The Metroid Prime games are some of the most challenging I’ve faced.  The first two, in fact, had to originally be completed over the course of years as I got stuck at one boss after another.  While this issue has since been eliminated due to simply growing as a gamer, it is the second game in the trilogy that gives me the most trouble.  If you’re not familiar with our Challenge Mode posts, we like to discuss certain moments in games that really challenged us and how to overcome them.  While this post was initially going to revolve only around my arch nemesis, the Spider Guardian, I have since decided that there are several bosses and mini-bosses that need to be called out for their bad behavior.

Alpha Blogg: Starting off with the earliest beastie that gave me trouble, the Alpha Blogg marked the first point of the game where I became utterly stuck.  I only managed to defeat it after going back and collecting every energy tank available at this point in the game, along with lots of practice.  The problem with this aquatic fiend is that it can only be hurt if shot in the mouth, and you really only have access to the mouth when it charges at you, making you far more likely to want to dodge than to aim carefully into its oncoming maw.

Well, after my second full playthrough of the game, I feel rather silly.  I recently figured out that this foe can be swiftly dispatched if you simply shoot a few super missiles into its mouth.  Um, I guess there’s that problem solved.

Spider Guardian: Don’t be fooled by this unassuming pillbug with wall-clinging abilities.  Because it is.  Pure.  Evil.  For some reason, this game, unlike its predecessor, enjoyed pitting us against enemies that had to be fought either partially or entirely in morph ball mode.  I don’t know about you, but controlling a spherical object that likes to roll every which way is aggravating on the best of days.  Furthermore, if you die during this battle, this particular boss has no fairly recent save point, so you’ll have a lot to redo just to reach it again!

This battle is a weird one because you need to attack the Spider Guardian with bombs until it turns green.  Then you have to get to a bomb slot and activate it, causing the little monster to roll away into some damaging barrier…for some reason.  Earlier on, the biggest nuisance is having to roll around on a half-pipe, another weakness of mine.  (I recently learned that you have to boost going up the side of the slope, not down.  That’s probably obvious, I suppose, but it was a lesson that took me years to learn.  I think I figured that I was gathering speed while going down…?)

The worst part is the place you have to navigate at the end, which requires you to activate one, then two, then all three bomb slots in order to finish off your fierce, tiny adversary.  What really bothers me here is that you have a limited time to activate the bomb slots, and often times, you must do a bomb jump at the top of a small hill to reach it.  For me, I was always rolling one way or another and wasting precious time.  Though I was able to activate two bomb slots, activating all three while the enemy was stunned seemed like an impossibility.  Until I learned of a super helpful tip online.

You can stun it while it’s green.

…

Wow, I wish I had known that earlier!  If you need to give yourself more time, just use a few more bombs on it to slow it down, and it will stay green longer, thus giving you more time to activate those pesky bomb slots.

Emperor Ing: The big issue with this monstrosity is knowing what weapons are the most effective so you don’t waste time and ammo on something that just isn’t going to work.  I did find a strategy that worked for me, however, which I’m going to recount below.

Phase 1: Use seeker missiles on the tentacles when they’re in the air.  If they come down near the ground in a clump, as they often do, use a power bomb.  If you’re lucky, you’ll wipe out most, or all, of them right away.  Then shoot the exposed eye, between the gap in the barrier, of course, with the annihilator beam.  You have a short time to attack, and the tentacles can inflict damage too quickly, so you want to take out the eye as quickly as possible.

Phase 2: Spider-ball your way to the top of the Ing and take your time recovering health from the enemies that keep appearing, all the while attacking the weak points.  I almost regained full health (despite starting this phase of the battle on my final health bar) before the boss seemed to grow sick of me and raised the poison mist to fill the whole room, forcing me to finish it off posthaste.

Phase 3: Use missiles on the heart when it’s red.  Don’t bother shooting it when it’s moving because you’ll probably miss, and obviously don’t shoot when its “mouth” is closed.  Sometimes you’ll be lucky, and it will stay fairly still with the heart exposed for a short while.  A few direct hits with your missiles should change the heart purple or white.  Now use the annihilator beam for maximum damage, but use the same strategy as you did with the missiles in order to hit it.  With this method, it should go down fairly quickly.

Oh, and if you run out of time against Dark Samus during the time limit that follows, fear not, because they’ll let you try again without having to fight Emperor Ing again!

Well, I hope my tips were helpful for anyone who wishes to play Metroid Prime 2 again, but finds these enemies a tad tricky.  And if you’d like, dear readers, why not share which boss(es) gave you the most trouble and/or your own tricks for defeating them.  The comments are awaiting your input below!

Screenshot by the Duck of Indeed