Boss Fight: Gandrayda

As you might have imagined, given the Proving Grounds' name and shape on your map, a boss fight will happen here. Gandrayda will reveal herself to have been thoroughly corrupted by the Phazon in her body, and will attack with all of her power.

Phase One

Gandrayda will take the form of past bosses in an attempt to wear you down.

By default, in her own form, Gand isn't very powerful. She's agile, and will flip around a lot to prevent you from hitting her, but she doesn't have many attacks at first. Eventually she will begin to shoot purple discs that home in on you, but these do light damage and can be shot to reveal extra health. You can wear down Gand's health by firing on her while she flips, but she'll be difficult to hit unless you get up close. She can also jump onto you and drain you energy; shake your Wiimote and Nunchuk up and down to get her off of you.

Most of Gand's attacks will involve her taking the form of other, more powerful enemies. At first, it's the Berserker Lord, so stay away from her and shoot her phazon blasts back at her head, then finish it off when the carapace cracks. You'll also have to deal with an Aerotrooper in the first phase here, but that shouldn't be too problematic. Keep unloading on her and you'll move to phase two after a while.

Phase Two

Ghor and Rhundas return here. You should remember their patterns from when you first fought them, but if not…

Rhundas will fly around on his ice field and shoot projectiles at you. Shoot the projectiles for health and goodies, then wait until he hits the ground and pound him with shots and missiles. When he appears stunned, use your grappling hook to pull off his armor and repeat the process.

Ghor will mostly attempt to either fire missiles at you, which you can dodge, or fire some variation on his laser attack, or ram you. When the shimmering weak spot on his head is visible, hit that with beam shots; if he stands still with his lower-body weak spot available, roll into a ball and bomb it, then get out and fire at the weak spot on his head again.

Phase Three

Shake your remote and nunchuk up and down if Gand grabs onto you.

Gand begins to morph into you at this point. Gand/Samus can fire a powerful hyperbeam attack that sweeps across the arena. Beyond that, she'll roll into a ball and zip around in boost mode, attempting to hit you. Both of these attacks can be jumped over, but it'll be difficult to hit Gand/Samus with anything more than light beam shots here; she simply moves too quickly to really get a bead on. You can try to fire missiles at her as well, but you'll have to wear her down gradually to move on.

Phase Four

Use the x-ray visor to see Gandrayda when she becomes invisible.

Lastly, Gand will shift between an invisible mode and a PED mode to take you out. The invisible mode is mostly the same as her normal mode, but you'll need to use the x-ray visor to see her and fire on her. The PED mode will obviously deal more damage to you, and has a couple of new attacks, such as a fist slam into the ground that causes energy to wend your way. If you can get a bead on her in her PED mode, you can enter Hypermode yourself and blast her to wear down a bunch of her energy, but you should only do this if you have a good health buffer, as she won't drop a lot of health during this final phase of the fight. At any rate, if you constantly wear her down with normal beam shots, you'll eventually finish her off.

Overall, Gandrayda is really annoying, and is definitely capable of taking you out if you don't play carefully, especially since she doesn't drop a huge amount of health at any point during the encounter. Do your best to keep your health up and choose your Hypermode uses carefully, though, and she'll eventually go down, leaving behind the Grapple Voltage device, which will let you charge up or uncharge special devices scattered around the world. Use it to access the transit station nearby, then scan the room and activate the hand scanner to ride the rails.

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