An essential part of every Metroidvania!
Going into this, I thought that you just sorta went Area 1, Area 2, Area 3, everywhere. That is, until Area 3 was done, you didn’t have to leave the current area in order to get any progress items. Having therefore exhausted every avenue of progress within Torvus Bog and not finding anything, I was a little frustrated. On first playthrough, I never had to look up a guide, as far as I recall, though I also remember the prompts to investigate being a little more frequent. I’m not sure what’s going on with those. They almost never pop up.
The plus side of all that “getting lost” is that I now have almost every powerup available at this point in time. I’m certain I’ve missed some things, but not too much. As a result, I shouldn’t have too much difficulty with whatever’s on the way. I’m not saying this game is a cakewalk on Normal mode. It’s just not so challenging that I feel like I need everything. That said, I still want to get everything (please hit 100% this time) and it’s not like I know where the progress items are. I don’t know this game nearly as well as I do Metroid Prime 1. My familiarity with Prime 3 is even worse.