Metroid Prime (Essence)
Essence is the final boss of Metroid Prime. In all speedrun categories, the in-game timer ends when Essence dies and it switches into the cutscene. However, there is one extra frame of IGT when the game loads the end sequence.
General Information
The way this boss fight works is that Essence will spawn pools and switch its visibility starting from combat to X-Ray to Thermal and back to combat again for another loop. Essence can only be damaged via phazon shots, which can only be performed while standing inside a phazon pool. It usually takes ~30 seconds for Essence to spawn a pool. However if Essence is too close to its torso then it will not spawn a pool and still switch visors. A phazon pool vanishes either 15 seconds after it was spawned or if it has been drained out. However it is possible to reduce the draining by stepping inside and outside of the pool, which is called attack cancelling. It is also possible to make Essence spawn the next pool earlier by timing your shots in a way that your shots hit directly after it started some animation and it will immediately cancel it. When a pool is drained out you want to go away from the torso to lure essence away from it to ensure it doesn't skip a pool. It is also worth to note that the phazon shots spread around randomly, so the further away you are from essence, the less shots will hit and the less damage you will deal. Also essence will spawn 2 metroids with each pool depending on its energy it will go from no metroids, to normal metroids, to hunter metroids and finally fission metroids. Usually it's best to deal with them by laying a powerbomb right where the pool is being spawned.
Properties
- Health: 36,667
- Vulnerable only to the Phazon Beam
3 Pool Strat
The idea of a 3 pool is to fully concentrate on cancelling essence's animations to make the next pool spawn as soon as possible for the first 2 pools. On the 3rd pool a few attack cancels are needed to finish it off. However this strategy might not work every time as essence could move close towards its torso so it will skip a pool. In this case one might consider to switch to the 2 pool strat.
<insert video of justins 3 pool strat>
2 Pool Strat
The idea of a 2 pool is to deal as much damage as possible via attack cancelling. As you have some time after the first pool is drained out, you also have more time luring essence away from its torso making this strat more consistent if you can get many attack cancels consistently.
<insert video of 2 pool>