Quadraxis was really the fight I was dreading.
I think the Sanctuary/Ing Hive is my favorite area in all of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. It’s not a huge pain to navigate, with most of it being a hub-and-spoke design, and many of the harder foes to beat aren’t the worst to just ignore. There’s not a whole lot of getting knocked off of narrow platforms if you just run past everything. Beyond that, it’s a very creative futuristic city design, which we certainly never get with the more naturalistic Chozo, and the red/blue swap between the Sanctuary and the Ing Hive tells you which world you’re in even with how quickly you’ll lose track what with all the use of portals here.
Metroid Prime 2’s boss fights are best summarized as “many stages.” Quadraxis is certainly a good example, though of course so was Chykka! However, unlike Chykka, Quadraxis never has a random weakness we haven’t seen anywhere else. It’s a supersized version of the drones it produces, which we’ve been fighting the whole time we’ve been in the Sanctuary, so we already know the main points of its weaknesses. Boost and bombs for the legs, then missiles for the head. There are some extra steps thrown in, but for the most part, it’s a known quantity. It just takes a while to get through it all. I’m glad it gave me so many health refills!