Metroid Dread has been breaking series records and raking in rave reviews for its atmosphere, fast-paced, action gameplay and excellently designed boss fights. The Metroid series has a history of beloved, imposing monsters and villains as complex boss battles that the player is greatly rewarded for figuring out how to defeat. While Nintendo has shilled Samus’ arch-enemy, Ridley, in the vast majority of titles in the series, Dread has given the purple dragon a break to shine the spotlight on his less powerful counterpart, Kraid.
Kraid is one of the Space Pirates’ highest-ranking generals and often one of the earliest bosses Samus will encounter. Wielding a variety of very strange and disgusting attacks, such as tossing his regenerating claws at the player and shooting grotesque spikes from the orifices in his belly, Kraid’s most notable feature is his toweringly monstrous size. Despite these advantages, Kraid can be seen as something of a joke to veteran players, as the squishy weak point inside his mouth has led him into a series of humiliating defeats.
Ironically, Kraid’s most difficult battle is his very first appearance in the original NES Metroid, where he is also at his smallest. Standing at exactly Samus’ height, the tiny sprite of the original Kraid is the hardest boss in the game for being nearly invincible as all of his constantly-spamming projectiles cancel out Samus’ attacks. The best way to defeat him is to use the Ice Beam to freeze projectiles in place and then exploit the tiny window he is vulnerable in to blast him with lots of missiles and Morph Ball bombs. Otherwise, the player’s aim and timing must be extremely precise.
If that wasn’t bad enough, a player with a poor sense of direction may find themselves wandering into a series of rooms leading them to a fake Kraid in its own chamber. This imposter Kraid is slightly less challenging in that it doesn’t share the real one’s large health pool and has easier-to-dodge projectiles, but its defeat does not open the Stone Statues that are blocking the path to Tourian. The imposter Kraid shows up again in Super Metroid a few rooms ahead of the main boss room, tricking veteran players into thinking they had defeated the real Kraid–leading to a big surprise only moments later.
The real Kraid in Super Metroid is gigantic, jump-scaring Samus with his head burrowing and popping out of the ground ahead of her. The ground beneath Kraid’s head crumbles, revealing that the imposingly kaiju-sized Space Pirate takes up the space of about two television screens. Many of Kraid’s attacks remain the same as in the original game, but while it’s a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to shoot Kraid in the face first before firing up some Super Missiles in his throat, Kraid’s slowness and weak insides start a trend of Kraid being relegated to an early game boss.
Kraid’s final appearance until Dread would be Zero Mission, a remake of the original game that effectively retcons the beast from being a diminutive yet deadly Muppet reject into the lumbering paper tiger he was in Super Metroid. The tactics used in Super Metroid are exactly the same as in Zero Mission, although the improved sprite animations lead to Kraid now having a swiping attack that the player should watch out for. Beyond a cameo in Super Smash Bros, Zero Mission would be Kraid’s final on-screen appearance for 17 years.
Metroid Dread marks Kraid’s first appearance in a mainline Metroid game in over a decade, though the last surviving Space Pirate leader has fallen hard from whatever little grace he had left. Held prisoner in the Cataris sector of Planet ZDR, an enraged Kraid attempts to attack Samus with whatever strength he has left, with Samus herself barely giving the monster any acknowledgment beyond what can be considered disappointment as she nonchalantly blasts him in the mouth once again.
Kraid’s fight in Dread is his most difficult since his original NES appearance thanks to some new attacks, such as exploding vomit and acid projectiles from his stomach holes throwing the player off. But veteran players will eventually find Kraid goes down just as easily as he did before, pathetically being restrained to the very end as he falls to lava. Kraid’s status as a fan favorite has led to this much-lauded appearance in Dread, with fans hoping for the scrapped “Meta Kraid” to finally appear in the upcoming Metroid Prime 4.
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