I've been ranking stuff for a while in this blog, but I've also always wanted to do full-on, dedicated rankings about some of my favorite games. With the release of Metroid Prime's truly fantastic remaster, I thought this would be a great place to start. Metroid Prime has some very memorable bosses, not all of them are amazing, but they're all large, intimidating, and eye-catching. So, let's rank them, worst to best:
13. Cloaked Drone
The infamous Cloaked Drone is an absolute hellscape of a boss if you're not prepared for it. Coming after a grueling half-hour gauntlet with zero save points, the Cloaked Drone is your last obstacle before finally getting to rest a bit. You'll likely be exhausted and low on health, and then the game throws an invisible miniboss at you right before you're meant to get the X-Ray Visor. It's a cruel trick on the part of Retro Studios and, no matter what, that alone would put it in last.
But what makes this fight even worse, is that you can cheese it in the easiest way possible, since because drones are weak to the Wave Beam, this invisible drone happens to also be weak to the Wavebuster, a super powerful charge combination that automatically locks on to enemies, including invisible ones. Thus, all you really need to do here is make sure you have enough missiles, enter with the Wave Beam equipped, charge up a Wavebuster, and watch as the drone gets destroyed in the span of five seconds.
12. Hive Mecha
The Hive Mecha is less of a fight and more of an enemy rush. The mecha sends out a bunch of bees after you, you shoot them down, and then you move onto the next phase which has even more enemies. The bees quickly spin around the platform so you spend the whole fight pivoting around to catch up with them, which ultimately just makes for a fight that's both really static and kind of annoying. The remaster's better aiming does make the Hive Mecha a bit more engaging since it's a bit easier to snipe bees without locking onto them but still, this one's kind of a bore.
11. Incinerator Drone
I keep forgetting this is a boss. The Incinerator Drone is a bit more fun than the Hive Mecha because its flamethrowers are used in some pretty creative ways, like how it purposefully tries to inflame the hive above it to get bees to attack you, or how it spins its flamethrowers around forcing you to do some light platforming. However, in terms of actually defeating him, it's really just a waiting game where you shoot when the weakpoint is available.
10. Metroid Prime - Core
I'm ranking the second phase of the final boss as its own fight because, for all intents and purposes, it is. Metroid Prime Core has its own health bar, attack patterns, design, theme song, and unique way of defeating him. Unfortunately, it's a big step down from the first phase. The Metroid Prime Core fight is the definition of a waiting game, you can only attack when he opens a Phazon pool, which can take a matter of seconds to about a minute of waiting time. It also gets especially annoying when he starts spawning Metroids with the Phazon pools. The pool starts to disappear the moment you hit Metroid Prime with Hypermode so if you accidentally hit Prime while trying to take out the enemies first, that's even more waiting you have to deal with.
However, while this fight is fundamentally incredibly annoying, there are a few elements that I do genuinely really like about it. The design and theme are legitimately menacing, I like how it makes you use the different visors, and actually managing to lay on the hurt with Hypermode can be incredibly satisfying. This really should've been a satisfying victory lap phase like getting the Hyper Beam in Super Metroid was, but the decision to drag it out as its own individual boss fight was definitely to the final boss's detriment.
9. Plated Beetle
Plated Beetle is yet another one of those really easy early-game midbosses, but I found it a lot more fun than the Hive Mecha and Incinerator Drone. I think it helps that the Plated Beetle is an actual living creature, so it feels like it has more personality to it. It also helps that this fight is entirely movement-based, requiring you to dodge at the right time and hit its backside. It's nothing ground-breaking, but a fun change of pace.
8. Sheegoth
This might be the scariest boss in the game for me, and the remaster just made him worse. Those tears in the skin, the unhinged jaw, it gives me the shivers. As far as the actual fight goes, it's alright. Sheegoth is the first boss to use your projectiles against you, so you have to fight thoughtfully and try to suss out the right time to use missiles. His attacks are pretty projectile-based and are fun to dodge, and the length is pretty much perfect for a miniboss. Sheegoth doesn't stand out as anything amazing, but it's a solid fight regardless.
7. Omega Pirate
Similarly to the Cloaked Drone, the Omega Pirate can range from pretty tough to mindlessly easy if you know what you're doing. In this fight, you have to destroy the Omega Pirate's plating and then pelt him with Super Missiles whenever he retreats to a Phazon pool. He has a variety of attacks like bashing you into the ground and calling up enemies. However, you don't actually have to deal with most of these attacks, since the Omega Pirate can be cheesed pretty easily.
The armor plating can be destroyed in one go with a Power Bomb, which pretty much eliminates an entire phase from the boss. If you're fast enough, you only need two Power Bombs in this fight so you don't have to worry about resource management much. When the Omega Pirate is in the Phazon pool, the Super Missiles can take out large chunks of his health and even cancel his attempts at charging his armor plating, making his vulnerable phase last even longer. There are still the Pirates you have to deal with, but their shots don't deal much damage and are easy to avoid, and they can be destroyed instantly by the Omega Pirate's shockwave. It's still a solid fight, don't get me wrong, but when you know what you're doing, the Omega Pirate goes down way too fast for one of the last fights in the game.
6. Parasite Queen
Okay, here me out. I know that the Parasite Queen is hands down the easiest fight in the game. She has a single attack, and all you really need to do is keep pelting her with Missiles and Power Shots until she goes down. I do quite like the moving barrier and how you can get shots in even when the barrier is spinning around super quickly, but yeah, otherwise, this is a very easy fight. However, this is one of those cases where the presentation really makes up for otherwise pretty basic gameplay. The Parasite Queen's design is fantastic, her theme is super intense and memorable, and the fight itself plays a big part in making that opening sequence so empowering. Keep in mind, this is before Samus loses her abilities, being able to completely trash a Mother Brain-lookalike before Meta Ridley shows up just illustrates how powerful Samus is and makes the loss of her abilities sting all the more.
5. Elite Pirate/Phazon Elite
Look, I know I'm technically putting the less powerful versions of the Omega Pirate above it, but here's the thing. These guys can't be completely and utterly cheesed by the Power Bomb. As a matter of fact, you don't even have the opportunity to try because the first Elite Pirate fight is before you even get the Power Bomb. As a result, you actually have to engage with fighting these minibosses, dodge their attacks, and be cautious around their energy siphoning unit. Once you get the hang of it, these guys aren't too tough either, but they're still far more involved than the Omega Pirate. It also helps that for minibosses, these guys are intimidating. The Elite Pirates tower over you, and the way they walk towards you with their hand stretched out to stop any energy you might throw at them gives off an air of superiority befitting the Elite title.
4. Thardus
Thardus definitely has one of my favorite designs out of all the bosses in this game. You wouldn't think Retro Studios would be able to make a bunch of rocks look menacing or even recognizable, but they really did it. Thardus does a pretty good job at forcing you to quickly swap between the normal and Thermal visors in a way that feels natural, and many of his attacks are pretty fun to avoid, particularly the boulder one. I especially like how you can still try to shoot his weak point while he's rolling around with good aim. However, the Thardus fight can feel a bit damage-spongy. He has a lot of weakpoints to hit, and the second phase where he introduces a blizzard doesn't do enough to change up the fight since you can still see the important stuff through it just fine.
3. Flaahgra
If this was the original Gamecube release I was talking about, Flaahgra would probably be a bit lower. While he's always been a fun puzzle boss where you have to angle lights to prevent it from photosynthesizing, the lights were always a bit too high up to lock-on too forcing you to constantly stop in place and angle your cannon up whenever you wanted to change a light's position, which not only interrupted the game flow but gave you a much shorter window before Flaahgra starts changing the lights back.
In the remastered version, however, you don't need to lock on to the lights because you can aim freely! This means that you can shoot up lights while on the move and dodging Flaahgra's attacks, which makes for a far more kinetic fight with a stronger sense of flow to it. It also helps that Flaahgra's design is suitably intimidating, the theme is absolutely stellar (and it doesn't just loop the first 30 seconds like in the original), and the fight is the perfect length. Just four short phases, each increasing the amount of lights you need to hit by one. For the first true area boss of the game, Flaahgra made one hell of an impression.
2. Metroid Prime
It's a shame that his second phase is such a disappointment because Metroid Prime's first fight is absolutely stellar. He's big, intimidating, his boss theme slaps, he has loads of attacks and phases, and he tests you on swapping beams in an incredibly clever way. Metroid Prime has four forms, each vulnerable to a specific beam and boasting its own unique set of attacks. Hitting Metroid Prime enough will cause it to charge across the room, requiring the Morph Ball to duck under him, and change his form. Learning how to effectively use each beam and which Metroid Prime form does which attacks is immensely satisfying.
And the progression of the fight is so good too. Every once in a while, Metroid Prime falls into a new room which leaves you with less room to dodge, while also adding another form for you to contend with. And in the final phase, he starts to change forms at will, which leads to some incredibly fun mind-games and fakeouts to cap off the fight. Metroid Prime's first phase really is a perfect final boss. It heightens the difficulty and complexity at a perfect rate and doesn't go on too long, and it tests you on all the skills you've learned throughout the game in a satisfying manner. I reiterate that if Metroid Prime didn't even have a proper second phase, I would've been perfectly happy because this first phase felt climactic and rewarding enough on its own.
1. Meta Ridley
You all knew this was coming, the Meta Ridley fight isn't just the best fight in Metroid Prime. It might be the best fight in the entire Metroid series. Meta Ridley is an especially fascinating antagonist in this game because he's really just an agent of chaos and nothing more. He only shows up to ruin your day, so by the time he destroys the Artifact Temple immediatelt after you found all the artifacts, you really start to hate the guy. The atmosphere of the fight really helps sell the drama of Samus and Ridley's rivalry here too. It's foggy and rainy, the music is mechanical and intense, and Meta Ridley is using every single trick in his arsenal from laser beams to bombing runs to claw and tail swipes.
But what really pushes the Meta Ridley fight to first for me is the unique way the fight is paced. Meta Ridley's first phase is deceptively easy, and takes up around 80% of his health bar. His attacks are fairly slow, and hitting him often deals a lot of damage. But then Ridley's wings burn off, and he goes absolutely savage. He's faster, his attacks hit harder, and you need to get him to expose his belly to actually land a hit. Manage to find an opening and tear into his chest is always super satisfying, but it's a lot tougher in this phase. And then, with only 10% of his health remaining, Ridley gets even faster. None of his attacks change, he just gives you far less breathing room with them, and that alone makes this final stretch of the fight way harder and more anxiety-inducing. But managing to land the final hit and watching the Chozos knock him off the temple just makes that struggle all the more worth it. It's a cathartic finisher to one of the most raw, brutal, and angry fights in the series (at least before Raven Beak showed up).
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