Metroid Dread Walkthrough – Bosses

Here you’ll find a detailed list of strategies, information, and tips in fighting the many bosses of Metroid Dread.

Corpius

Holy smokes, what a setting. Looks like there’s blood all over the floor. Creepy.

Remember that invisible creature we saw in the background earlier? Meet Corpius, a beast-like creature missing everything below the torso, except for a giant scorpion-like tail. Let’s get down to business and take this thing out.

The first phase will be somewhat straightforward. You’ll want to concentrate fire on Corpius’s head. He’ll spit out some green gunk at you every now and then. Simply shoot the gunk and you’ll get ammo and health refills.

Pay attention to what its tail does, because that will indicate what kind of attack Corp is about to unleash. When you see the tail go back and twist, that means the tail is about to strike you where you stand. When you see this, jump out of the way as his tail has incredible reach.

When you see the tail just stiffen up, that means that Corpius is about to plant his tail in the ground. Now – you can do one of two things when you see this: move backwards and out if it’s way, just avoiding it – this is the safe bet. Conversely, when you see that tail stiffen up, you can actually run towards Corpius’s head and let the tail plant itself to the ground, trapping yourself under it, but directly in front of Corpius at close quarters. This is obviously more risky, but if you get in the right position, you can blast Corpius’s head with missiles.

Keep avoiding the tail and green gunk and continue pelting his head with missiles, and phase two will trigger.

Here’s where things get interesting. Corpius will turn himself invisible. You’ll still be able to somewhat see him, but for now, the only vulnerable spot on Corpius is a spot on his tail that is glowing. His attacks will pretty much stay the same, so concentrate your fire on the glowing spot on his tail. I’ve found that just rapid beam shots are more effective than missile shots since the spot can be tricky to hit and you’ll want to save your missiles.

Once you’ve hit his tail enough, Corpius will do kind of a weird attack where he points his butt at you and has his tail start gyrating. Eventually, his tail will slam downwards, but before it does, slide underneath Corpius. GET READY TO MELEE COUNTER! As soon as you’re almost done sliding, the trigger will appear. Counter and then blast Corpius away with missiles!

The third phase will start, and this time, it looks like our boy is about to throw up. Run towards either side of the room and grab onto the spider track. Corpius will throw up a bunch of green acid on the ground. This is a good time to aim downwards and blast him in the face with missiles from your safe spot on the spider track. Still though, watch out for that tail, as even up there, the tail can get you.

After enough hits, Corpius will turn invisible again. Same tactics as before – blast the glowing part of the tail with your beams. Eventually, Corpius will turn around to do his butt attack again. Slide under and counter! Blast him away with missiles until he falls.

If you miss the counters, don’t worry. Keep playing it safe, blast away, and eventually, Corpius will fall in defeat. Collect the PHANTOM CLOAK as your well earned reward.

Kraid

He’s baaaaack! Big Daddy Kraid returns after a decades long hiatus and looks more imposing than ever!

For anyone that’s familiar with Samus’s previous battles with Kraid in Super Metroid or Zero Mission, you can take comfort knowing the general principle of this fight is the same: blast him in the face, getting him to open his mouth; once his mouth is open, fire away. Kraid won’t make it this easy for us in Metroid Dread, however, since he has a whole slew of new attacks for us to be mindful of.

First things first, after that (incredibly badass) cutscene, when you take control, you’ll obviously want to keep some distance between yourself and Kraid. There’s no reason to fight close quarters, and the closer you get, the higher the chances are you get hit with Kraid’s little Tyrannosaurus arms. Kraid will usually open his mouth and scream to start the battle, so this is a good opportunity to unload some free missile shots.

Once he’s settled, he’ll start attacking regularly. One of his most go-to attacks is barfing up little balls on you. You can shoot these little balls to get ammo and health, but don’t get too comfy in one spot, because there are three fireballs in each regurgitation that can’t be destroyed and will damage you. Your best best is to plant your feet, shoot up and destroy some of the balls, jump out of the way of the fireball, shoot up, and repeat.

Kraid will also throw some pretty heavy duty spikes at you. These are somewhat manageable, since one missile will destroy them and they’ll usually drop ammo. Just be careful, the spikes that Kraid’s right arm throws are usually pretty low to the ground and come at you in a straight line, whereas the spikes thrown from his left hand tend to curve up in the air and drop down on you. It’s important to shoot out the spikes, which I know sounds obvious, but you can get caught up in blasting Kraid’s mouth with missiles pretty quick and forget to destroy them, which damages you heavily. The top curve spike in particular is one to watch out for.

That’s pretty much his entire shtick in this phase of the fight, so keep dodging his attacks and concentrating fire on his head. If you want to be missile-conscious, hit his head with charged shots and then blast him with missiles in the mouth. Do this enough times and phase one will end.

Let’s start phase two.

Kraid will smash the stage, destroying the floor and sending you crashing down so that you’re face to face with his disgusting, puss filled belly button. Yummmm!

This belly button is going to be the source of most of his attacks, and the spot we want to concentrate fire. The belly button will fire out more little balls, except these little balls bounce (minds out of the gutter people!). Priority #1 should be eliminating these balls; they’re annoying and will basically keep bouncing until they are destroyed, so don’t delay. Destroying them will also give you some health/ammo. I would recommend using charged shots versus missiles to take them out since your shot radius will be wider. In fact, I would recommend using charged shots to shoot the belly button over missiles as well.

One thing you can try and do is jump up and release a charged shot at the belly button and time it so that you fire a split second after the bouncing ball is released. If you timed it correctly, you’ll destroy the ball and hit his belly in one shot. Worth noting that his belly will also shoot out little purple puss bombs; just watch for these and jump over them before they touch the ground.

The other attack that Kraid has at his disposal is far more devastating. He will periodically shoot out massive spikes from his belly at you. Now these spikes will hurt like heck if they hit you, but they also represent an opportunity. Let’s just get this part out of the way: if you want to play it safe, just Morph Ball as soon as you see the spikes forming and they’ll shoot over you.

There are two ways these spikes are shot out: the first way is after continuous fire to Kraid’s belly, he’ll eventually put his hand over the belly button and shoot a ton of spikes. Just duck under these, as they all shoot at the same time and will just do damage. All these spikes will cause a spider rail to fall; jump on the rail, ride it up and you’ll be face to face with Kraid’s head, where you’ll want to repeat what’s worked: shoot his head, wait for him to open his mouth, and fire missiles. It’s worth repeating, but please be aware of the other spikes he shoots! As soon as you see one, shoot it! Don’t wait, since one hit will knock you off and to the bottom. Eventually, Kraid will grow tired of you shooting him and move in to hit you down. Just drop down before he connects and you should emerge unscathed. This is the safest and most sure way to win this battle.

However, there is another way the giant spikes come out.

Occasionally when you’re on the ground shooting Kraid’s belly, he’ll start shooting up spikes, but instead of shooting all of them at once, there’s about a second delay between him shooting the bottom spike, then the middle spike, then the top. This means that instead of ducking under the spikes, you can jump on the first, then jump up and land on the second, then the third. From the third spike, you can grab the spider rail and start firing away as usual. Kraid will sometimes cock his arm back in an attempt to bat you off the rail, but this can be melee countered, giving you some huge missile refills and health, as well as a chance to blast away at Kraid. There is far more room for error in this strategy, but this can be a huge damage dealer.

Eventually after enough hits, you’ll be treated to an awesome cutscene and Kraid will fall.

ADVANCED STRATEGY: if you went and backtracked to Dairon after getting the Morph Ball and performed the sequence break allowing you to get Bombs early, here’s the payoff. Simply get in Morph Ball form as soon as phase two starts and bomb the lower wall. You’ll see a Morph Ball Launcher; get inside and it will shoot you directly into Kraid’s horrifically disgusting belly button. Bomb bomb bomb away and Kraid will die almost instantly. Worth noting, being in there will damage you, but you should kill Kraid quickly enough that it won’t matter.

Robot Chozo Soldier

We get no rest after absorbing all of that information from the late Quiet Robe. Instead, we’ll be right in the thick of it, facing off against a pretty tough boss.

This Robot Soldier hits incredibly hard, so the key to victory will be moving fast and avoiding his fire. He has a couple standard attacks which are easy enough to dodge. He’ll charge up a laser shot and fire at you; simply jump up and over it, or jump up before he fires so that when he does launch, the shot goes above your head.

He’ll also fire off three quick shots, spaced out at a pretty decent pace. Do the same thing here, either jump over them (you’ll need two jumps at least to clear all three), or lazily jump up before he fires, sending the first two shots above your head, making for an easy jump over the last shot.

His next two attacks are infinitely more damaging and harder to avoid. You’ll see him cock his shield back and have it start grinding against the ground. If the sparks from this are red, GET OUT OF THE WAY! This attack is essentially unavoidable and un-counterable, so just dodge it, either by getting onto another platform or by jumping as high as you can and flash shifting over him. The Flash Shift method can be dangerous since the hit box for this attack is so big.

Luckily, however, if you see him charging up his attack and the sparks are white, GET READY TO COUNTER! This will be your biggest opening in the entire fight if you can counter this. The Robot will be stunned and just have his chest pointing right at you, which you should be unloading missiles into.

Damaging the Robot Chozo is straightforward enough. Either missiles or charged shots will do the trick, so if you can keep avoiding his attacks and peppering him with missiles, he should soon fall. Sweet revenge for our dear Quiet Robe!

Drogyga

So good news and bad news. The bad news: you’re trapped in a big fish tank with a monstrous Kraken-esq monster called Drogyga. This is especially bad since we still have no Gravity Suit to our name.

The good news? You should be able to use brute force to obtain victory without too much trouble, particularly if you’ve been following this guide and collecting all the missiles. Also, the moving-in-water-with-no-suit doesn’t suck as much as you might think.

Before we start fighting Drogyga, let’s set the stage: this is definitely one of those bosses that feel more like a puzzle than a fight, and the key to the puzzle of Drogyga is the switches on either side of the room. When you inflict enough damage on ‘gyg’s, you’ll be able to hit the big glowing switch on whatever side you happen to be on with a charge shot. This will activate a spider rail on the top and drain half the water out of the tank. Riding the spider rail after hitting one switch will take you to the other side, allowing you to hit the other switch, which in turn drains the rest of the water from the tank. This will expose Drogyga, allowing you to attack.

Let’s get there first though. You’ll start the battle off looking at Drogyga’s big ugly shell, which has some tentacles sticking out of the top and hanging from the roof. That is the weak spot that you’ll want to aim for with your missiles. ‘Gyga has pretty basic attacks, and all are easy to avoid.

The first attack you’ll probably see is him spitting out three “fireballs” at you (maybe these are like acid balls? I’m sure they’re not fire since we’re underwater, but I can’t stop calling them that, so let’s go with fireballs). There will be two blue fireballs and one red one; the blue ones can be destroyed with missiles or charged shots for health and ammo; the red ones cannot. Just destroy the two fireballs and avoid the red and you’ll be just fine. These fall quite lazily, so you have lots of time. As Drogyga takes more damage, he’ll shoot two reds and one blue instead – no worries, just avoid the reds.

His other attack will be unleashing even more tentacles and using them to slap you across the face. He’ll do this twice in quick succession, but luckily, you can just jump over this. I know you’re probably thinking about the water making you heavy, but you need barely any clearance to make it over them, just just tap jump twice and you’ll be in the clear.

His last attack involves three tentacles swirling up and shooting straight at you like a battering ram. It took longer than I’d like to admit to realize how to dodge this, so don’t be like me: when you see the tentacles start to coil up, simply Grapple onto the spider rail above you and pull yourself up above the attack.

These are really his only offensive moves, so just keep dodging his attacks and pumping that top tentacle with missiles, and you’ll stun him soon enough. When that happens, shoot the switch on the one side, grapple up and over, and shoot the other side. The water will empty and you’ll see the inner tentacle (the head??) pop out. Line it up and light it up when you see it. Once you’ve hit the head with enough missiles, this tentacle will stiffen up and prepare to strike. COUNTER!! Melee counter this attack and you’ll be able to pump even more missiles into Drogyga.

You shouldn’t need more than two, maybe three tops, cycles of this in order to destroy the sea monster. Just keep unleashing those missiles into Drogyga’s tentacles and head, and he will fall. Sometimes, the best defence is a good offence.

Once you’re done, exit the boss room and blow up the tumor in front of you, giving you access to that same Energy Recharge Station from before. Scale upwards and save your game to the right, and then blow up the tumor above you and head into the underground forest of Ghavoran.

Chozo Spear Soldier

You’ll see a Chozo Soldier come to life, no doubt thanks to the X. Get used to this guy, because this is the first of many times that we’ll have to duke it out with him. This Chozo Soldier is equipped with a big spear that he likes to wave around; the spear does pretty big damage, so you’ll want to keep a close eye on it.

Fortunately, the first phase of this boss fight is very manageable. He really only has two attacks: the first, he’ll start to swirl his spear in a circular motion, signifying that he’s about to lunge in your direction; this is pretty easy to just jump up and Flash Shift over. The second is he will jump on the wall and then jump off, striking downwards with his spear as if he’s impaling you. This is likewise easily dodged by just Flash Shifting out of the way as he starts to fall downwards.

Blast him with missiles repeatedly while dodging his attacks and you should have no trouble triggering phase 2 of the fight.

The Chozo Soldier will mutate a bit, it’s head transforming into a bird-like beak that looks suspiciously like one of Samus’s greatest rivals. Not much will change for his actual attacks, however. His twirling attack to either side remains the same, but an extra feature on the wall attack will be two blobs of black goo that will shoot out on either side when the Soldier lands after his downwards strike. Again, easy enough to avoid, but stay frosty as too many mistakes can add up.

Keep blasting him with missiles and the battle will come to its ending point, HOWEVER, it won’t be as simple as just watching this Chozo Soldier blow up. When you’ve hit him enough times, a quick time event will trigger in which you’ll have to melee counter him twice to truly finish him off. If you miss the queues, you’ll go back to battling; pump a few more missiles into him and you’ll have another opportunity to finish the Chozo Soldier off. When you successfully hit both melee counters, Samus will stick her arm cannon inside the mouth of the soldier and blast away, finishing it. Absorb the X and move on.

Escue

Let’s get ready to rumble! After a moment, Escue will fly in and get this battle kicked off. Escue actually resembles the flying creatures (called Quetzoa’s) that you’ve already been battling since Ghavoran in terms of both movement and attacks to an extent. The thing that separates Escue from the regular flying bugs is he is equipped with a pretty gruesome orb attack that he will use frequently. Unfortunately, no way that I’ve discovered yet can destroy the orb attacks, so you’ll need to just avoid them.

Understanding his attacks and when you can strike is key to victory here. This is an incredibly tight room, so avoiding his attacks will be just as important.

The first attack that Escue will use is his aforementioned orb attack. This looks like what it sounds like: he will spit out a big, purple orb at you. Now, this is easy enough to dodge, BUT if this orb hits the floor, it will send a shockwave along the floor that will hurt you, so either jump over that, or better yet, lure Escue into shooting the orb at the wall.

His other attack is similar, except instead of one big orb, there are about half a dozen little “bullets” that spit out and go flying in every direction. These are difficult to avoid, and they can’t be destroyed, so they’re definitely a pain, but one strategy that works fairly well is to get to one side of the room and when you see them start to fire off, start running underneath Escue to the other side of the room, wall jumping or sliding if you need to. This will probably be the attack that dings you the most, so just grit your teeth and do your best.

That’s not all though – Escue isn’t afraid to use brute force to hurt you. You’ll see him stiffen up for a second and then lunge at you. He telegraphs this early enough, so you should have enough time to dodge and avoid this, but just watch out if you’re in close quarters with Escue since this can definitely hurt. It’s after he’s lunged that we want to finally launch a counter-offensive.

You’ll notice that his body is surrounded by a sort of purple-looking electricity. When he’s got this around him, don’t even bother attacking, just avoid taking damage. After every time he lunges at you, however, this electric shielding will drop and stay down for a few moments. ATTACK THEN! Hit him with everything you have while his shielding is down, but be careful – those bullets will still be flying and he’ll still be moving around erratically.

If you’re having troubles with taking too much damage while trying to drop, aim, and shoot missiles at him, try using charged shots instead. It might take you a bit longer, but it beats standing around taking a buttload of orbs to the face while trying to aim. Conversely, you can use missiles, but unless you have the time, avoid using the 360° aiming and just let the missiles fly. Eventually, you’ll hit Escue enough times and he will be destroyed.

… ONLY FOR A CORE-X TO POP UP!! WHAT?!

For any fellow Metroid Fusion fans out there, I’m sure you popped off for this moment as much as I did. Yes, out of our defeated Escue is what is known as a Core-X, an enhanced X parasite that houses a special ability inside. There’s nothing really to this battle other than slamming the Core-X with missiles and avoiding it as it goes crashing into you. Hit it with five missiles and claim the STORM MISSILES!

Twin Robot Chozo Soldiers

You will be confronted by not one, but TWO Robot Chozo Warriors! Now, before you start to sweat, let’s just go over a few things.

It’s important to know that nothing has changed with the Robots attack patterns (here’s the guide for the original fight), so you don’t need to worry about anything new. The Robots also operate pretty much independently of each other, so you don’t need to be worried about any kind of tag team finishing moves or whatever. The Main Hall is also a huge room, so you should have a ton of room to manuever around these clunky robots, which is a big advantage. Lastly, you have the Storm Missiles, and they’re going to demonstrate right away why they are a game changer.

What you want to do is basically have your finger down on the Storm Missile button the entire fight. Aim quickly at the Robots and then let them fly. One thing I want to make very clear is that you can charge and aim your Storm Missiles while moving! You do not have to be standing still for the Storm Missiles to lock on and you do not have to have all five missile locks connected. Let me repeat that – you can charge up your Storm Missiles, aim for like one second and as long as you aimed at the Robots and got even one Storm Missile lock on, let those missiles fly! All five missiles will still fly and more than likely all five missiles will hit. Understanding how Storm Missiles work and lock on is so important, I can’t stress it enough.

Keep locking on and using hit and run tactics and you’ll find that these Chozo Robots shut down and explode faster than pop rocks and Coke. Worth noting: the silver Chozo Robot has far less health than the Golden one, so if you want to pick them off one-by-one, start with silver.

Experiment Z-57

Oooh boy. Remember that creature we walked by earlier in Dairon that was being poked and prodded? The one you almost felt sorry for? Well, it’s escaped and it’s wreaking havoc on ZDR, and specifically, the central control system that’s responsible for heating up the planet. Needless to say, this is a threat that needs to be eliminated.

Z-57 will be a tough challenge, a definite step up from the last couple bosses were squared off against, so let’s run through his attacks so we can know what to look out for.

Experiment will attack with brute force a lot of the time. It’s go-to move is sweeping the room from side to side with its arms and trying to hit you. Z-57 will slash you in a scythe-like direction, once from the left and then immediately following up from the right. This is easy enough to jump over, but don’t get cocky and wait too long to jump, OR land too soon. Space Jump around if you have to; I don’t need to tell you that these attacks hurt.

It’s other favorite attack involves shooting what looks like a laser beam out of its mouth; the “laser” leaves a residue on the ground, so it’s probably more accurate to call it stomach acid. When Experiment is spitting out its acid, though, it’s important to know how it comes out and how you can avoid being hit. When Z-57 starts spewing out the acid, he will start at one side of the room and work his way slowly to the other side. He’ll stop to get his breath once, and this is your chance to jump across without getting blasted by acid. I mentioned that the acid leaves a residue on the floor, which deals damage, but there will always be a small spot where no residue sticks, and that is where you want to land after jumping across. You can Space Jump over Z’s head too if you’d rather but be careful if you do it this way, since bonking its head will damage you.

Its last attack in this phase is another acid attack, except this time, Experiment will get right in front of you and aim at the ceiling. He will shoot out a continuous beam of acid that moves in a clockwise (or counter-clockwork depending on which side of it you’re on) direction. The key to avoiding this is to actually stand pretty close to Z-57’s head. Once it hits the 5:00 position, the acid will stop, but get ready – it will snap at you with its jaws. This is where you counter! Wait for the queue and then hit that counter and you’ll be treated to an awesome cutscene where Z and Samus are brawling over the central reactor. This also gives you health and ammo, so make sure you’re taking advantage of this.

Keep blasting Experiment Z-57 with missiles (remember, Storm Missiles are what you always want to be using), and after enough damage, phase two will begin.

You’ll be able to tell that the battle is shifting when Z-57 puts all four of its appendages on the walls. This isn’t always the attack that kicks off phase two, but I’d say most of the time, expect this. When all it’s arms/legs/tentacles grab the wall, this is your time to blast them away with Storm Missiles. Be careful though, because if you stand still for too long, you’ll get blasted by some energy balls Z-57 conjures up. Just aim, move, aim, get that Storm Missile locked on, and fire away. Blasting its limbs will earn you some health and ammo.

Experiment’s two acid shooting attacks from phase one will move over to phase two, so you know how to counter those, but be careful of its sweeping scythe attack. There is now a third strike, and it comes from both sides at the same time, so you’ll need to jump up above it’s head to avoid getting sliced. Don’t jump too early, however, or else you’ll get clubbed.

Z-57’s big new attack for phase two involves it getting over to the right side of the room and blowing air at you. This will push you all the way to the left, and you’ll basically be running in place. Not only is Z-57 blowing air at you, it’s also spitting projectiles that you’ll need to jump over and dodge. Some of the projectiles are easy to jump over, but some of them can be quite tricky, especially if the gap is small. Be careful.

Avoiding taking damage and keep letting those Storm Missiles fly. With enough damage, Z-57 will fall. Once the creature is destroyed, and its Core-X obliterated, the gunk around the central reactor will fall off and the planet will start to thaw back out.

ADVANCED STRATEGY: If you’re really rocking, during the attack where Z-57 is blowing air at you in phase two, towards the end of the attack, after you’ve jumped over most if not all the projectiles, start Speed Boosting. Quickly charge your Shinespark as soon as you get it, and you’ll have about a 2 or 3 second window after the last projectile while Z-57 is finishing his attack where you can jump up and perform a midair Shinespark. You’ll go crashing right into Z, and that will be enough force to finish him off for good, quickly.

Chozo Spear + Shield Soldier

Yes, the Chozo Spear Soldier is back for another showdown, but this time, he’s got a big shield. This doesn’t really change the dynamic of the battle other than the obvious addition of the shield blocking any missiles that you fire. You can either pick your spots and jump over him, unleashing a slew of Storm Missiles into the Soldiers back, OR you could go with my preferred method of brute force. After absorbing enough missile shots, the shield will explode, giving you health and ammo. For the extra couple bursts of offense it will cost you, I think there’s something satisfying about destroying that shield.

The Chozo Soldier will attack exactly the same way, but has two extra attacks. The first is a charging attack where he puts his shield up and runs at you. This can be countered and you’ll destroy his shield. (Later versions of this battle will actually have the shield be counterable too, but not the usual way; instead, when you see the flash and hear the click, whip out your Grapple Beam and destroy his shield. You get no health/ammo for this, but it’s kind of cool if you don’t wanna brute force it). His second attack comes in his second phase; the Chozo Soldier will climb to the wall and shoot out 3 separate shots of black gunk from its mouth at you. This is actually a pretty strong attack, as I guess someone vomiting on you would be, but it’s easy enough to dodge using the Space Jump.

Other than these additions, this fight is the exact same as before, so unleash your fury and finish the Chozo Soldier off.

Golzuna

Giant enemy crabs, the meme that never stops giving. Metroid Dread seems to like that meme too, since in this boss battle you will face not one, not two, but three enemy crabs!

Start off by sliding in the tunnel and dropping down to the battlefield. The first enemy crab you’ve seen a million times, so destroy it. Now, an X will pop out of it. Watch it fly for a second and then start Speed Boosting to the other side of the room. Crouch and charge your Shinespark. As you’re doing this, a giant armored crab should appear. Jump over it, Flash Shifting to its other side, and Shinespark right into its backside to kill it right away (if you miss the timing, no worries, just wait for the crab to get close and then slide under. A couple Storm Missile shots will destroy it).

Now, once the second crab is dead, more X will pop out. Do the exact same thing as last time and Speed Boost to the other side of the room. Once you see the X take on the form of Golzuna, jump over and Shinespark it right in the butt. One shot won’t kill it, but Golzuna will be severely damaged. Once again, if you miss the Shinespark, don’t worry about it, you’ll just need to pump a few more missiles into ‘zully to beat him.

Golzuna himself is every armored enemy crab you’ve seen in the game. He has the same basic movements, the same lunging attack, the same ‘slide under it’ evasion technique, everything. Additionally, there’s no second phase or anything, Golzuna remains fairly consistent throughout this fight with what he does. This doesn’t make him a pushover, however; far from it, actually, as Golzuna is equipped with a special ability: the cross bombs.

First things first: when you are standing in front of Golzuna, he will charge at you, the same as every crab in the game. Simply walk back to the wall (he’ll always stop just short of actually ramming you) and wait for him to get up on his hind legs, claws in the air. Obviously, if those claws come down and smash you, that hurts big time, but when he’s standing on his back legs, that’s actually your queue to slide under him and get to the other side.

Once you’re there, you can fire off your Storm Missiles into his butt, but watch out: this is where the cross bombs come into play.

Golzuna has two different cross bomb attacks that he’ll use. The first is relatively easy to avoid; a purple orb will shoot out of his back that will follow you around for a second, before settling and exploding. As the name implies, these cross bombs blast off on the shape of a cross (or a lowercase “t”) and can do some mean damage. However, since the bomb follows you, you’ll have control of where it explodes, so lure the bomb somewhere in the air where it won’t hit you and stuff Golzuna full of missiles while the cross bomb misses you completely. Golzuna usually shoots out a few of these orbs in a row, so stay frosty.

The second cross bomb attack is far harder to dodge. Golzuna will shoot out four bombs at once, and they’ll fall into a randomly selected shape before exploding. This isn’t so bad if they form a box, as you can just Space Jump in the middle, but when they form a diagonal line, it can be trickier. The best way to avoid getting hit when you see the four bombs form a diagonal line is probably just to jump and quickly Flash Shift over to the front side of Golzuna. He’ll start charging at you, you can slide under him and then repeat the process again.

This is really it. Golzuna doesn’t have a whole lot of tricks up its sleeve. Keep pumping Storm Missiles into him, and he will be destroyed. A Core-X will pop out, so hit that with one last Storm Missile shot and you’ll destroy it. Absorb the floating X and you’ll gain the ability to use CROSS BOMBS.

Raven Beak

Phase 1

Samus! Raven Beak! The fight of the century is on!

Let’s just get this out of the way right now: if this is your first time fighting Raven Beak, you’re going to die. You’ll probably die a few times. Even if you followed this guide and got 100% of the items, you’re still probably going to fall at least once. And to be honest, a lot of this fight is you needing to react fast enough to Raven Beak’s attacks, so I’m not going to be able to provide you with as much of a detailed strategy as you may like, but I can tell you what attacks Raven Beak will use and how to avoid them, as well as some key advice.

Let’s start with the single most important thing you need to do in this fight: hold down the Storm Missile button basically all the time. You want to be constantly charging up your Storm Missiles so that when you get an opportunity to lock on Raven Beak, you’re ready to fire. As important: once your Storm Missiles are charged, you do not need to stop moving and wait to lock onto Raven Beak. This is so important, and the key difference between winning and losing this fight. To reiterate: charge up your Storm Missiles constantly and then quickly aim at Raven Beak so that just one – not all five – Storm Missile locks lock on. You don’t even have to stop and use 360° aiming for this if you do this right. Just get that singular lock on and fire away your Storm Missiles

I can’t overstate how important the Storm Missiles and locking on are in this fight. This is how you’ll deal damage to Raven Beak the entirety of this fight. There’s no set opening or opportunity to do this, so you’ll need to just make this a constant.

Now onto Raven Beak’s attacks. Raven Beak has an assortment of offensive moves that he will bust out in a randomly selected way, so knowing how to avoid them, and in some cases, counter them, is key. It’s worth noting that Raven Beak also uses a Flash Shift, so he can move around the battlefield fairly quickly.

The attack you’ll probably see the most is Raven Beak raising his arm cannon directly up and shooting an Energy field that will move both clockwise and counterclockwise in either direction. Being in this field drains your energy away, you’ll need to run to the safest place on the field to avoid being hit – right beside Raven Beak. Stand right next to him and blast him with Storm Missiles as he finishes up his attack. Be careful though – Raven Beak almost always counters with a haymaker punch after he finishes shooting his energy field. He’ll lunge at you once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, and these punches hurt, so best practice is to jump up and over the Dark Chozo, getting behind him so he doesn’t hit you. This punching attack isn’t just limited to after the energy field attack either, you’ll see this throughout the fight, so be ready.

Another favorite of Raven Beak is summoning a giant black orb that will slowly move across the battlefield and hit you. Your first instinct might be to avoid the orb since it moves so slowly, but the damn thing just never really goes away until it hits you, so you’re better off just blasting it with Storm Missiles and destroying it. The orb will drop missiles and health once it’s gone too, making its destruction extra valuable.

These attacks are ones you want to avoid, but the real meat is in the attacks that are able to be countered, and Raven Beak gives us three opportunities to do so in phase one.

There will be times when you’ll see Raven Beak stop and just kind of taunt you, doing the whole Neo “come get some” hand motion. When this happens, oblige him! Run up and dash melee counter right into Raven Beak. A quick time event will happen where the Mawkin Warrior will go to punch you; melee counter this and you’ll trigger an awesome cutscene where Samus is doing all kinds of crazy acrobatic moves to avoid Raven Beak, while also blasting him up close with missiles.

Another counterable attack is when Raven Beak goes to lunge at you; You’ll see his fist start to glow red as a visual cue to get ready. While your first instinct will be just to jump over him (and if you want to play it safe, just do this since this can be difficult to counter), if you stand your ground and melee counter right before Raven Beak hits you, you’ll be treated to another awesome cutscene of Samus just laying the hurt down on ol’ RB.

His last attack involves Raven Beak creating another kind of energy field. This time, you’ll see the sky turn red and start to charge up. Simply either slide when the red energy is about to explode or just get in Morph Ball form and wait, and as soon as the red energy explodes, a QuickTime event will trigger in which you’ll need to melee counter again, pretty much right away. Doing so will once again allow Samus to do her thing and fill the Dark Chozo up with missiles.

Keep those Storm Missiles charging and locked on and take advantage of the opportunities Raven Beak gives you to counter him, and eventually, he will rip off his cloak and trigger phase two.

Phase 2

Oh boy. Now he can fly. The air above Raven Beak was a relatively safe zone in the last phase, but not anymore. Sporting a very badass, very Sephiroth-esq pair of black wings, Raven Beak now has the ability of flight and a whole schwak of new moves.

Though Raven Beak hits hard, most of his attacks are manageable in that they are easier to avoid. There’s also no counter opportunities in this phase, so you’ll need to really be using the charged Storm Missiles and quickly locking on strategy. For an example of how quick you need to lock on, there are times in this phase when you can be dropping down from a jump and lock onto Raven Beak for a split second and fire. You must be quick and must always have that Storm Missile button charged!

Now, for the attacks, Raven Beak seems to prefer brute force this round, so really try your best not to get hit, because these attacks will hurt. Expect to see a lot of lunges this round; Raven Beak will lunge at you like a bullet going side to side in the arena, and it doesn’t matter what position you’re in. Get out of the way when this happens by either jumping over or sliding under; whatever you do, just don’t get hit. Raven Beak will also dive bomb at you and shoot straight downwards; similarly, either Flash Shift or jump or slide or whatever, just don’t get hit.

Next, Raven Beak will finally put that big arm cannon to use and line up a charged shot that looks a lot like Samus’s Final Smash in Smash Bros. This shot will always be diagonally pointed downwards, so either pointing to the southwest or southeast. You’ll have a second or two to get out of the way before the big blast hits you, so make sure you’re moving.

Raven Beak’s big attack in this round relies on your ability to Space Jump, so this can be a trouble spot for some people. Basically, Raven Beak will aim his cannon at you and a laser sight will pop up. This is your queue to start Space Jumping. You’ll need to jump in circles around Raven Beak, since he will be firing off a stream of bullets and moving his arm in a circular motion around you. The amount of time that Raven Beak spends shooting depends, I’ve seen him go for four or five spins before, and also seen him end his attack after one spin. Either way, you’ll need to Space Jump over and around him to avoid taking damage.

This attack is also a great opportunity to blast the Dark Chozo with Storm Missiles or even charged Plasma shots if you’re running low on ammo. Like I said, you can jump over him and start to fall and then quickly lock on. You’ll have one target on Raven Beak, which is all you need to send those Storm Missiles flying. If you’re shooting with charged shots, you can just angle your arm cannon as you’re falling and release a blast in RB’s direction.

ADVANCED STRATEGY: When Raven Beak begins to get his chain gun out and you see the red laser indicating the attack is about to start, melee dash away from Raven Beak and then immediately hold down L to trigger your 360° aim. If done correctly, Samus will be standing still but in somewhat of a crouched position, allowing you to stand still and aim directly at Raven Beak, while more importantly, most if not all of the machine gun fire will go over Samus’s head.

Keep avoiding Raven Beak’s attacks and peppering him with missiles, and eventually, you’ll destroy one of his wings and trigger phase three.

Phase 3

Raven Beak will go full One Winged Angel here, until he decides to rip off his remaining wing and finish the brawl against Samus.

The good news is this: if you’ve made it to phase three, you probably have learned enough about Raven Beak and his attacks that you’ll probably win this fight. Bad news is that the Dark Chozo won’t go down easily.

Many of the attacks from phase one will return here, including the giant orb that moves slowly across the field, Raven Beak\s energy field that he’ll shoot straight up, the various punches and haymakers, and the running lunge that can be countered. You know how to deal with those already, so react accordingly.

The Mawkin Warrior will also use his arm cannon to fire off big shots, but unlike in phase two, Raven Beak’s cannon is capable of shooting in any direction and will follow you around the battlefield. The cannon will almost always fire in bursts of three, and the shots last a second or two longer than they did in phase two, so prepare for that.

Another scary attack Raven Beak will use is his version of a Shinespark. After charging for a split second, the Dark Chozo will turn blue and shoot straight at you, and then Shinespark upwards or in another direction after. This attack can’t be countered, so get outta dodge when you see this start to happen.

Raven Beak’s last attack looks scary, but is actually a great omen for us. The Mawkin Warrior will summon a sun out of his arm cannon, and this sun will float to the top of the field and start shooting out bursts of energy at us. You can avoid this attack, but the sun will stay up there for absolutely forever, making an already difficult fight nigh impossible. Luckily though, we never have to let it get this far. As soon as you see Raven Beak create that sun, get into Morph Ball form and lay a Power Bomb. The bomb will destroy the sun, granting you missiles and health, and damage Raven Beak at the same time. Effectively, we’re turning the Dark Chozo’s greatest weapon against him.

Keep avoiding his attacks and hammering him with Storm Missiles, and eventually the battle will conclude. A quicktime event will trigger and Raven Beak will go to backhand slap Samus, which you’ll need to melee counter, and then punch Samus, which you also need to melee counter; this will be similar to how you finish off the Chozo Spear Soldiers in the game. Once you complete that, the fight will be officially over!

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