There’s cutting it close, and then there’s this.
A uniform thing across tough Metroid Prime bosses is that they have teeny tiny weak points that are rarely accessible. The beam absorption weapons system is perhaps the most annoying part of the Elite Pirates, because as far as I can tell it doesn’t actually have that missile weak point that their research keeps mentioning. At the very least, when I shoot a missile at it, it doesn’t seem to do anything. Maybe that’s Veteran difficulty, maybe I’m just not doing it right. Either way, it sure kept me from doing more than dodging for a massive part of the fight.
I think the Phazon Suit is pretty cool. Samus has been getting upgrades past the Gravity Suit for a few games now (though I think this was the first) and it’s always a neat addition. Plus the black-and-red color scheme here is just really well designed. Blue might be my favorite color, but stuff like this always looks great to me.