Playing "Metroid Prime: Hunters" for the first time!

First up:

Playing it on 3DS, have it mapped to dual analog, which has its plusses and minuses (mostly not having to use a stylus).

1) Feeling a strange mix of "I'm amazed they were able to make this as good at is for the system it's on" and "I don't know how good this actually is." And I'm not sure how much of the latter is "Maybe I'm not paying proper attention to the game's conveyance," because I have had to go to secondary sources for a bit of help. (I'm stunned the game has so few item pickups-- seven E-tanks feels borderline surreal.)

2) The maps of the planets themselves feel satisfyingly designed. I like the portal / docking baby of the Celestial Archives, and how Alinos opens up a little bit more each time I return. The backtracking never feels too annoying.

3) Maybe a stylus would be better for shooting, though, because I struggled at times with aiming. This was manageable in general because enemies didn't hit too hard and stayed in predictable patterns, but it was awfully hard to keep up with, for example, those big eyeball bosses that float around. Again, I think the designers recognized this and tried to mitigate that, whether by making the damage taken pretty minimal, or by giving you lots of drops. But it's the first game I've played since maybe the first game where combat could be frustrating as much as fun.

4) That said, the platforming is smooth as silk, and the morph ball stuff largely works well (I liked a morph ball puzzle on Alinos that involved some arbitrary pistons straight out of Galaxy Quest). Shooting mapped to the left trigger plays better than I thought it would. So while the combat can annoy, it hasn't made the game unmanageable. (And anyway, I like Metroid games more for the exploratory sequences than for the "action," which can be excellent, for sure; I just like Samus the Archaeologist a bit more than Samus the Killer.)

4) I would buy a book that just consolidated the Alimbic / Chozo / Luminoth lore into a galactic history. Good coffee table material.

How do you all feel about Hunters? Into it, or did it bounce off you?