Lying deep in Metroid Prime 4’s volcano facility of the Flare Pool region is the huge boss Phenoros, yet another creature native to Viewros that has been corrupted by a Metroid and now serves as a major threat to Samus and her mission.
There’s a few stages to this battle, which can be quite a drawn out one if you don’t spot the key moments and what you need to do in order to succeed. Here’s a breakdown of the stages to the boss battle and how best to overcome them.
Obviously there are some progression spoilers within this guide, so at this point, stop reading if you aren’t currently struggling to beat Phenoros!
OK, so… with that out of the way, let’s get on with the guide!
Phenoros on the lava lake
The first section of the Phenoros battle has Samus on the Vi-O-La IC, chasing after Phenoros as it swims around a huge lake of lava. It doesn’t really try to attack you during this phase, but can swim a little erratically, throwing up choppy lava flows that slow you down and balls of magma. Scanning Phenoros and look at it for visual clues reveals a string of weak spots on the underside of its snake-like body.
The goal during this section is to use the Vi-O-La disc attack to hit all of these weak spots, and the best way to do this is to try to drive alongside Phenoros and quickly target multiples as its body dips in and out of the lava. Once all of them have been hit, it’s on to the next stage!
Phenoros showdown
Now you’ve made Phenoros really angry! Samus is stuck on a small chunk of its body while its head towers over her. The aim here is to hit between one and four blue weakspots on Phenoros’ head and trigger a damage phase where you blast its tongue with as many heavy attacks as you possibly can! Ice Beam attacks can quickly take out chunks of its health during this.
Hitting the weak spots can be tricky. Phenoros’ head waves around a lot and the weakspots are on the side of its head. You need to either lock on and manually adjust your aim to hit them, or Switch 2 players might feel better using mouse mode.
During this section, Phenoros has a few key attacks to be aware of:
Flame Breath – Phenoros rears back and then unleashed a beam of flaming energy that it sweeps from one side of the semi-circle island to the other. You can jump over this, but I found it easiest to just morph ball and wait until it passes over.
Bite – Phenoros pulls back from the island before rushing forward to grab Samus. You need to time a dodge move to evade this, or be caught in Phenoros’ mouth and mash A to escape.
Magma Balls – Phenoros spits out five slow-moving magma balls that home towards you. Shoot them in time and you’ll get some ammo and health top ups.
Phenoros below half health
Once you’ve got Phenoros below half health, it transforms and opens up two large head flaps, revealing four new weak spots. The goal is the same: blast those weak spots to put Phenoros into a dazed state and then blast its tongue with damage.
During this, Phenoros has all its previous attack, but a little bit faster and souped up – the flame breath is a double sweep. In addition there is one new attack:
Ear Guns – From the remaining weak spots, Phenoros shoots blasts of energy at you. Keep strafing to avoid taking damage.
Phenoros Finisher
With Phenoros down to its last chunk of health, it will be incapacitated, floating on the surface, mouth wide open. This is the time to strike the final blow. You can’t head into its body yourself, but using a guided charged beam shot – charge up a standard beam shot while in the scanner view – you can home in on its core and take it down!
If you don’t do this in time, Phenoros will recover and return to the previous stage with a bit more health, needing to be downed once more.
Well done, you’ve defeated Phenoros! And now? Well, it’s time to grab a new ability and get the heck outta here!
