other M, which turned out to be the series’ Franchise Killer for more than half a decade. Even worse, several of the most controversial elements of that game were directly caused by Sakamoto himself no less, due to his severe Magnum Opus Dissonance and his apparent misunderstanding of what most of the audience wanted out of a Metroid game. Looking back on his excitement of the series’ future at this point in time, right before he himself killed it off for a while, is a bit painful to look at.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Samus gives a fly-by thumbs up at the end of the game, a few years before Other M had her signature gesture be a thumbs-down.
  • A living planet seeks to reproduce by spreading to and infecting other planets. This planet can manifest itself as bright blue tendrils of energy, or in a humanoid form directly related to the protagonist. The hero, using the planet's own energy to fight against it, travels to the center of the planet and fights the humanoid form. When a giant brain at the center of the planet is killed, the humanoid form disintegrates and the whole planet implodes, with the hero barely escaping in time. This is the plot of Metroid Prime 3... and 10 years later, it would also be the plot of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
  • The main villain is an Iconic Sequel Character who corrupts and slowly Grand Theft Me-s other characters as part of their ultimate plan to take over the universe. Are we talking about Dark Samus or Xehanort?
  • In the final battle with Dark Samus, she is able to create duplicates of herself called "Echoes". Come Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Dark Samus is playable as an Echo Fighter of Samus.
  • In the Pirate Homeworld, there's a panel that Samus can scan that details how Metroid Project "Dread" is supposedly nearing the final stages of completion. It then took fourteen years for Metroid Dread to be released.
• I Knew It!: Those who suspected that the mysterious ship seen in the 100% completion ending was the Delano 7, Sylux's gunship from Metroid Prime: Hunters turned out to be right, though it took eight years before the theory was confirmed.
• Les Yay: Gandrayda acts very familiar and flirtatious with Samus, and is the only character to ever call her "Sammy". Samus never seems particularly bothered by this behavior, and it puts a different spin on Samus closing her eyes when Gandrayda dies.
• Narm:
  • While the other characters speak, Samus stays silent, so it can seem awkward when others talk to her and she never responds. Makes her seem like a Silent Bob, despite other games showing otherwise.
  • A bridge officer on the Olympus sounds very fake-excited when declaring: "The crisis is over!"
  • Omega Ridley spinning his arms when stunned, which Retsupurae compared to a kid excitedly flailing over Christmas presents.◊
• Older Than They Think: Reviewers and fans often cite this as the first Metroid game to feature different designs for the various doors depending on which group made them (Federation, Reptilicus, Elysian, Space Pirate, and Phazon). While this is the first game to show such a variety throughout the entire game, door design differences were first hinted at in the beginning of Super Metroid, where the doors on the Federation-owned Ceres Space Colony looked different from the doors on Zebes. The door design seen on the Ceres Colony would subsequently be used in Metroid Fusion.
• Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic:
  • After a few extreme cases of Checkpoint Starvation before bosses in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes due to how some areas were designed and save stations being your only form of checkpoint (most infamously before the Alpha Blogg and Spider Guardian), the game always sets up temporary checkpoints before boss fights, major battles, or segments that can result in a Non-Standard Game Over if failed.
  • Another often criticized aspect of Echoes was the endgame scavenger hunt for the Sky Temple Keys, which was considered to be the most tedious late-game collectathon in the series (and one of for the Action-Adventure genre) due to incredibly cryptic clues, a lot of backtracking to find the keys, and most of the keys requiring very late-game upgrades to collect. In Corruption, not only are a good number of the Power Cells (this game's "final area keys") found barely out of the way (and sometimes in the way, as collecting those specific Cells is mandatory for immediate progression) and are evenly accessible throughout your adventure, you don't have to collect all of them to finish the main story. The only reason you'll have to find them all is if you're going for 100% Completion and want the hidden endings.
  • After two straight games of the Disappointing Last Level you've spent the whole game preparing for being very short, nonhostile and essentially just a lobby for the boss room, Corruption's final level is Phaaze, which comprises a very long trek through an extremely hostile living planet while you try to stave off terminal corruption long enough to find and kill Dark Samus. You also can't leave once you get there.
• Scrappy Weapon: Hyper Missiles are the single strongest attack in the game, BUT they eat through your Phazon reserves like nothing else (in addition to the somewhat trivial cost of one missile). Since most of the bosses in the game need to be made vulnerable to open a short period of vulnerability AND will change phases in a cutscene when reaching certain health milestones (discarding any overflow damage the player may have dealt with their last hit), trying to launch a Hyper Missile is likely to be a waste of Phazon. On top of THAT, most bosses are very good at dodging attacks, so they may just jump out of the way. A simple charged up Hyper Beam is almost always more practical, as it still deals tons of damage, consumes less Phazon, and can be finessed by keeping the pointer at a boss's weak spot as it moves around (since it fires in a continuous volley of shots). On top of that, if a cutscene is triggered by the boss falling to half-health, the beam attack will stop, and it will thus stop consuming Phazon. Not even mentioning how you get the Hyper Missiles at the game's halfway point anyway, so you can't even use them for the earlier bosses that have more generous vulnerability windows or are slow-moving when stunned (like Mogenar or Rundas).
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The difficulty of the Prime series stabilized after Echoes. Although the game is more combat-heavy and the Wiimote aiming requires more precision, the addition of Hypermode and the game's more linear nature help reduce the difficulty somewhat.
• Squick: The whole premise of the game is grotesque, dealing a lot with the body horror of Phazon corruption. There are often cutscenes showing a close-up of the cancer-like Phazon cells in Samus' body growing, and she has to take off her helmet to vomit Phazon after reaching 25% corruption.
• That One Achievement:
  • If the player is going for all of the friend vouchers, one of the most difficult to achieve is during the Morph Ball segment against Meta Ridley, which requires you to repel him without taking any damage. The whole time you’re stuck in a very cramped space dodging Ridley’s laser attacks, and your movements have to be super precise. Press too hard on the joystick and Samus will get hurt by Ridley’s claw; but press too lightly and she won’t be far enough from the laser to avoid it. To make matters worse, if the player fails and needs to reset the game, the closest save room is six whole rooms away.
  • For true completionists who want to get every possible credit in the game, getting the Gold Credit for a No Casualties Run of the Federation demolition trooper Escort Mission is easily the most difficult one. Considering how easily the demolition troopers die, keeping four of the twelve alive to progress the story is difficult enough in its own right. Keeping all twelve alive, however, meaning that even one dying fails to achieve the credit, is difficult enough to make a player want to hit their head against the wall repeatedly. Most noteworthy is that this is still excruciatingly difficult even on the easier difficulties. So good luck even trying it on Hypermode difficulty.
• That One Attack: The final boss has a particular laser attack that, while not too hard to dodge on its own, starts rapidly raising the Phazon meter just while the attack is being fired, nevermind getting struck by it.
• That One Boss:
  • Mogenar, the Core Guardian of the Leviathan on Bryyo. To defeat it, you have to destroy its four power cores one at a time, then use Hypermode to destroy the cores' sockets so that it can't replace the destroyed cores. Problem is, not only are those cores very durable, don't stay exposed for long, frequently switch sockets and repair themselves if left alone long enough, Mogenar is one of the earliest bosses in the game. As such, you'll only have five energy tanks at maximum and the measly Power Beam, and sacrificing health for Hypermode means you'll likely be very weak towards the end of the battle. The last of its power cores is on its back, making shooting it and its socket even harder. There are ways of slowing Mogenar down, like using Ice Missiles to freeze its face when it fires its mouth laser, but otherwise it's a very difficult boss at this early stage in the game. It gets worse on the hardest difficulty, as the cores' increased hit-points make preventing core-replacement next-to-impossible if it attempts to do so (it always grabs two cores, they both can take a lot of punishment from even the Hyper Beam, and the time you have to destroy them is not adjusted to accommodate the increased hit-points), potentially causing a long fight to drag out even longer.
  • Gandrayda, especially if fought on the hardest difficulty. For a seemingly unarmored Exposed Extraterrestrial, she has a lot of health, especially when she goes into Hypermode. While it's possible to cut a quarter of her health at a time with Screw Attack, she moves so quickly that one would be lucky to hit her.
  • Dark Samus can become this at times, due to a significant number of her attacks granting her invincibility. While avoiding the attacks is manageable, you're already on a strict time limit to defeat Dark Samus and AU 313 back-to-back, and if she starts spamming her invincibility moves you're likely to find yourself running out of time before you get a chance to finish off both bosses.
• That One Level: GFS Valhalla, due to Checkpoint Starvation. You have to explore the wrecked vessel in one go, as the only save point is Samus's gunship (in the docking bay, where the level starts); and the place is filled with particularly dangerous creatures (including Phazon Hoppers and Metroids) and a limited sight. Once you're done, you have to return on foot to the gunship to save again and leave. Additionally, if you’re hunting for power-ups to achieve 100% completion, the Valhalla is one of the few places you can’t send a satellite to mark the hidden items on the map, so you have to scour every inch of the ship yourself.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The other three hunters made such an impression as rivals to Samus that it's only natural to hope they'll be playable later or be recurring characters in the series. Too bad they get corrupted by Phazon and you're forced to kill them off before very much can be done with their development.
• Woolseyism: An English-to-Japanese example for once. The Japanese version mentions in Meta Ridley's scans that he's a different organism from the Meta Ridley fought on Tallon IV back in Prime 1, rather a clone of him. This would explain the drastic redesign, and why he can explode into Phazon dust in this game only for Ridley to return in Samus Returns, but it's not mentioned anywhere in the original English version.

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