A few tries is all it takes to defeat the squid boss, known as Drogyga. I have to be a little faster with activating the pumps and grapple beaming over it, and then a lot more aggressive with the missiles, and try to dodge a bit more, but after the fourth of fifth attempt, I’ve defeated the beast. I’m left with single digit missiles, and a little over 100 health, so it was a tough fight. Toward the end of the fight, I got a melee counter against one of its tentacle swipes, which left it vulnerable for an extended period to hitting the weakpoint in its mouth with a bunch of missiles, and I think that’s what made the difference.
After defeating Drogyga, I don’t immediately get any new powers, so I’m left wondering what the purpose was in coming here, or where to go next. Eventually I figure it out, as I walk over a section of the floor that gives way, dropping me back down into the area near the closest health recharge station, which is mighty convenient. I refill my health here, and then go to the nearest save point and save.
From here, I’m not sure where to go. I consult the map again, and notice a section of the map nearby that appears to be open and unexplored, so I head there. There’s a series of magnet panels that I have to climb up, using the grapple beam, and then I’m able to get into a new area, where I find yet another save point, and a transport pad that will take me to a new zone, Ghavoran.
Ghavoran is a jungle area, teaming with life forms. Some of them are dangerous, others just skitter out of the way. I make my way to the right; there’s a doorway to the left, but it’s blocked by what appears to be a shield of some kind, and none of my weapons can do anything to it. I think I need super bombs or super missiles. To the right, there’s a magnetic door that I can open with the Grapple Beam. Beyond that, there’s a small pool of water which might be a pathway leading down into an underwater cavern, and a pathway leading up. I decide to go up first, and find my way blocked by a grapple beam block, which if I pull it, will fall down to fill the gap where I just came up, sealing me off from the entrance to Ghavoran. I guess that’s it, then. I pull the block and open the way forward, and seal off the way backward. The level design commits me to my chosen course; I only hope that I’m right. But so far, every time I’ve second guessed whether I’m ready for a new area, it turns out that I have been up to the new challenge.
To the right, there’s a total recharge station, and a difficult-to-reach Missile Container, which I manage to get by using the Shine Spark ability to jump high enough to reach the ledge where it sits. There’s no more places to explore this way, so I turn around and head to the left.
Through the first door I come to, I encounter another Chozo soldier. This one wears gold colored armor, and appears to be perhaps a bit more heavily armored than the first one I defeated back in Ferenia. I have to fight it ten, a dozen, maybe twenty times before I manage to win. The key to victory again is avoiding damage and getting a lot of missiles to hit in between the enemy’s attacks. He has a few different attack modes, which he mixes up randomly: a three-shot burst, which is best dodged by jumping; a charge shot, which again you should jump to dodge. These require a bit of timing, and the timing is different. If you see his gun glowing like it’s charging up for a charge shot, then you need to wait a bit and then jump over the shot. If you jump too soon, expecting the three-shot burst, it will throw your timing off and you’ll most likely end up hit by the charge shot. Likewise, if you don’t jump fast enough when he’s shooting his three shot burst, it will hit you. If you’re really unlucky the first and third shots from the burst will both do damage. Each hit does a lot of damage, and with a full charge of health (around 599 units currently) it only takes a few mistakes before I’m done for. This Chozo also has a dash attack, where he charges up a red glow, and then slashes at you very quickly. The windup for this is long, but the release is lightning quick. But this is an opportunity to score a melee counter, which will release a ton of health and ammo boosts, and leave the enemy stunned for a few seconds, allowing you to pour on missiles and deal a lot of damage.
The timing to pull off the melee counter is difficult — the long, slow windup of the slash is such that I anticipate it too much and try to counter prematurely, throwing my timing off, and then I’m unable to recover in order to pull off the counter when the attack finally comes. It’s tough to get it down, but after many screw-ups, I manage to pull it off — once. Then I keep dying, trying again and again, each time screwing up either my jumps over his shots, or the melee counter move, and die. I have no indication how much damage I’m doing to the enemy; he has no life bar, and there’s no visual indication to show me how damaged or close to death he is. This makes it feel like I’ve barely dealt any damage to him at all when he creams me each time. But for all I know he could be one missile away from getting taken out.
Most of my failed runs against this enemy, I manage to pull off a melee counter early in the fight, when I don’t really need the health boosts, and then I miss a later melee counter, when I do. It’s frustrating, but I’m only successful countering him maybe 1-in-3, 1-in-4 tries.
Finally, though, I manage to get the best of him, in a fight where I do exceptionally well at dodging his fire. I come at him, holding a charge beam shot, and letting it go at him just as he appears, then immediately charge up another and let it loose at him as he comes at me. From there, I leap backwards, evading his fire, and increasing my distance, charging up a third charge beam shot while I’m in the air, and then whirl around and shoot it at him the instant I land. Then I switch to missiles and fire four or five at him as he closes. I get ready to react to his next move, depending on which attack he brings, and successfully manage to jump his three round burst attack, getting off a few more missile strikes as I’m dodging. Then he unleashes his slash attack, and I manage to counter it. I still haven’t taken damage, so the health boosts are wasted, but he’s stunned and I take the opportunity to jam as many missiles into him as I can manage, then as he’s starting to recover, I jump over him and run left. He gets back to his feet, but I’m past him and have opened up more distance again. He tries blasting me with a charge shot, but I have plenty of space between us and this gives me more time to react, and I jump over it. He again tries to close with me, and as he comes I blast him with more missiles. He stands off a few blocks distance from me, and this is where he’s most dangerous — he could shoot another three round burst again, or a charge shot, or go for a melee slash, and I have to be prepared for any of these, and if I guess wrong my timing will be off, he’ll hit me, and I’ll be off-balance and probably get hit again and again. That’s basically what happens, and he manages to hit me a few times, taking me down to where I’ll be dead if I take one more good hit from him. But I manage to jump a few of his shots, and stay alive just long enough to put the coup de grace on him, thankfully.
I could fight this guy and win maybe one in ten, one in twenty times. He’s tough. But I bet the more I fight him, the better I’ll get at dodging and countering, and that ratio would go up. The key is mostly to play defensive and avoid his attacks as much as possible, while still mounting an effective offense, and being able to pull off the melee counter reliably would make this enemy a lot easier.
I explore the rest of Ghavoran, at least the parts I’m able to here. I’m down to just 107 health, so the first thing I do is run back to the room I just came from and take another total recharge, before heading back to the left to see what’s beyond the area where I fought the Chozo. I don’t find much, and end up talking to ADAM on another communications console. ADAM tells me that I’m no match for Raven Beak, even fully equipped, and confirms that the remaining EMMI are still deactivated. This gives me the idea that maybe I could turn the tables on Raven Beak if I could take control of the remaining EMMI and turn them on him, ganging up all at once. That would be neat. But who knows what will actually happen. ADAM expresses puzzlement as to why Raven Beak spared me in our first encounter. Indeed, I wonder why he didn’t just get a sample of the DNA he needed from me at that time. Then he could have just killed me off, or let me go, or kept me prisoner. But I guess there wouldn’t be much game then, would there.
After that, I then find a transporter to take me back to Dairon. I end up coming in near the upper left quadrant of the map, near the ice cold room that I created when I restored the second power station to service. I have no choice but to get through it as quickly as possible. I have to blast the wall open, first, then run for it. I barely have enough life energy, even at full health, to get through. I can screw up one or two jumps and if I don’t grab a ledge, or accidentally switch into morph ball when I don’t mean to, it really hurts my chances of getting through safely. So it takes several attempts, and it shouldn’t be as hard as it seems, but with the pressure on I keep screwing it up. But on the 5th or 6th attempt, I finally manage to get through.
I kinda suck at video games, I guess.
But I’m back to a known area where I feel relatively safe. I haven’t gotten any new abilities from the last several boss fights, it seems, and I’m not sure where I should go next.
I puzzle over the map of Dairon, and don’t see much that I haven’t already explored. I must be missing something. The only area that doesn’t look completely mapped out is the top corner of the cold area I just came through. Could it be that I was meant to go up, into an unknown part of the map, rather than across to a location where there was certain safety? It seems reasonable. But how to get up there? I can see no means that would look possible with my current capabilities. The one thing I might be able to pull off would be to get a speed boost run going on the bottom of the freezing room, and then jump vertically to the ceiling using the Shine Spark ability.
The problem is that right where I would need to jump vertically to pull this off, there’s a ledge, and I can’t jump through this ledge using Shine Spark. So is there some way to jump while the Shine Spark is charged, but not trigger the Shine Spark jump? I’m not sure. But I don’t see how I can do it. I’ll get one, maybe two attempts per run, and if I don’t pull it off, I have to watch the death animation and then wait for the game to reset and spawn me again for another try.
I give it a bunch of tries, but it doesn’t feel like it’s working, and if this is how you’re supposed to go, I just don’t have the skills built yet to be able to pull it off.
The only other thing I can think of to do is return back to Ghavoran and see if I may have missed anything.
It turns out, I did miss two important things. First, the Super Missile power-up, which I find not far from where I had exited Ghavoran. Next, there’s another pathway that I hadn’t taken before, which goes off to the right, and leads to a new train platform, this one says it will take me to a new place I haven’t been to before, called Elun.
From the size of it on the map, it looks like it must not be very big. Is that where I was meant to go, rather than back to Dairon? It makes me wonder why they put a transportation device to go back to Dairon in this part of Ghavoran in the first place. Maybe I’m meant to do something or get something quickly in Elun, then backtrack through Ghavoran and eventually return to Dairon in order to complete my mission?
Since I don’t know where I should go next in Dairon, it seems logical to explore Elun a bit and see what’s there.