There are a lot of different things trying to kill you in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. Ranging from angry robots to even angrier insects to space pirates, you’ll encounter a lot of threats during your journey.
Unsurprisingly, this includes boss-tier enemies that will require slightly more elaborate means of extermination. One of these is the Flare Pool’s Phenoros. A massive serpent that lives in lava, you’ll need to use your bike, Vi-o-la, to conquer this foe; otherwise, you’ll end up with a rather nasty sunburn.
How To Defeat Phenoros
Phase One
When the fight starts, you will be completely restricted to using Vi-o-la, as the entire arena’s ground is covered in lava. Once you finish scanning Phenoros, ride your bike along the side of Phenoros and lock onto the cyan-colored pustules along the underbelly. One shot from your Vi-o-la’s cannon will destroy this weak spot and do damage to Phenoros.
Think of these glowing pustules as Phenoros’ health bar, and to force this fight to Phase Two, you’ll have to blast all of them!
During this portion, Phenoros will use its massive size to try and block your path. Additionally, the motion of its swimming will cause both large fireballs to burst forth from its side and cause geysers of lava to appear around it.
These will be your main obstacles during the fight, and it’s critical to prioritize your own health. Phenoros is generally pretty passive during this phase, so it’s better to take your time and focus on destroying the weak points when you can.
Whenever you destroy a pustule, Phenoros will briefly speed up before slowing back down again. Don’t bother using your boost to give chase, as you can easily crash into this serpent if you’re not careful. It’s always better to just be cautious and only get close to Pheronos when you want to attack them.
Remember, you can also lock onto multiple weak points at once by holding down A. This will drastically speed up this section, but once that part of the body goes under any lava, it will be briefly immune.
After you pop all the weak points along Phenoros’ underbelly, it will knock you off Vi-o-la and take you into the next phase.
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Phase Two
When Phase Two begins, you’ll need to once again pop some weak points on Phenoros, so it becomes stunned, and you can shoot the main weak spot on its body, the tongue. Damaging the tongue is the only way to actually deplete its health.
Phenoros will unleash one of several different attacks during this phase. They are:
|
Attack |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Fireballs |
Phenoros will launch between 4–6 large fireballs into the air that will slowly home in on your position. |
|
Fire Beam |
Phenoros moves to either the left or right side of the arena and emits a large beam of fire that goes from one side to another. |
|
Bite |
Phenoros rears back and attempts to bite down on the player. If successful, you’ll need to mash A to escape. |
|
Frontal Beam |
This attack begins once Phenoros reaches 50 percent health. It will fire a large beam of fire directly in front of it at your last known position. |
|
Weak Point Energy Shots |
This attack begins once Phenoros reaches 50 percent health. The four weak points on its body will begin firing out slow energy shots at you. |
Once you regain control of Samus, switch to Ice Shot and start shooting at the four weak points along either side of its head. These don’t need to take a lot of damage to actually destroy them, but popping one will cause Phenoros to pull away briefly and roar at you.
During this phase, the big attacks you want to watch out for are Bite and Fire Beam. The former is easy to tell when it’s coming because Phenoros will pull way back, open his mouth, and then lunge at you. You can avoid being grabbed by either dodging to the left or right. I recommend dodging to the side where there is still an active weak point, as it will give a brief opening to destroy another one.
As for the Fire Beam, you can simply avoid this by going into your Morph Ball mode and letting it pass over you. After Phenoros passes 50 percent, they will drag the beam back a second time when it reaches the end of the arena. Just stay in Morph Ball form during this phase, and it won’t hit.
Phenoros may occasionally launch large fireballs at you, but these can be instantly destroyed with a single Ice Shot.
After all four weak points are destroyed, Phenoros will become stunned for several seconds with its mouth open. This will give you an opening to absolutely pour on damage. Focus on either spamming Missiles or Ice Shot, as these will do a lot of damage to Phenoros.
Upon reaching 50 percent health, Phenoros will respawn four weak points that actually shoot at you now. Additionally, Phenoros will start mixing in the Frontal Beam attack along with its other moves. Your strategy doesn’t change here, so just focus on damaging the weak points until they’re all destroyed and shooting Phenoros’ tongue when it’s stunned.
Eventually, you’ll get Phenoros down to about 20 percent health, which will trigger a cutscene of it collapsing into the lava with its mouth open. The fight isn’t over, so turn your visor on and fire a Psychic Beam and direct the shot into Phenoros’ mouth, down its throat, and towards the final weak point in its body. Popping this will finally kill this serpent and end the fight.
Your reward for all this trouble is the Psychic Grapple, so now you can use all those grapple points you’ve been passing by this whole time!
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