Well, I did it. Raven Beak took a few attempts, I want to say 5 or 6, but ultimately I was able to learn his tells and got decent at dodging his attacks (the Aeion Flash really makes a huge difference).
The final boss fight is pretty epic - you fight against a Chozo who has a similar power suit to your own. In many ways, he's you, but more powerful. The main frustration I ran into was that there's a thing you have to do in the second phase that I was failing to.
After you deal some initial damage to him, he'll do this taunt - approach him, and he'll make a melee attack you can counter. Once this cutscene plays, he'll get a golden armor which means he can't actually be damaged.
Phase two thus has you waiting for him to do these taunt moves again while dodging his attacks. One of his attacks sends this big black hole toward you, which is secretly a gift, as you can blow it up with four missiles (I tended to use the Storm Missiles, but either works) and you'll get a bunch of missiles and health back.
The thing I screwed up for a good five minutes as that during this phase, you can only damage him by countering his post-taunt attack. You have to do two counters (which aren't very hard,) but what I wasn't getting was that right after you land the second counter, you have a brief window to hit him with missiles, and if you do, an animation will start playing during which you can continue to spam missiles at him. Three of these counter-attack animations full of missile attacks will move you onto phase 3.
Phase 3 is the most unique of them. The trick here is finding a safe window to hit him. He has some devastating attacks in this phase. When he locks on to you, you need to space jump around him to dodge his barrage of missiles, and when he charges his shot, you want to flash under him to get out of the way, as this attack does about a full energy tank's worth of damage. He'll also dive at you - vertically you can avoid him if you just move out of the way, but the horizontal dives you'll need to slide underneath.
Phase 4, which is the final phase, is rather similar to the first two phases, except that he has a few tougher attacks. In addition to his black hole attack, he can summon a star-like fireball that floats in the air and keeps pulsing out a bullet-hell-like ring of damage. Drop a power bomb when he launches this and it'll clear the star and give you some resources back. The other seriously devastating attack here is his charge beam, he'll aim at you until he lets it loose, so you should either try to be up in the air when he finishes charging and just drop or make sure it's low enough that you can space jump over it.
All the while, you want to be pelting him with missiles. Do enough damage, and the final boss is defeated.
Now, let's talk about the ending. I have, of course, already discussed most of the details, but now that I've truly earned it, let's get in deep.
Spoilers ahead.
At the beginning of Metroid Fusion, Samus receives a vaccine made from the preserved Metroid DNA of the infant she spared on SR388 - that Metroid saved her life twice. While this has the most notable effect of making her immune to the X-Parasite, we find that in Metroid Dread, it has begun to transform her into a humanoid Metroid.
Raven Beak makes his first and almost certainly last appearance in this game, but we find that he's actually been part of the story all along. Leader of the Mawkin Chozo tribe, Raven Beak wanted to use the Metroids to conquer the galaxy. He was opposed by the Thoha Tribe, who could actually control the Metroids, and for their defiance, he had all but one of them wiped out.
But, as we also discover, it seems that when Samus was younger, growing up on Zebes, she received infusions of Chozo DNA from both the Thoha and Mawkin - and her donor on the latter side was Raven Beak. Raven Beak, who we find has been impersonating ADAM potentially for the entire game, thinks that Samus' Metroid DNA should have given her the creature's life-draining powers immediately, but because the Thoha programmed the Metroid to see the Mawkin as enemies before their tribe was wiped out, the two forces within her have been preventing her metamorphosis. However, seeing an Mawkin awakened the killer instinct within her, and as such, that part of her has been awakening.
This... is a bit much to take in. But, the end of the Raven Beak fight has him grabbing Samus and choking the life from her - which ultimately truly awakens the Metroid within her. Her suit transforms utterly into this green and red biomechanical thing and she sucks the energy out of Raven Beak's ship, causing both of them to plummet to the ground.
Raven Beak, though, seems about as tough as Samus, because even this isn't enough to kill him. He struggles to his feet, but before he can reengage her in combat, an X-Parasite infects him. Transforming horrifically, and kind of melding with an X-version of Kraid (which... I mean I know he was a bad guy, but does this mean Kraid got X'd?) he crawls toward Samus, but with the hyper beam (or whatever it is) now working through her Metroid Suit, she blasts him away, destroying both the Raven Beak/Kraid monstrosity puppet as well as the purple X-parasite within.
Then, as is customary, the planet is about to explode (I actually don't know what sets it off - had Raven Beak planned it to ensure the X on ZDR were wiped out?) and you have to run back to your ship, which involves a fairly circuitous route that takes you back through a lot of familiar rooms in Hanubia - though thankfully your Hyperbeam will destroy any barriers, regardless of what you're meant to use on them.
As you get into your ship, you're about to start it up before ADAM - definitely the real ADAM this time, stops you, reminding you that you'll drain the ship's power and doom yourself. Samus is basically left to panic - she can't start her ship, and the planet's about to blow up.
And then, maybe the most mysterious thing happens - Quiet Robe, the friendly Chozo of the Thoha tribe you met earlier in the game, shows up - though he's dead and zombified by the X-Parasite. However, rather than attack, he bows, and then dissolves, revealing the red X parasite, which allows itself to be absorbed by Samus, restoring her to her ordinary Gravity Suit and thus allowing her to launch the ship and escape.
ZDR explodes, and Samus emerges from this death-trap alive and with a greater understanding of what has happened to her.
So...
First off, I'm a bit sad that ZDR gets destroyed, though the moment those X-Parasites broke out of Elun, the planet was utterly doomed.
The makers of the game had talked about how this game will conclude the story of Samus and the Metroids, but I think that in a way, it sort of ties them inextricably in a way that previous games hadn't. Samus is a Metroid both in the sense that it's the Chozo word for "ultimate warrior," but also in that she is, physiologically, a Metroid. Not, she hasn't become a flying green fanged bubble, but her ability to drain the life of her foes makes her one.
The insane power she demonstrates when her Metroid nature awakens seems to go away with the X-parasite she absorbs in the ship (we'll call it QR-X). I've seen a lot of people speculating on what, exactly, that entire encounter meant.
Did that somehow remove her Metroid nature? I don't think so - otherwise she'd be getting horribly X-mutated. One suggestion I've seen is that QR-X transferred the Thoha ability to control the Metroids to Samus. Thus, she can control the Metroid within her and turn her powers "off."
The graceful cooperation of QR-X is also something rather shocking from an X-Parasite. One interpretation is that the X aren't as mindless as previously thought - that they might understand that they were all about to die, and that at least through this sacrifice someone could escape ZDR. More compelling to me is the notion that the Thoha are so enlightened that even a parasite-derived Thing-like copy would carry on that wisdom, and that despite being dead, Quiet Robe could still control what had become of his body.
Moving forward with future Metroid games, I imagine that Samus' ability to drain foes could actually make for some kind of gameplay mechanic, but I don't think we're going to see her go full-Metroid except in final boss encounters.
In the Metroid games I've played, the Space Pirates have always played at least some role (to be fair, Kraid's presence technically ticks that box,) but the notion of an evil Chozo is actually pretty cool. The Chozo sort of play the "precursor" role in the Metroid games - a trope in sci-fi in which a super-advanced alien civilization has left behind remarkably advanced technology. Of course, the Chozo are not long-gone in the same way that most precursors are.
I'd like to know whether the Mawkin and Thoha are just two tribes among many, or if the Chozo as a whole were really just divided into these two peoples. If the latter is the case, then our slaying of Raven Beak would seem to spell the end of the Chozo people.
At the risk of sounding ungrateful for what we've just gotten, my eyes have turned to the future. Metroid Dread does a fantastic job of updating the Super Metroid formula for a modern era. I know that Metroid Prime 4 is theoretically in the works (after they were forced to entirely restart the development a couple years back,) and I'm eager to see that. But I'm curious to see what the next main-line Metroid game will be, and more importantly, when it will be. 19 years went between Metroid Fusion and Metroid Dread. I very much hope that we see Metroid 6 a whole lot sooner than that.
Anyway, having beaten the game, I've unlocked Hard Mode, which... man, this game wasn't exactly easy on normal mode. I do suspect that a second playthrough will prove a lot easier - and also quicker given that I'll be less focused on getting all the items.
My total game time was about 12 hours - that was done avoiding any guides until I got to the point where I was just collecting items. While I definitely don't remember exactly the order in which to get things, I think a second run will probably go significantly faster.
Anyway, it's a fantastic game.
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