Metroid veterans all know that if you want to have normal mobility under water, Samus needs the Gravity Suit. Until that time, moving through the water as little as possible is fairly important. So naturally, Metroid Dread makes you face a whole boss battle underwater well before you find that helpful upgrade.
While Drogyga can certainly look intimidating, this is a relatively simple boss encounter by Metroid standards. That said, there are strict timing demands here that will mess you up if you aren’t on point. So with that said, hopefully this boss guide will make this tentacled space clam demon robot thing a little easier to deal with.
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Drogyga starts with two different attacks, both of which are loudly telegraphed. First it’ll shoot out three projectiles that float down towards you. You can shoot the blue ones for health and missiles, while the red ones need to be avoided. The second attack is a pair of tentacle swipes across the screen. You’ll be able to see the wind up on both, so just be prepared to jump. You have just enough time and height to avoid the tentacles with a normal jump, but timing is everything.
While you’re avoiding these attacks, you need to be damaging the smaller, bright pink tentacle at the top of the arena. You can damage it with normal shots, which makes focusing on defense easier. It’s kind of a bad idea to use missiles on that part anyway, since you only have so many at this point. Charged shots work great, though.
Once you stun Drogyga, a pair of large buttons will appear on either side of the room. You need to shoot the one to your left until it’s activated, then immediately grapple up to the little yellow rail piece to slide over to the other button. If you activate it in time, you’ll get a chance to do actual damage to Drogyga.
Once Drogyga is stunned, shoot the exposed core with missiles as much as possible. Once the boss raises a tentacle, stop shooting and be prepared to counter as soon as the spark appears. During this animation just keep hammering out missiles until you end up back where you started.
The second half of the fight is mostly the same, with slight variations. For the projectiles, now you have two reds and one blue. The tentacle swipes come out a little faster, but the strategy is the same. Finally, a third attack is introduced during which Drogyga readies a few of its tentacles on the floor. You have to grapple back up to that ceiling rail to avoid this one.
That’s all for Drogyga; repeat these steps until you take it down, and enjoy your newfound confidence for dealing with things underwater. You’ll get the Gravity Suit eventually, but for now you have street cred.
