I said the game could be big and then they do this.
While the navigation in the game is at least on par with Other M, though admittedly a little less linear, the boss variety could use some work. The Hunters all more or less work the same way, just with differences in their weapon types, and I’ve only seen two kinds of Octolith bosses so far. That’s not to say they’re easy (they’re emphatically not), but the difficulty comes more from the amount of damage you take than having a hard pattern to figure out.
Exploring Arcterra only to hit a dead end reminded me of Torvus Bog, which was thankfully still in recent memory so I didn’t beat my head against a wall for even longer. (Or have to look anything up.) The more interconnected nature of Prime 1’s layout meant I never really felt like I had to stay in an isolated area. That worked in its favor: you were constantly weaving between the environments and never really felt lost for the path forward. The main bonus here is that each special weapon matches the color of the door it opens, so if you don’t have a color you know you probably can’t progress. I wasn’t expecting to be correct on my first guess, though.