Following my review, I have completed Metroid Prime 4 on both Normal and Hard difficulty and unlocked everything, so here are a few helpful pointers.
As I said in my review, collecting green crystals is really important. They not only increase your firepower, but also unlock the most powerful armor in the game, the Legacy Suit (shown above).
Most of the initial upgrades are found by destroying green crystals within the six shrines in Sol Valley and are also dotted across the area that upgrade your elemental shots of fire, ice, and electricity.
The first upgrade is a boost to your basic psychic shot. This makes a big difference, so the sooner you get it, the better. The second upgrade allows you to change the speed of the control shot, and the third upgrade marks green crystals on your radar.
The latter is mainly for Sol Valley, but it’s worth remembering that you have an initial deposit of green crystals tucked away in Fury Green, directly after the first boss fight (something I completely forgot about on my Hard playthrough later on).
Once you get the power bomb, you can destroy the big chunky green crystal deposits, and that will give you the fourth upgrade of the Lamorn Memory Fruit and the Legacy Suit.
Apart from better defense, you can also initiate a psychic defense barrier in scan mode with the Legacy Suit, which uses some of your missiles. You will definitely need this to fight Sylux at the end, so you should find all the items you can before that.
Item hunting is handled in a similar-ish way to Corruption. In that, you need to find a broken scout bot and pump it full of electricity with the Thunder Shot (shown below). When you scan it again, it will jump up and do a sonic pulse for the area, marking all the hidden items on the map.
Every area has a scout bot hidden away, even in Sol Valley, so keep an eye out for them once you get the Thunder Shot.
Some of these items are also unlocked by chatting with Tokabi in the desert, as well as the teleporter chip for transporting the missing mecha parts. The campfire chats with Tokabi are also nicely chill and make for a nice respite from the action.
When it comes to log entries, most of these are shown in the backend menu, and while a few are one-offs (as in if you don’t scan them straight away, you miss them), a lot are just quite simple to find through a regular playthrough.
On my first playthrough on Normal, it took me around 16 hours to find everything without knowing any of the above. On Hard, it was around 13 hours, with the last 3 of those hours hunting for the green crystal deposit that I had missed in Fury Green.
I am by no means a speedrunner, and have always enjoyed just exploring Metroid games, so I am sure you can finish the game much faster than I did.
The main changes on Hard difficulty are that save stations don’t resupply ammo, just health, and enemies have more health of their own. The Grievers also dodge more, and general enemy attacks do a bit more damage.
To be honest, the only really tricky part of Hard mode was starting out at Volt Forge and having to fight the robots in enclosed spaces. After that, and making sure to unlock hidden energy tanks earlier on, things became a lot easier.
Anyway, I think that’s about it, and just remember to keep an eye out for the scout bot.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is now available for Switch 2 and Switch. You can also read my review of the game here.
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