Samus Aran, the Galactic Federation’s greatest bounty hunter from Metroid.

Firefly, the former Iron Cavalry-turned-Stellaron Hunter from Honkai: Star Rail.

Throughout the vast cosmos, whispers abound of two unstoppable mechanical merchants of mass-destruction, said to leave entire planets trembling in their wake. These human weapons-turned-hunters leave a trail of wildfire across the cosmos, carrying with them the legacy of fallen empires. Even with their humanity diluted and their fates preordained, they will stop at nothing to achieve the futures they believe in, no matter the cost. Today, we’re taking a look at gaming’s iconic power-suit-powerhouses, repping old and new gens! Will Samus’ return to the G1 Death Battle Fan Blogs be a triumphant one, or will Firefly give Hoyoverse another score on the board? Only one of them can survive a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

For what to use for Samus, there’s a bit of a complicated answer with certain media, so let’s get the easy one out of the way. The primary source material, of course, is the main games. Each game is canon to each other and has a chronological order shown here by Nintendo (Dread is after Fusion it’s just not in the image 💔)

For more out there media, Metroid has various different manga and comics. This blog will by and large include all of them. The Zero Mission manga is a detailed story about Samus’ backstory, congruent with canon set up by various games and guides, so it’s completely fine. The Metroid Prime comic is a faithful retelling of events in the game, and Metroid Prime: Episode of Aether manga, while having its differences regarding who Samus meets up with, follows enough of the same same plot beats regarding planet Aether, the Luminoths VS Ing, etc., to be valid as secondary material. 

The Super Metroid Nintendo Power comics may seem like an out there source, but it was written and illustrated by Benimaru Itoh, who was a Japanese APE employee that worked on the Super Metroid: 2 hours and 59 minutes with Samus Aran guidebook as well, with that same guide featuring many pages of art only found in the Nintendo Power comic. That same guide is important, as it was the first piece of Metroid media to detail Samus’ backstory and establishes a lot of worldbuilding that later games come back to and reference. The comic exclusive character, Armstrong, while acting as a PoV character, is guided by Samus through the events of the game in a pretty one to one way and referencing specific details from the guidebook, including Samus’ backstory. While certainly a more out-there source, it would fit the criteria for secondary material.

Most controversial, of course, is Samus & Joey and its place in canon, as it’s a manga with no explicit references in the games and is a lot more action heavy than anything else in the series. In an interview, manga creator Idzuki Kouji clarified the manga takes place in between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion, and so has a defined point in the timeline. While Yoshio Sakamoto didn’t have huge supervision while Kouji was writing, the latter emphasized that his manga must have gotten scenario checks and changes, and he wrote the ending of the manga in mind to tie into Metroid Fusion. There are some contradictions though, as Metroids end up existing within this comic despite taking place after Super Metroid, and wouldn’t fully line up with some story beats in Other M. In spite of some oddities, it’ll be included for the sake of comprehension

As for Firefly, it is important to stress that we have elected to only analyze content pertaining to and within Honkai: Star Rail. Star Rail is technically part of a wider multiversal continuity, with several characters originating from or traveling to the game Honkai Impact 3rd. However, the goal of this blog is to focus on Firefly and what has been shown specifically in Star Rail, rather than a completely separate, unrelated game. This isn’t making a definitive stance on whether or not certain characters can or should scale across the games, but rather how we’ve chosen to approach this project to fit our vision for the matchup. We hope you understand, Impact 3rd fans.

Note: As a live service game, it is possible (even likely) that Firefly will receive alterations in the form of buffs to her in-game abilities sometime in the future. Not to mention, as the story progresses, new developments in scaling will inevitably arise. We will only be analyzing Firefly’s in-game abilities, resources and scaling as of the Version 3.5 update, so please keep that in mind!

Furthermore, neither series involved here will be given cross-franchise scaling in the form of collaborations or crossovers. That means no Smash Bros. for Samus, and no, Firefly isn’t going to be scaled to Saber because of the Fate/Stay Night collab. 

Now then, onto the hunters.

Background

Samus Aran

“Don’t worry… I’ll end this. Once and for all.”

• Full Name: Samus Aran
• Age: Late 20s
• Height: 190 cm
• Weight: 90 kg
• Species: Human, Chozo, Metroid
• Bounty hunter of the Galactic Federation
• Sole survivor of Earth colony K-2L
• Likes: Adam, Joey, Baby, Seguru, Etecoons, Dachoras
• Dislikes: Mother Brain, Ridley, Space Pirates, being told what to do

Somewhere, in a galaxy much like our own, space is as ruthless as one can imagine. Deadly space pirates scour planet after planet to bring anarchy, interdimensional shapeshifters seek to enter our universe to infect everything, and various parasitic creatures seek out to take our very places in life. In this cruel space, innocents die. The galaxy is no longer at peace… until one single hunter came in. One hunter who would bring justice to others and make sure nobody else would suffer the same past she did. 

Born on an Earth colony known as K-2L, young Samus Aran was an innocent girl living the best life she could with her loving parents. However, tragedy struck when a space pirate raid attacked the colony, led by the cunning Ridley. Samus’ mother died saving her life, and her father sacrificed himself to destroy Ridley’s flagship, and everyone else was brutally killed. Samus herself was the sole survivor, without anyone to help her, until an alien race known as the Chozo arrived, led by Old Bird. He took the young girl in his custody to their home planet, Zebes, and infused the young girl with Chozo DNA so she could survive the planet’s harsh conditions. For the next 14 years, Samus was trained in the art of battle to enhance her capabilities by her new family, until she was finally ready to head out and join the Galactic Federation and carry on the Chozo’s wish of galactic peace. She passed with flying colors, trained under Adam Malkovich, and eventually took on the occupation as a bounty hunter, becoming revered around the stars.

Soon, she was called forth by the Galactic Federation for an urgent reason; space pirates had infiltrated research shuttles containing a dangerous species, Metroids, and stole them to bring back to Zebes. Metroids have the deadly ability to absorb any form of energy, even life, and the artificial intelligence known as Mother Brain would mass-produce these Metroids as her own bio-weapons to bring order to the universe. The Galactic Federation needed Samus to return to the planet and destroy all Metroid organisms and defeat Mother Brain, on her very own zero mission. Samus accepted, and though she had trouble, she managed to avenge her parents by defeating Ridley and put an end to Mother Brain’s schemes.

 However, sometime later, the Galactic Federation, knowing the dangers these Metroids could pose to the universe, had Samus infiltrate their home planet of SR-388 to eliminate all Metroid life. Samus nearly succeeded, killing even mutated Metroids and their queen, until a single egg would change the course of her life. From a lonesome egg emerges a baby Metroid, and upon birth, imprints Samus as its mother. Samus knew the threat this creature could pose, but couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger; a sole survivor of its race with no one left to look after is something she knew far too well. Instead, she delivered the larva to Ceres’ galactic research station, in hopes the scientists would use its energy producing qualities for the good of civilization. 

Unfortunately, her old nemesis Ridley was still alive, attacked the station, slaughtered everyone, and stole the baby back to Zebes, as the space pirates had rebuilt their base of operations there. The pirates used the baby’s data to clone Metroids much stronger than normal, and yet Samus still proceeded to wipe out their leaders, including Ridley for good this time, and all the cloned Metroids. She encountered Mother Brain one last time, and despite her ever-growing strength and upgrades, she couldn’t handle the machine’s new form and upgrades. 

At the brink of death however, the baby Metroid, now enlarged and enhanced through unknown means, comes in to save her mother, draining Mother Brain of her life energy and giving it to Samus. Sadly, Mother Brain ruthlessly assaulted the baby, eventually killing it. Samus, in a fit of rage, absorbs the last of the baby Metroid’s stolen power and blasts Mother Brain to kingdom come, finally killing her and ending the threat of space pirates for good as she escapes the exploding Zebes. And yet, even with that victory, Samus felt hollow. She had found herself attached to the baby, even seeing it as her own child, and fell into a deep depression, drifting through space for weeks with no purpose.

Eventually, Samus received a “Baby’s Cry”-type distress signal directing her to a facility known as the BOTTLE SHIP. She found that a Federation vessel had also received the S.O.S. and had docked on the BOTTLE SHIP, the crew of which being the Galactic Federation 07th Platoon headed by Adam Malkovich, her old mentor. Throughout their exploration, they ended up discovering the BOTTLE SHIP is in truth, a base of operations for rogue Galactic Federation agents wanting to turn various lifeforms into dangerous bioweapons, including Metroids. 

The journey to ending the mad project resulted in several casualties, and eventually, Adam was forced to sacrifice his life in order to permanently destroy an indestructible species of Metroids. However, before his untimely death, Adam gave Samus words of encouragement; Samus was always a galactic savior, the best of the best, and she always had it in her to finish the mission, no matter the cost. With no objections, Samus swore to finish her fight, no longer chained down by the past, but moving forward. Not just for Adam, but for the baby Metroid, for the Chozo, and for others who suffered like her, putting an end to the dastard experiment and saving all galactic life.

With the threat of Metroids finally gone, Samus and an investigative team were later sent back to SR-388 to investigate it. There, however, Samus ended up being infected by the prey of the Metroid known as the X-Parasite. This deadly organism quickly spread through her suit and nearly killed her, and even surgically removing parts of her Power Suit didn’t increase her chances. It was only through a lucky sample of Metroid DNA from the baby injected into her bloodstream that Samus was able to cure herself, as the Metroids energy absorption counters the parasite. Once again, she owed her life to the baby, and would use this new ability to combat and destroy the X-Parasites terrorizing the BSL research station, including one mimicking her own Power Suit.

However, sometime later, a video transmission was sent to the Galactic Federation, showcasing an X-Parasite on the remote planet of ZDR. Samus was sent due to her prior experience, but was surprise attacked and ruthlessly beaten down by an unknown assailant, losing her powers in the process. In her path to recover them, she had a shocking encounter with Quiet Robe, a surviving Chozo from the Thoha tribe. He revealed to Samus that her attacker was a rogue Chozo known as Raven Beak, a member of the Chozo warrior tribe known as the Mawkin, and he intended to use the Metroids as, but what else, a bioweapon for galactic conquest. As such, Samus was the key to his success; her latent Metroid DNA was gradually awakening through combat, and he would use her awakening to mass-clone and revive the Metroids.

Try as she might to resist it, Samus’ Metroid powers only grew, eventually to where she can absorb life energy at will, exactly what Raven Beak wanted. As it turns out, Metroids were programmed to view the Mawkin as their enemies, and Raven Beak’s brief battle with Samus was just enough to act as the catalyst for her powers emerging. In combination with the reveal of her Mawkin Chozo DNA being inherited from Raven Beak, Samus and her technical father had to do battle in order to decide the fate of the galaxy. Despite the struggle and being outmatched, Samus’ Metroid powers finally awakened deep within, allowing her to kill Raven Beak and end the threat of X-Parasites once and for all before escaping the exploding ZDR.

What will become of Samus nowadays isn’t yet known, especially now that her latent Metroid powers are out and hard to control. However, no matter her own internal struggles or what the universe throws at her, Samus will always fight the good fight. So long as she has the drive to bring justice and save others, the drive to carry out the will of the Chozo’s wish for peace, and the drive to make sure nobody suffers like she did, then perhaps the galaxy can be at peace once again.

Firefly

“Like fyreflies to a flame…  life begets death.”

• Aliases: Stellaron Hunter SAM, Molten Knight, Samuel
• Affiliations: Glamoth’s Iron Cavalry (formerly), Stellaron Hunters
• WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. BOUNTY: 9,723,000,000 CREDITS
• Very fireful. Very flyshine.
• Great at killing, not so great at baking
• Actually called players on the phone IRL, proving she totes transcends fictionality
• Likes: Oak Cake Rolls, the Trailblazer, grilling
• Dislikes: Memes, gaming, spiders & roaches

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Glamoth Empire was in crisis. The Glamoth star system’s skies were perpetually blackened by the onset of the invasive Swarm – a self-replicating species of insectoids hellbent on destroying and reproducing at all costs. To combat this existential threat, the Republic of Glamoth developed the Iron Cavalry. Much like the self-propagating Swarm that overwhelmed the stars with an unending tide of replicable pests, the Iron Cavalry were designed to be mass-producible soldiers with a single goal: to dedicate their lives in perpetual battle with the Swarm, in service of their Empress.

AR-26710 was no different. Born from a cloning tube with no name, no rights, no choice, she dutifully served the Empire without question. Much like her brothers and sisters, AR-26710 was intentionally created with an incurable genetic disease known as Entropy Loss Syndrome, slashing her lifespan in half to ensure fealty to the Empire. Furthermore, the Cavalry were designed to be physically incapable of dreaming; literally crushing the possibility of foreseeing a life beyond the one they were built for. And indeed, the Iron Cavalry proved a loyal, one-track-minded counter-force to the Swarm. Their mission to repel the Swarm day-in and day-out was just barely sufficient enough to keep the invading pests at bay, for the time being.

However, despite the Empire’s best efforts, the Iron Cavalry proved to be more human than they intended. In secret, AR-26710 and her fellow clones developed personalities, individual preferences, and sought a future free of eternal conflict. Perhaps, they thought, when the war ended, they could learn to live amongst the society they fought to protect. And so, they dared to dream, even against their very biology, against the very purpose for their existence entirely. Surely, their lives were not as meaningless as the disposable cannon fodder they dispatched of every single day. Surely, there was more to life…

Like fireflies to a flame, however, life begets death. It is unknown when exactly the Empire fell; records only show that the Iron Cavalry’s birth-given mission never faltered, even in the face of existential annihilation. Nothing but the Swarm and the Cavalry remained, the unceasing tide of incomprehensible masses nearly successful in snuffing out the final embers of Glamoth from the universe. In one final, desperate effort, the Iron Cavalry deployed a scorched earth operation: literally obliterating the planet, themselves, and the Swarm’s queen with it.

When she awoke, she was far removed from her home planet. Who was she, anyway? With Glamoth wiped from the stars and the Iron Cavalry dismantled, AR-26710 ceased to exist. Instead, she found herself rescued by the galactic outlaws known as the Stellaron Hunters, who offered her a new lease on life. By aligning herself with their leader Elio, whose ‘scripts’ could foresee ones’ fate, the former Iron Cavalry soldier hoped to someday, somehow, find a future she could genuinely call her own. 

So began the life of SAM, the Stellaron Hunter. Together with the silver-tongued Kafka, edgelord heartthrob Blade, epic gamer Silver Wolf, and a certain gray-haired baseballer, SAM sought out Stellarons – basically powerful space cancers – across the universe, using her talents as a former Iron Cavalry to their fullest. Unlike her teammates, whose skills allowed them to systemically dismantle planets through hacking, infiltration, or sheer, literal undying perseverance, SAM’s skills made her the bona fide juggernaut of the group. Word quickly spread across star systems of the Stellaron Hunter, clad in silver armor, whose mere presence alone left seas ablaze and bodies in ashes.

When they weren’t committing intergalactic larceny, however, the Stellaron Hunters actually treated SAM like family. For the first time in her life, though the moments remained fleeting, she experienced something resembling normality. It was through their comradery that SAM finally realized life really could be more than constant fighting. Perhaps, if she followed Elio’s scripts, she would one day find a future where she could live a normal life. Even as her shortened lifespan ticked ever nearer to expiration, she dared to dream of a day when she could experience normal, mundane things, like school or romance.

To that end, SAM accepted a script from Elio, sending her to the Land of Dreams: Penacony. In this literal Dreamscape, you can do anything, be anything, anyone you want to be. For the first time since she had awoken in her new life, SAM could shed her armor, dress how she wanted, and of course, choose a new name for herself. Thus, Firefly was born. 

As fate would have it, Firefly’s mission on Penacony saw her cross paths with a former Stellaron Hunter-turned-Trailblazer, Caelus. Or Stelle, depending on which gender you picked. However, due to mysterious circumstances, the Trailblazer’s mind was purged of all their memories. For all intents and purposes, this person who had practically been Firefly’s family was now a stranger; in essence, this was their first time meeting. For but a fleeting moment in Penacony’s grand dream, the Trailblazer and Firefly shared an utterly normal, mundane night together. In a way, Firefly got to live out the dream she dared to hope for all along.

Of course, this sweet dream could not last forever. Firefly still had a mission to fulfill, and although she succeeded in aiding the Trailblazer’s efforts to liberate Penacony from a grand conspiracy, Elio’s script forced the two to once again go separate ways. Even so, Firefly continues to trust Elio’s guidance, knowing that her dream is one step closer to becoming reality. Perhaps someday she will finally be liberated from her armored shackles, free to live out the rest of her days – however short – in peace. 

Experience & Skill

Samus Aran

Samus is considered the greatest bounty hunter and warrior in the galaxy (if not the universe), and she’s earned that accolade over the years. She’s been trained in the strategies of battle by the Chozo since she was young, and once she enrolled in the Federation Police, she passed with flying colors and earned the position of Star-Tracker, an elite force that only one in a million police officers were qualified for. She’s been the Galactic Federation’s best bounty hunter for around a decade, encountering a wide variety of enemies across her adventures and coming out on top. Metroids, X-Parasites, space pirates, and even other Chozo, she’s seen it all and come out on top. For actual combat skill, Samus excels in several areas. She’s an excellent marksman, able to perform complex shots with pitch perfect accuracy. This ranges from disarming a group of enemies with a ricochet shot, to shooting down two ricocheting bullets out of the air at once from outside a bar. 

She excels in close range too, able to disarm several armed enemies and giving physical powerhouses equal to her a beating in hand to hand. She’s able to accurately time and parry enemy attacks with the melee counter, requiring intense reflexes and timing. Even 100 space pirates at once, all well trained in the arts of combat, were nothing to her, as she easily killed them all in a short time. In general, Other M, Samus Returns, and Dread showcase Samus as a very physical and up-close fighter if the situation calls for it, grappling opponents and either using that as an opportunity to shoot them or just swing them into the ground. Her naturally acrobatic skills compliment this, with some of her attacks focusing on kicks and her evading tactics being through jumps or sliding through.

Even outside of combat, Samus is quite clever. Given Metroid’s status as, well, a Metroidvania, exploration and puzzle solving is key, and Samus is quite adept and not only being able to figure out how to access hard to reach locations, but is an expert at knowing what abilities or weapons to mix and mash at the right time. She’s also a great pilot, and even designed her own Gunship at one point by herself through combining the technology of the Chozo with Galactic Federation technology. Even when participating in the deadliest race course in the galaxy against a group of bloodthirsty hunters with her ship being sabotaged, Samus still managed to clear it with her life.

Firefly

As a genetically-engineered super soldier, Firefly was quite literally made for this category. The tenants of the Iron Cavalry make clear that the soldiers pretty much did nothing but fight the Swarm 24/7, albeit we do know Firefly sometimes took brief breaks in-between missions to commune with her fellow Cavalry. The real problem is simply that we don’t know how long Firefly had been active as an Iron Cavalry before the fall of Glamoth. In the flashback to her very inception, we can see that the Cavalry were produced in a physical form identical to Firefly’s current age and likeness, so we can’t gauge years of experience based on appearance alone. The relic Glamoth’s Silent Tombstone states that the Iron Cavalry fought the Swarm for “decades”, which would provide at least a minimum of 20 years of combat, but Firefly’s exact timeline within the greater Glamoth chronology has not been clarified.

Regardless of the years, Firefly’s M.O. was engaging in life-or-death skirmishes with the Swarm constantly. They have corrosive acids, hallucinogenic spores, and sharp stabby talons, all things Firefly has grown accustomed to facing. After becoming a Stellaron Hunter, she’d have accrued more experience against humanoid threats, like swordsmen and the broader machinations of various civilizations. She’s fought Acheron and Black Swan, who use electric and wind elements respectively, as well as Argenti, who uses a bunch of shields and a lance.

In terms of skill, simply piloting the SAM armor is a feat in and of itself. According to Silver Wolf –  a techno-wizard skilled enough to bother one of the smartest geniuses in the universe – piloting the SAM armor would be too difficult for her, even with her vast array of gaming and tech-based knowledge. Bear in mind that Silver Wolf’s whole thing is essentially hacking and interfacing with reality itself, and she can’t wrap her head around the SAM armor. 

Firefly is pretty sharp to adapt to new experiences, too. When she was controlling Hanu alongside the Trailblazer, she quickly grew accustomed to the… unique experience. She’s alluded to handling yet-unseen weapons, and was skilled enough in combat to both stall with a master swordswoman and kill a 700 year old sword master. In battle, she rarely ever holds back, opting to incinerate her foes first, then ask questions if anyone’s around after.

Equipment

Samus Aran

Beam Weapons

Samus’ default weapon integrated into her arm cannon is the Power Beam, allowing her to shoot streams of energy to damage foes. While low in power, it can be rapidly fired, still providing utility, and she can upgrade it with other beam weapons listed below for varying effects.

• Long Beam: Allows the arm cannon greater reach with its energy shots. Interestingly, this appears only in the original Metroid and in Zero Mission, but appears to be a default within other games, implying it’s an upgrade Samus permanently kept.
• Charge Beam: An upgrade to her arm cannon, Samus can charge the energy within for a single, powerful burst of energy to knock down most foes. When used in conjunction with other Beam weapons, it ends up enhancing the effects and power of the other weaponry.
• Diffusion Beam: An amplification of the Charge Beam, the Diffusion Beam similarly requires charge up, but upon impact with an enemy or surface, explodes into a wide blast radius to hit more enemies.
• Spazer Beam / Wide Beam: If long-range wasn’t good enough, Samus can equip this specific ability to fire a spread-shot version of her beam weapon of choice, firing three energy shots at once and allowing for a better strike zone to attack multiple enemies at once.
• Wave Beam: This specific beam allows Samus’ energy attacks to ignore solid surfaces entirely, phasing through them to attack enemies hiding behind them. In the Metroid Prime games, the Wave Beam instead fires streams of electrical energy to shock or even paralyze foes. It can even be charged to fire a continuous electric stream with good range and even better damage.
• Ice Beam: One of Samus’ preferred weapons to combat against Metroids, the Ice Beam fires a sub-zero cold beam attack to freeze objects and enemies solid, and can be charged to spread across the ground. It both makes them viable as platforms to ascend to greater heights or easier to shatter with a powerful enough attack. Some descriptions describe the Ice Beam as freezing organic life to their own individual freezing point, while others say it can halt the entropy of its targets to cut them off from space-time, an explanation for why they can remain frozen mid-air.
• Plasma Beam: Perhaps the strongest individual beam weapon, the Plasma Beam can pierce through any defense and destroy most enemies in one shot. In Super Metroid, this is explained as causing the victims to implode through nuclear fusion, destroying them on an atomic level. However, the Metroid Prime games and onwards give it a much different description, instead living up to its name of being superheated plasma to melt and burn nearly any material or foe. Charging it up allows it to act like a flamethrower, firing a continuous stream of fire with the cost of short range in exchange for incredible firepower.
• Grapple Beam: A unique tether beam of energy Samus can use to attach to various objects. Samus typically uses it for traversal by swinging around the area to reach inaccessible areas, but it can be upgraded for other usages. The Grapple Lasso can let Samus attach to certain surfaces and rip them away or apart with enough strength, even enemy shields and weaponry. The Grapple Voltage lets Samus latch onto a target and either siphon their energy, damaging them while restoring Samus’ suit durability, or alternatively transferring Samus’ energy to them, dealing much greater damage over time at the cost of some health.
• Nova Beam: A high frequency beam that can pierce any object, even substances as durable as Phazite, which is normally immune to Samus’ weaponry. If used in conjunction with an x-ray visor, Samus can target the internal organs of her enemy and bypass conventional defenses, proving a devastating combination of technology.

Missiles

A key offensive tool in every Metroid game, Samus can shoot, well, a missile, for much greater firepower than her normal energy shots and with greater range. There are several upgrades to this simple ability Samus has had access to over the years

• Super Missile: A much stronger variant of the normal missile, with three times the firepower and capable of one shotting enemies impervious to her normal attacks.
• Ice Missile: A chilling variant of Samus’ normal missiles, these specific types can freeze enemies on contact alongside dealing damage, making them easier to shatter, or freeze objects for platforming.
• Diffusion Missile: A much stronger version of the Ice Missile, as it bursts upon contact into a wide blast radius. The blast radius sends out four giant snowflake like constructs, of which anything impacted is frozen solid.
• Seeker Missile: As the name suggests, these missiles feature a lock-on feature to home in on enemies. Samus is able to lock-on to five enemies at once in order to shoot five missiles at once, allowing a good amount of utility. An even stronger version appears in Metroid Dread known as the Storm Missiles, where Samus can fire five series of three micromissiles onto targets, firing up to fifteen missiles at once.

Morph Ball

Samus can utilize the Power Suit to transform into a small sphere to explore tight spaces. While Samus is unable to use her normal weapons and is less mobile, the Morph Ball form provides a few abilities and weapons to make it worth it

• Spring Ball: More of a quality-of-life upgrade than anything, the Spring Ball allows Samus to jump in her Morph Ball form.
• Spider Ball: Allows Samus to attach herself to magnetic systems or surfaces, allowing for easier vertical traversal.
• Boost Ball: By charging up energy, Samus gets a speed boost for quick travel and even being able to plow through and damage enemies.
• Morph Ball Bomb: Samus can drop a seemingly endless supply of miniature time bombs to both destroy objects, damage enemies, or give an extra height boost for exploration.
• Power Bomb: Perhaps Samus’ most dangerous weapon, the Power Bomb is a time bomb that, upon detonation, emits a superheated shockwave capable of vaporizing any foe, even robots as large as the Diggernaut. Almost nobody can survive it, usually one shotting regular enemies and dealing heavy damage to bosses. They also possess a curious healing power, in which Samus can transfer the energy Power Bombs release upon detonation to completely heal herself, a technique known as the Crystal Flash. However, it requires 11 Power Bombs, 10 Missiles, 10 Super Missiles, and less than 50 units of life energy in order to accomplish, making it very situational.

Speed Booster

Perfect for speedruns, the Speed Booster enhances Samus to travel at super speeds in a straight path, with enough momentum to destroy enemies and structures blocking her way, or use the momentum in tandem with her jumping to cross great leaps. By charging enough momentum in a Speed Booster state, Samus can utilize the Shinespark technique, allowing her to charge at full speed in any direction she wants with intense kinetic energy.

Screw Attack

Samus surrounds herself in an energy field that damages all foes within contact if she performs a somersault jump, acting as an energy buzzsaw and protecting her from damage. When used in conjunction with the Space Jump upgrade, Samus can do an infinite number of jumps, and stay surrounded in that energy field indefinitely until she lands on a surface.

Reserve Tanks

Found in Super Metroid, the Reserve Tanks are extra piles of energy tanks Samus can carry with her, up to four at a time. These allow her to recharge the Power Suit’s energy shield system for a full tank, letting her stay in the game longer. She can also set them automatically to activate when her systems are reaching zero, giving her an ‘extra life’, so to speak. These tanks can be recharged through the Crystal Flash technique as well, though as explained above, its situational.

Affinity Weapon

A series of weapons used by the various bounty hunters Samus encounters in Metroid Prime Hunters, of which she encounters variants of in her travels around the Alimbic Cluster. Each weapon has their own unique descriptions and usages in combat

• Volt Driver: Fires quick moving multi-terawatt voltage blasts by drawing energy from a planet’s electromagnetic field. When fully charged, it fires a giant ball of energy for big damage at the cost of slow speed.
• Battlehammer: By using a miniature nuclear reactor, this weapon can fire and propel heavy projectiles at rapid fire.
• Imperialist: A quantum cascade laser equipped with a zoom function to act as a sniper weapon.
• Judicator: Fires supercooled plasma at near absolute zero temperatures to freeze almost anyone in its tracks. Charging it fires three shots in different directions.
• Magmaul: Fires superheated magma projectiles thanks to a hyperstatic hydrogen core burning at thousands of degrees. When charged, it fires a stronger and bigger projectile with a greater impact radius.
• Shock Coil: Shoots a continuous stream of energy powered by high-density neutrinos with concussive force, accumulating more damage with longer exposure.

Suits

On some journeys, the Power Suit just isn’t enough to get through the greatest threats in the galaxy. That’s why Samus occasionally gets different suit upgrades above her normal Power Suit to even the odds. Any weapon or ability exclusive to a suit will be listed here.

Zero Suit

What it says on the tin, the Zero Suit is Samus without wearing an actual suit of armor, more than likely due to it being disabled. Instead, she wears a blue tightsuit that makes her significantly weaker and more fragile, but allows faster movement speed and less restrictive acrobatic skills. She also comes equipped with a paralyzer shot to stun enemies and break objects, so she’s not completely worthless. Still, given even regular space pirates can seriously damage her while like this, Samus is a lot more comfortable having actual defenses in combat.

Power Suit

The face of the series, the Power Suit is Samus’ main armor throughout all her travels. As a result of being made from her DNA sequence, it acts as a second skin of sorts for the bounty hunter, with bio-mechanical and organic components making it as tough as the skin of a Chozo. The armor is durable enough to let Samus sustain ballistic damage, and has life-support systems to protect her from foreign pollutants, let her breathe underwater, and even survive the vacuum of space. The suit also has energy shields to absorb damage before it impacts her physically, ensuring she’d be safe until it runs out. Even on the off chance it is damaged, the suit has a self-repair system that can restore broken armor parts back, and should skilled hackers or deadly viruses invade it, the suit comes equipped with a reboot system to fend them off.

Defense isn’t the armor’s only strong suit, as it comes with several other ways to aid Samus in combat or exploration. It boosts all of Samus’ superhuman physicality, and comes equipped with rocket thrusters that she only uses like two times ever to help increase her mobility and jumping height. The suit has an auto-targeting system to help Samus’ already impressive marksmanship skills, as well as built-in sensors and radars to detect enemies and assess environmental threats. It also has a built-in map system that updates with her real-time discoveries, fleshing out her location’s geography, structure, hidden paths, and more, making backtracking for exploration significantly easier for her and players.

Perhaps the Power Suit’s most notable ability is the various visors in its disposal, of which will be listed below.

• Combat Visor: The Power Suit’s default visor which highlights enemies, energy gauges, lock-on reticles, etc., through a heads-up-display for Samus to see.
• Scan Visor: Unassuming at first, but one of Samus’ most important tools, as the Scan Visor can take a short scan of anything and immediately provide Samus with crucial data. Whether it be Space Pirate logs, information on the Chozo, enemy resistances and weaknesses, etc., the Scan Visor can gather any information from it. Even beings with no publicly known data like the Chozo Ghosts or Metroid Prime are able to be scanned and deduced by the visor, making it extremely helpful in helping Samus form a strategy in the heat of battle. The visor also detects environmental hazards and can hack several forms of machinery.
• Thermal Visor: Allows Samus to detect heat signatures and track foes. It’s primarily useful in cloudy areas or dark rooms, or to even help spot enemies utilizing optical camouflage. However, brightly lit areas or explosions can impair the visor’s line of sight, meaning it’s a bit situational.
• X-Ray Visor: Samus can use this to see through enemies, illusions, or solid surfaces. Even enemies like the Chozo Ghosts, who can phase out of existence, can be detected through this visor. However, robotic enemies can jam its frequency, which would make it less reliable.
• Echo Visor: With this special visor on her travels in the planet Aether, Samus can use it to see her surroundings through echolocation. This lets her see otherwise invisible enemies and objects, as well as interact with sound based technology or attacks.
• Dark Visor: Gifts Samus with the ability to detect interdimensional objects or beings that are normally impossible to spot and attack them.
• Command Visor: Allows Samus to remotely control and operate her Gunship, bringing it to her location to either aid her in puzzle solving or for combat (see Gunship).

Varia Suit

An upgrade to the already impressive Power Suit, the Varia Suit increases the Power Suit’s normal capabilities like enhanced durability. For its own unique features, it’s able to help Samus better withstand extreme heat, and completely protect her from the corrosive effects of acid. It also has some defenses for cold temperatures, like withstanding the subzero temperatures of Sector 5 in Metroid Fusion or withstanding shots from the Judicator’s near absolute-zero plasma blasts in Metroid Prime Hunters (nearly -459.67 °F), though it’s inconsistent between games.

Gravity Suit

What is usually Samus’ final suit upgrade in most of her games, the Gravity Suit improves the Varia’s Suit high defense. More importantly, the old suits’ resistances to extreme temperatures are now immunities with this suit, letting Samus withstand being submerged in lava (1,470 to 2,190 °F) or extreme cold the Varia Suit can struggle against. Its most important feature is of course in the name, as the Gravity Suit allows Samus to negate any gravitational hindrance or effect on her own body, such as being submerged underwater or intense gravitational fields. This lets her walk and run in such pressure as she would normally, key for exploration.

Phazon Suit

After defeating the Omega Pirate, Samus absorbed the leftover Phazon from their defeat and infused it with her armor to upgrade to the Phazon Suit. Aside from increasing defenses, its main trait is how it interacts with Phazon; specifically, it allows Samus to be immune to its radiation effects entirely, and when near the presence of Phazon, can absorb and channel it to greatly boost her firing power. However, too much Phazon can end up overloading the suit and making it inaccessible.

Dark Suit

Originally worn by one of the great Luminoth Keybearers to attack the Ing, the Dark Suit similarly grants enhanced durability above the Varia Suit. However, more specific to it, Samus’ is much more resistant to the toxic atmosphere of Dark Aether. More importantly, the Dark Suit provides Samus with more exclusive and unique weaponry to combat the threat of the Ing. Most notable of these is the Dark Beam, as it fires energy similar to the energy source of Dark Aether. Charging it brings forth the Entangler technique that encases and petrifies caught targets within a wide radius, leaving them open to easy shattering from other weaponry. With a Charge Combo, the Darkburst technique is fired, a slow moving projectile that opens a rift to an alternate dimension and pulls enemies in. 

There’s also the Annihilator Beam, a secret Luminoth weapon powered by both light and dark energy, it fires matter-antimatter blasts to home in on targets. When charged with enough energy, it unleashes the Disruptor technique, which trades the lock-on feature for a huge energy wave with a big blast radius. Its Charge Combo is Sonic Boom, projecting a wave of powerful sonic forces that can strike multiple targets at once and seemingly distorting space.

Light Suit

The ultimate creation of the Luminoth to combat the Ing, powered by the planetary energy of the Light of Aether. It improves her physical capabilities and defense while also making her completely immune to Dark Aether’s poisonous world and effects. Its only major weapon is the Light Beam, an attack that fires beams of light to set them ablaze and even hit multiple at once. Charging it up fires Lightblast, which instead shoots out a stream of white hot light balls instead of beams with good covering range. With a Charge Combo, Samus can unleash Sunburst, a big slow moving projectile of light that burns and incinerates anyone unfortunate enough to stand in its path.

PED Suit

After barely surviving a brutal attack from Dark Samus, Samus herself was put in a coma for a month, infected by the radioactive Phazon. However, she didn’t show many negative signs of health, and so the Galactic Federation used their technology to upgrade her Varia Suit to the Phazon Enhancement Device Suit, or PED Suit. It offers all the same bonuses as the Varia Suit, but now with the ability to safely channel the Phazon slowly corrupting Samus without too many side effects. The gimmick is that, due to her body naturally producing Phazon, Samus can sacrifice an energy tank to enter Hypermode, greatly increasing her firepower, invulnerability to almost any form of attack, and granting her Phazon-powered weaponry, of which is listed below.

• Hyper Beam: A much stronger version of the Charge Beam that fires bursts of Phazon energy. Samus can charge this attack to unleash a rapid-fire stream of Phazon that boasts limited homing capabilities and deals even greater damage.
• Hyper Ball: By going into Morph Ball, Samus can use this attack, which releases Phazon in the form of numerous bolts of electricity that arc out from her Morph Ball in every direction and automatically strike nearby foes.
• Hyper Missile: A much faster weapon than most of Samus’ other attacks, in which a Hyper Missile bursts into a Phazon-enhanced explosion for greater damage.
• Hyper Grapple: Samus can utilize this weapon to latch onto foes to either drain them of their energy and / or Phazon, or overwhelm what she’s attached to with Phazon energy.

It is worth noting that Samus can’t stay in Hypermode for too long, for anything longer than 10 seconds causes her Phazon to overreact and bring her into Corrupted Hypermode. The trade off in having much more Phazon ammunition for attacks is that Samus is now at risk of succumbing to Phazon’s corruptive properties. If she lets too much Phazon accumulate, she ends up being a servant to Dark Samus’ will, making Hypermode risky to use.

For additional information, Samus integrated the Hazard Shield into the suit to increase defense and protect her from hazardous environments, like the terrible acid rain on the space pirate world. It’s also worth noting that, due to the weaponry being Phazon-based, that they could potentially share the same abilities that normal Phazon offers, though given that none of Samus’ Phazon attacks apply them in game, this is speculative. Hypothetically, it could give her:

• Radiation and Poison: Phazon is a highly radioactive and corrosive substance, with enough concentrated pools of it killing living organisms in seconds.
• Corruption and Mind Manipulation: Phazon can end up corrupting others and turning them either violent or servants to the users will, such as Chozo Ghosts for the former and the Prime 3: Corruption bounty hunters for the latter.
• Mutation: Enough exposure to Phazon mutates organisms to great size and amplifies their power, at the cost of degrading their brain tissue and shortening their lifespan.

Fusion Suit

When Samus’ suit was infected by the X-Parasite, she was knocked unconscious and unable to separate from it in such a state, as she is physically bonded to the armor when wearing it. Because of this, the Galactic Federation had to surgically tear apart the infected parts to save her life. With much of her special abilities gone, the Fusion Suit is basically a watered down version of the Power Suit, with its only unique armor function being retractable blades that Samus never uses. Hey, may as well be comprehensive.

Gunship

While designs vary across the series, Samus always has a handy Gunship on hand to help her traverse the endless abyss of space. Even normally, it’s able to travel thousands of kilometers in seconds, but the Gunship comes equipped with a warp drive function, allowing it to de-materialize in 3D space and ‘jump’ intergalactic distances quickly. For other benefits, the Gunship has microfactories to help Samus restore ammunition if she enters inside, as well as a mobile energy recharge system to heal all damage done. It has forcefields for defense, and in the off-chance it is damaged, the Gunship has an auto-repair function to make it good as new with time.

With the Command Visor, Samus can call over the Gunship to her location for two uses. The first is to help rain down hell onto unsuspecting enemies. As such, it’s equipped with powerful ship missiles to annihilate anyone below and destroy objects Samus can’t dent normally, like massive shield generators. For the second, it can help Samus progress further in uncharted territories, and that’s where the ship’s unique Grapple Beam comes in. This allows it to tether to and lift incredibly heavy objects, allowing Samus to puzzle solve without an object blocking her way. If the Gunship is suddenly attacked and on the brink of destruction, it has an emergency eject button to send Samus flying straight away, protecting her from its explosion.

Firefly

Fyrefly Type-IV Strategic
Assault Mech (SAM)

Glamoth’s Iron Cavalry units came equipped with variations of the Fyrefly Type-IV battle suits, and Firefly is no exception. By default, Firefly carries a condensed handheld device that she can activate at-will to fully form the SAM armor around her. It’s unclear how exactly she fits in there, given the rather pronounced difference in her proportions in-VS-out of the armor, but we do know she is still physically present, somehow. 

Designed solely for life-and-death battle with the Swarm, SAM possesses powerful pyrokinetic abilities and enhanced, superhuman strength. Aside from thermal weaponry, the SAM armor comes packed with rocket thrusters for free-range flight and wrist-mounted explosive artillery; those same wristguards are also designed for crushing massive Swarm beasts, let alone a smaller, human-like target. Moreover, the suit’s helmet greatly enhances Firefly’s sensory signals via spinal cord stimulation, to ensure her actions have maximum synchronicity with her armor. 

Naturally, the armor is meant to protect the soldier within. To that end, the SAM armor boasts an impressive resistance to a Swarm insectoid’s biological quirks. The armor vaporizes corrosive chemicals on contact, and the helmet’s filters protect the Iron Cavalry from the Swarm’s hallucinogenic fibrous particles emitted from flight. It can withstand air pressure millions of times greater than ‘normal’, and protects the Iron Cavalry soldier from radiation, even in such immense quantities found in things like blue stars; among the hottest, most radioactive stars in the universe. 

Despite all this, the suit is not invincible, and with sufficient firepower, it can essentially be vaporized off Firefly’s body, leaving her completely vulnerable… However, given enough time to recover, she also re-manifested her armor after that happened to her, so the suit might not actually be one individual, irreplaceable item. It’s possible the SAM armor is more like a physical structure given shape through Firefly’s will directly, with its limits only defined by Firefly herself.

Light Cones

In the world of Star Rail, memories are tangible, powerful phenomena, particularly when coalesced into a Light Cone. These physical light constructs contain within them the literal memories of significant individuals, making them invaluable to those who procure such delicacies, such as Memokeepers. In gameplay, they provide certain stat bonuses and special effects to the user.

Firefly can equip any individual Light Cone at a time, but she can only fully benefit from those that align with her in-game Path classification, that being Destruction. As such, we’ll only be covering pertinent Light Cones she can use at their full potential. If you’d like to see a list of all possible Light Cones, you can check that out here.

Generally speaking, Firefly’s Light Cones offer a frankly redundant amount of damage-boosting options, though the exact numeric values differ slightly. Some Light Cones increase her combat speed, critical hit ratio & damage, special attack damage, self-healing abilities, or even her total cumulative HP value. Others allow her to regain energy simply by landing basic attacks, heal automatically after taking any kind of damage, and even ignore up to 36% of her opponent’s defenses when landing attacks. 

Firefly’s signature Light Cone amplifies her ability to shatter enemy defenses, chipping down their Toughness meter by boosting her Break Effect substantially. Those who have their defenses broken by Firefly in this manner also take increased damage from her follow-up attacks for extra battle-ending efficiency.

Relics

In Star Rail, every character can use phantasmal equipment based on data coalesced throughout the universe. Much like Light Cones, Firefly can use any sets in the game, but only a set few are actually designed for her specifically. We’ll cover the most notable directly below, but if you want a list of every possible Relic Firefly can use, you can find that here. Most Relics give slight buffs to Firefly’s stats, so most of them are redundant compared to each other. The following are the sets designed specifically to bolster Firefly’s capabilities above all others:

Iron Cavalry Against
the Scourge

Composed of a Homing Helm, Crushing Wristguard, Silvery Armor and Skywalk Greaves, this Relic set represents an entire Iron Cavalry battle suit, much like the one Firefly wears in combat. We covered what that can do earlier, so all you need to know now is that this specific Relic set allows Firefly’s attacks to ignore 10% of her opponent’s defenses in battle, followed by an additional 15% if she has a ton of Break Effect stat. Which she very much should, so that’s nice.

Forge of the
Kalpagni Lantern

This set is derived from the progenitor of all heliobi, basically space spirits and yokai. More specifically, the Primordial Flame, the Flint Emperor, a being as large as a literal star. It was defeated in battle ages ago, its eternal body enshackled and used as a never-ending fuel supply for the interstellar Xianzhou Alliance. This set is composed of a Planar Sphere and Link Rope that, when combined, increase Firefly’s speed and Weakness Break capabilities by 40%.

Abilities

Samus Aran

Superhuman Physicality
& Willpower

Due  to being infused with Chozo DNA, specifically those of the Mawkin warrior tribe, Samus is far above what the average human is capable of. Even outside of her Power Suit, she can perform superhuman jumps, survive her ship crash landing, withstand and adapt to the harsh conditions of almost any planet, and has gained endurance great enough to hold up against almost any form of punishment. Going through atomic disintegration or having her powers ripped out of her body isn’t enough to put her down, and she can bring out just enough willpower to continue attacking. Even holding the Power Suit together requires mental fortitude unheard of for an ordinary person. Her willpower is so great that, when under intense emotions like rage, Samus’ strength can unexpectedly increase up to 5 times, allowing her to gain the upper hand on enemies previously overwhelming her.

Aeion Abilities

Aeion is a mysterious energy source primarily found in SR-388, believed to be linked to the Chozo. Due to this link, Samus’ Power Suit was compatible with the energy system and is able to utilize several special abilities to temporarily aid her in battle or exploration. 

• Scan Pulse / Pulse Radar: Samus releases a pulse of Aeion / soundwaves, revealing a portion of the map area around her and hidden secrets like breakable blocks.
• Lightning Armor: Samus creates an electrical energy field around the Power Suit to protect her from some forms of damage and increase the range of her Melee Counters.
• Beam Burst: Allows Samus to enhance the power of her currently equipped beam weapon and has rapid-fire shots for more damage.
• Phase Drift: Samus uses Aeion to slow down time around her, letting her run over collapsing floors or handle fast enemy attacks easier.
• Phantom Cloak: By refracting light around her, Samus utilizes optical camouflage to appear invisible to the untrained eye. How long she can stay invisible depends on how quick she’s moving; standing still depletes her Aeion normally, but moving or attacking drains it quicker. If her Aeion runs out, she can sacrifice her life energy to remain invisible for longer.
• Flash Shift: Samus can channel Aeion to boost her speed in short-bursts either forward or backward up to three times, even mid-air. Primarily useful for exploration or dodging enemy attacks.

Her usage of these abilities depends on her Aeion Gauge to draw upon its energy, with one Aeion Ability fully draining it. She’s able to quickly self-replenish this energy when the abilities aren’t taking effect, though it means she has to be careful when to utilize them or what ability to use.

Concentration

To replace Other M’s lack of missile and energy ammunition, Samus instead utilizes concentration. By focusing the energy from her Arm Cannon, she’s able to heal up to a full tank of life energy and replenish missile reserves at once. However, Samus has to stand still to use it effectively, so it’s preferable in scenarios where she’s not under attack.

Metroid Energy Draining

As a result of being infused with Metroid DNA to prevent infection with the X-Parasite, Samus inherited the species’ primary ability to absorb energy. While originally only used to absorb X Parasites, her encounter with Raven Beak, a Mawkin, awakened the Metroid killer instinct within her and accelerated her development. Now through physical contact, Samus is able to drain the energy powering machines or even the very life energy of other living beings. In particular, draining the life energy of others replenishes Samus’ own, healing any damage done to her.

Resistances

• Corrosion: Samus implied she’d be safe from Zebes’ acid rain, and the Varia Suit protects her from acid attacks, even ones potent enough to melt steel.
• Extreme Temperatures: The Varia Suit makes Samus more resistant to hot and cold temperatures, and the Gravity Suit makes her outright immune.
• Electricity: Withstands Wave Beam attacks from Wave Troopers, which use the same technology as her own Wave Beam and are potent, albeit less so. Can withstand hits from the multi-terawatt Volt Driver and is only slightly damaged by electrified water.
• Radiation, Corruption, and Mind Manipulation: While not immune, Samus has shown to withstand Phazon damage better than anyone else, being able to survive exposure to large pools of Phazon and fighting back Dark Samus’ attempts at corruption when the other bounty hunters in Prime 3 failed to do so. Even when absorbing large amounts of Phazon and it visibly affecting her, Samus was able to still make it out alive.
• Poison: Withstands exposure to Dark Water, a venomous liquid, and is fine being hit by toxic vapor. Her suit also protects her from foreign pollutants.
• Life Energy Absorption: Can withstand Metroids sucking away her life energy with struggle, but fares better against most others who die within seconds.
• Gravity Manipulation: The Gravity Suit negates any affect on Samus’ own personal gravity.
• Electro-magnetism: Her Power Suit functioned fine in an electromagnetic storm that short-circuited her Gunship and bypassed an electrical interference that jammed other communication systems.
• Matter Manipulation / Deconstruction: Samus, while heavily injured, withstood an attack that was disintegrating her atoms. Can also withstand Hecathon’s beam of light, which deconstructs anyone caught in it into particles.
• Potentially Antimatter: Withstands shots from Quadraxis’ “matter antimatter” attack, though whether it works like actual antimatter is unknown.

Firefly

Extrasensory Perception

Firefly’s senses are demonstrably sharper than those of the Trailblazer, who is rather extraordinary in and of themselves. She was able to completely accurately analyze and gauge the fine details of someone stalking her with just a few glances, assessing their height, weapon of choice, and intentions. This suggests she would also be able to perceive things the Trailblazer can, such as the ghost-like Wubbaboos.

Pyrokinesis

The Strategic Assault Mech’s specialty in combat is centered around pyrokinesis, thanks to the suit’s built-in thermal weaponry. Expulsing flames from the chest, palms, back, and legs, nearly every inch of SAM is incredibly dangerous. Simply standing near the armor for too long can sear those without proper protection, and it is intentionally hot enough to vaporize incoming corrosive acids before they can deal any significant damage. Even on the lowest setting, the SAM armor’s thermal gear is hot enough to be used as a grill for meat. Which Firefly has used, to surprisingly good effect!

In combat, Firefly weaponizes her flames like a Firebending Kamen Rider. Basic punches and Rider Kicks become exponentially more deadly with extra bursts of flame-on-impact, but that’s only scratching the surface of her techniques. She can upheave the very ground she stands on with a stomp, scorching the upheaved chunks in the process to create an area-of-effect attack. Not only that, she can generate flaming twisters, spew flamethrowers from her fists, or even create pillars of flame so intense, they propel her into the skies for aerial meteoric assaults. 

Weakness Break

Firefly’s specialty in combat is absolutely annihilating her enemies’ Toughness stat via Weakness Break. In laymen’s terms, think of Toughness as a shield that passively reduces all incoming damage, no matter what. By attacking that shield with the proper element types, Firefly can destroy that barrier. In doing so, enemies become stunned and vulnerable for a period of time, allowing her to deal even further free damage in the process. In the event that an enemy isn’t weak to fire, Firefly’s sole elemental type, she can just forcibly implant a weakness to fire onto them with her attacks, ensuring she is always at her best.

Flight

Whether in her base SAM state or the Complete Combustion, Firefly can propel herself through the air to achieve flight; the latter state seemingly faster, and does not require her to use her thermal weapons for propulsion. She’s flown fast enough to break the sound barrier (seen above), even breaching escape velocity in the past. 

The Iron Cavalry are capable of interstellar flight, but we should note that there is no hard evidence they can traverse entire star systems themselves, either through warp speeds or pure flight. We do know that Glamoth would transport Iron Cavalry bastions throughout space on their own ships, meaning the Cavalry would not need interstellar flight capabilities. Even when Firefly has alluded to traveling to star systems in the present, she is aligned with the Stellaron Hunters, who have their own starship for traversal, and we know on at least one occasion she did indeed travel with them, not on her own.

Chrysalid Pyronexus

Firefly’s Talent allows her to passively reduce the amount of damage she receives proportionate to her HP, meaning she is sturdier at lower cumulative health; she can reduce incoming hits by up to 44% of the original impact in this manner. She also enjoys a hefty 34% added resistance to incoming status effects and ailments, and automatically recovers energy when starting a battle. If she reaches full energy in a fight, she’ll automatically dispel all debuffs currently active on her, regardless of if she’s asleep or otherwise incapacitated.

Traces

• Module α: Antilag Outburst – In the Complete Combustion form, when Firefly attacks an opponent with no Fire weakness, their shielding is reduced dramatically to compensate.
• Module β: Autoreactive Armor – In the Complete Combustion form, attacking Weakness-Broken enemies deals increased Super-Break damage.
• Module γ: Core Overload – Firefly’s attack stat directly proportionately increases her Break Effect.

Eidolons

In Greek Mythology, an Eidolon represented something akin to a spiritual apparition of the deceased. However, later interpretations, such as those by poet Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”, refer to Eidolons as an idealized shadow of permanence, the ‘true form’ of a physical body or material reality – not just of the dead. Everything has an eternal ideal essence, an Eidolon; therefore, physical ‘reality’ itself is illusory, since Eidolons are, in fact, the truest forms of ‘self’. In short, they are basically eternal records of a person’s truest, rawest experiences.

Anyway, if you bust open your wallet, Firefly’s Eidolons unlock, granting her substantial permanent enhancements to her combat capabilities. For instance, in her Complete Combustion state, her attacks become amplified, ignoring 15% of the enemy’s defenses when struck and the ability to pierce Fire elemental resistances by 20%. Furthermore, she gains an additional 50% resistance to status effect ailments and becomes even more proficient at busting down her enemy’s Weakness Break defenses. 

Resistances

• Corrosives – The SAM armor vaporizes corrosive acids before they can pose a threat to the Iron Cavalry within.
• Radiation – The SAM armor can protect Firefly from the radiation of a blue star, which can have potentially millions of times more radiation than the Earth’s Sun.
• Elemental Damage – Firefly naturally has a 20% damage resistance to physical, fire, ice and wind-based attacks. Furthermore, she enters battle by default with an immunity to all Weakness Break elemental types. This basically just means she’s not weak to any elements, whether it be fire, wind, or lightning, etc. They still damage her, but won’t do extra damage to her protective shields.
• Entropy Dysfunction – The SAM armor is specifically designed to be a medical cabin for Firefly’s Entropy Loss Syndrome. Inside the armor, her out-of-whack entropy is stabilized, at least to the degree that she can operate mostly normally. Outside of the suit, she experiences fast-acting entropy loss, implying that the armor shields her from misaligned space-time. 
• Status Effects – There are a ton of status effects, negative conditions and debuffs in Star Rail that Firefly is susceptible to. However, Firefly also has some degree of Effect Res, which allows her a chance to potentially nullify these ailments as they are applied. She is therefore resistant, but still potentially vulnerable to the following notable conditions:
  • Bleeding – Damage done over time caused by physical injuries
  • Burning – Fire be hot
  • Frozen – While Firefly has a resistance to ice damage, she is not immune to being frozen by cryokinetic attacks, such as Jingliu’s overworld technique. She has also stated she can feel steep drops in temperature even through the protection of her armor.
  • Shocks – Electricity be zappy
  • Miscellaneous stat debuffs (speed, attack, total cumulative HP)
  • Mind Control – Kafka’s special ability, Spirit Whisper, allows her to hypnotically suppress and control the minds of her victims, preventing them from acting of their own accord. Firefly is susceptible to this effect.
  • Madness Inducement – A status that forces the target to lash out randomly at allies, suggesting some degree of mental manipulation like Spirit Whisper.
  • Fear Inducement – Huohuo’s overworld technique inflicts Horror-Struck on foes, causing most enemies to flee from her on-sight. Firefly can resist this effect enough to remain stationary and fight like normal, but she is technically not immune to being affected by it all the same.
  • Taunting – Firefly can be affected by Taunt statuses forcing her to target specific subjects against her will.
  • Gravity Manipulation – Welt’s Gravitational Imprisonment can work on bosses like Firefly, though unlike overworld enemies she makes no attempt to resist or move if caught in this technique.
  • Blinding – Sampo’s technique inflicts the Blind status, preventing those afflicted from being able to detect others or react to incoming attacks quickly.
  • Time Manipulation – Misha and the Remembrance Trailblazer have techniques that essentially allow them to freeze time in a large area, and Firefly is entirely susceptible to these effects in the overworld.
  • Sleep Manipulation – Firefly can resist the Alien Dream status used by certain enemies, but she is not immune to their anesthetic effects. Notably, Firefly was also forcibly put to sleep by Sparkle whilst within Penacony – a dream-world in and of itself – indicating her resistance’s limitations against “layered” haxes.
• Energy Absorption – Oronyx and Aquilla’s marks can cause Firefly to lose her accumulated energy reserves, much like the attacks used by other enemies.

Forms

Samus Aran

Metroid Suit

Throughout her journey in ZDR, Samus’ Metroid DNA gradually began to fully awaken thanks to her encounter with Raven Beak and her series of battles. It’s only in the climactic duel with the Mawkin that she lets loose, becoming the strongest Metroid in existence. This form greatly enhances Samus’ energy absorption capabilities, enough to drain the flying fortress Itorash of its energy as a side effect of draining Raven Beak’s own life energy. Her energy absorption capabilities are so great that she can’t even fully control it, to the point that even touching her Gunship threatened to drain it completely dry of its energy.

Outside of that, Samus kills weaker enemies instantly upon contact, and has access to a seemingly unlimited amount of Power Bombs. Her greatest asset is an enhanced Hyper Beam, where she combines all of her beam weapons to fire a single powerful laser that annihilates anything in its path, including the stronger Raven Beak X. However, Samus loses access to all of her other weapons and Aeion Abilities while in this state, trading versatility for raw firepower.

Firefly

Secondary Combustion

Typically, SAM will opt to enter the Secondary Combustion state in battle, consuming her own HP in the process (and with every subsequent attack) and shedding her immunity to all Weakness Break elemental attacks. In exchange for such a risky endeavor, her speed sees a hefty 50% boost, her damage output increases proportionate to the HP she self-consumes, and she afflicts the Molten Core debuff on her opponent. That basically means when her enemy uses a Skill, they lose a bunch of HP automatically. Not only that, the Molten Core effect reduces how much an opponent can heal by 90%, no matter if the source is an external or internal heal. To make things even worse, using a Skill while under the Molten Core effect will add yet another debuff to her opponent: Immolation, which adds yet another 11% decrease on the amount of HP they can restore. 

The Molten Core effect will automatically dispel if her opponent uses a Skill frequently enough, forcing them to endure the effects of the debuff in order to actually remove it. However, once removed, SAM will take a hefty increased amount of damage for a while.

Fyrefly Type-IV:
Complete Combustion

The SAM armor’s reactor cores are responsible for the suit’s pyrokinetic abilities, but under very rare circumstances, certain Iron Cavalry units have seemingly unlocked an entirely new state of being. According to mecha expert Welt Yang, this is not indicative of the suit having a specific mechanism designed to induce such a change, but rather the externalization of the pilot’s raw willpower overriding the reactor’s energies. As such, Firefly’s suit in this state exceeds its originally designed capabilities; evident by the far greater displays of power she’s demonstrated with it above her fellow Iron Cavalry.

In this form, Firefly manifests two longswords and two sets of ethereal wing-like streams of energy, allowing her to remain suspended in flight indefinitely. Furthermore, this form dramatically increases her strength, speed, offers her constant passive damage reduction, and resistance to statuses. She’s able to perform rapid-strike multi-slashes, produce massive columns of fire, and fly fast enough to break the sound barrier. Even just entering this state will heal Firefly by a substantial amount, and her individual sword-strikes do the same.

Feats

Samus Aran

Overall

• Considered the greatest bounty hunter and warrior in the galaxy
• Time and time again stopped the space pirates quest for conquest
• Restored Aether’s planetary energy and saved it from the brink of collapse
• Ended the threat of Phazon across the galaxy for good
• Nearly wiped out all Metroid life on SR-388
• Awakened her Metroid DNA and became the strongest Metroid
• Regained all of her Power Suit powers after losing them to Greed
• Defeated Mother Brain, Ridley, Kraid, Crocomire, Metroid Prime, Ing Emperor, Dark Samus, SA-X, Raven Beak
• Has consistently really good games

Strength

Physical

• With Grapple Beam, rips apart a metal gate
• With Grapple Beam, yanks onto and pulls or tears apart stone / steel blocks
• Parries an attack from Proteus Ridley
• Lifted and threw the Vorash into the air
• Parries a strike from Raven Beak
• Parries Kraid’s arm swing
• Parries a chomp from Experiment No. Z-57

Blasts

• Destroys stone and steel blocks
• Paralyzer shot can destroy large steel ceilings (0.47 tons of TNT)
• Destroys a rock thrown by Thardus
• Volt Driver can attack with terawatt energy output (956 tons – 1.434 kilotons of TNT)
• Destroys a Space Pirate ATC
• One shots multiple enhanced space pirates, who were a match for the Federation Force suit
• Blasts at Raven Beak’s midriff and blows away part of his armor
• Blows away one of Raven Beak’s wings with a charged shot
• Kills several space pirates in one attack
• Beam shots can pierce the skin of an Alpha Splinter that was bullet proof
• Creates a huge explosion even when in a weakened state with a Charge Shot
• Destroys part of a cliff with a stray shot
• Struck down a group of space pirates with one shot
• Vaporizes multiple Amoks with one blast
• Powers a rocket through her Power Beam with enough force to leave a planets orbit in seconds (67.72 kilotons – 1.08 megatons of TNT)

Other Weapons

• Missiles destroy Mother Brain’s container shield, which is made of Zebetite
  • The Super Missile is 3 times stronger than Samus’ normal firepower
• Ice Beam can freeze enemies instantly, even underwater
• Power Bombs can destroy a large Chozo statue
• Power Bombs can destroy a rock floor Samus is on top of
• Morph Ball Bombs can destroy a boulder
• Power Bombs can destroy large rock walls, sometimes even from far away
• Plasma Beam can melt metal and ice instantly
• Power Bombs can vaporize the large robot, Diggernaut
• Ice Beam can freeze lava pillars
• Power Bombs superheated shockwaves can vaporize humans
• Power Bombs can blow up the quarantine bay in the BSL research station
• Power Bombs can clear out a room of vines / roots
• Speed Boosting through a large X-Parasite wall destroys it
• Diffusion Missiles can freeze enemies at the edge of its blast radius
• Power Bombs can destroy Raven Beak’s sun-like construct
• Super Missile can cause a large explosion and one shot enemies immune to her normal shots
• Ice Beam can freeze the gigantic Megadroid
• Super Missile + Power Bomb combination causes a volcanic eruption that covers the sky in soot, though it is possibly a chain reaction
• Her Super Missile combined with Joey’s energy beam blows up Mother Amok
• Samus destroys several Hunter-Killers, many of which were vaporized by one Power Bomb
• Shatters Zegan’s blade with a Super Missile

Gunship

• Destroys a large rock wall
• Destroys the Leviathan shield generator
• Grapple Beam lifts a large stone cylinder

Metroid Suit

• Drains the energy of Raven Beak’s massive flying fortress
• Hyper Beam melts a large block of steel

Speed

• Moves in tandem with electricity, missiles, and homing torpedoes
• Dodges Kanden’s shot
• Can move in tandem with the dissipation of the Imperialist, which is a quantum-cascade laser (1.75% SoL)
• Moves in tandem with and dodges the Alpha Blogg’s sonic blasts underwater (Mach 4.3)
• Evades Rundas’ ice wave
• Weaves her Gunship around nearby asteroids
• Dodges a shot from Raven Beak
• Can parry an E.M.M.I.’s insta-kill
• Parries the spear strikes of an X-Parasite Chozo Warrior
• Dodges Raven Beak’s sweeping laser fire
• Evades Ridley’s plasma beam
• Weaves through bullet fire
• Catches a bullet in between a space pirate and Joey after it’s been fired
• Moves in front of gunfire to protect civilians
• Uses Shinespark to evade a thousand plasma strikes
• Dodges a blade strike from Zegan
• Samus is able to properly react to threats and attacks up-close while her ship is traveling at high speeds outside Hyperdrive, even when it’s moving 30% faster than normal. This allows her to scale in reaction speeds to the Gunship’s own flight speeds
  • Gunship escapes Tallon IV’s orbit within seconds (Mach 1453.26)
  • Gunship escapes a research station exploding while blitzing past asteroids
  • Gunship escapes Zebes’ planetary detonation in seconds (Mach 5076.5)

Durability

• Survives her Gunship crash landing and creating a large explosion upon impact even without her Power Suit (2.9 tons of TNT)
• Withstands shots from Parasite Queen, who can fire ‘weapon-grade’ energy
• Withstands a space pirate suicide bombing at her
• Tanks missile fire
• Survives shots from Power Trooper, Ice Trooper, Wave Trooper, and Plasma Trooper, whose shots are less powerful than Samus’ version of those attacks, but still potent
• Gets hit with a shockwave from Omega Pirate slamming the ground
• Survives multiple attacks from Meta Ridley, from his physical strikes to his plasma breath
• Survives multiple attacks from Metroid Prime, from their physical strikes to their shockwave blasts
• Survives attacks from Dark Samus that can destroy large metal structures
• Withstands shots from an enemy turret that can destroy large metal structures with one shot
• Withstands getting rammed by the Amorbis, which can burrow through solid rock with ease
• Survives Power Bombs from Power Bomb Guardian
• Is unfazed from Meta Ridley’s divebomb on her that destroyed a large metal platform
• Survives Mother Brain’s wave attacks and laser beam, though is heavily damaged
• Survives hits from fire pillars
• Withstands Nightmare’s laser blasts and his physical attacks
• Gets slammed to the ground hard enough to crater a ceiling
• Withstands energy shots with slight damage, even powering through a barrage
• Engulfed and hit by a beam that overpowers her own and is sent flying through a steel wall
• Withstood a country sized explosion that emerged from the heart of the planet (9.135 gigatons of TNT)
• Survives an explosion that eclipses mountains, though wasn’t at the center and was knocked out (10.94 kilotons of TNT)

Firefly

Overall

• Survived the fall of Glamoth
• Saved the Astral Express several times
• Helped awaken the Asdana galaxy from an eternal dream
• Succeeded in pushing the SAM armor past its intended limits, something rarely seen in Iron Cavalry 
• Survived countless fights day-in and day-out against the Swarm
• Aided in igniting the Jepella Rebellion, disrupting the Annihilation Gang’s base of operations
• Complicit in Stellaron Hunter attacks on Pier Point, Jemorse, Bayjhana, Shilla-39C, Ulmora, 7-Midville, Loar-51, Dor’a, Planet Screwllum, Herta Space Station, Sich-Lala, Inuepis, Oun-G7, Zukov, Lidovia, Illily, Attouine, and Buhayama
• Accumulated the 2nd highest bounty among Stellaron Hunters
• Defeated Argenti, Blade, & the Swarm

Power

• Propelled herself with a pillar of flame fast enough to part clouds (seen above)
• Briefly clashed with Black Swan, Trailblazer & Acheron
• Partially vaporized the internal organs of mechanical enemies
• Burns Swarm insects so thoroughly they dissipate into thin air
• Yeeted a luggage cart with one hand
• Iron Cavalry can overturn large boulders with ease
• Aided Kafka in killing Blade, physically restrained him
• Left a horde of IPC soldiers and mechanized enforcers charred from her flames
• Can fragment the ground on impact
• According to an IPC broadcast, is considered a ‘planetary’ level threat along with all other Stellaron Hunters
• According to Kafka, is responsible for the collapse of a star (See Before the Verdict)

Speed

• Flew fast enough to break the speed of sound (seen above)
• Capable of breaching escape velocity (Mach 33)
• Dodged attacks from Black Swan and base Acheron
• Weaved through energy blasts and missiles in combat
• Can tag Swarm insects in battle
• In the Simulated Universe, can avoid beams of light
• Intercepted a pressurized SoulGlad bottlecap that the Trailblazer failed to react to
• Theorized she could fly past Penacony’s broader Dreamscape in under 30 minutes
• Traversed the Asdana galaxy to locate the Astral Express

Durability

• Thanks to SAM armor, can withstand several million times more atmospheric pressure than ‘normal’
• Survived the destruction of a planet, though it destroyed her SAM armor and left her in a comatose state (6.1 Exatons of TNT)
• In entering Penacony’s Dreamscape, endured her consciousness being crushed and reconstructed in a pain said to be worse than death
• Deflected a hit from a giant mech monster
• Took hits from Argenti in battle
• Tanked Swarm insects literally exploding on her 
• Iron Cavalry are resilient enough to take action even after being brutally impaled by giant Swarm insects
• Withstood a slash from Acheron’s unsheathed sword (Non-Canon)

Scaling

Samus Aran

Ridley

The most iconic villain in the series has shown up several times in Samus’ adventures, and while she may not be as physically powerful, she’s been able to damage and even parry Ridley’s strikes, as well as survive his blows. She’s come out on top in all their battles, and part of that would require keeping up even in a close fight. As such, Samus should scale to just about all of Ridley’s feats

• Ridley busts a hole through a stone ceiling
• Ridley’s plasma breath obliterates part of a cliff
• Meta Ridley flies outside a space station at high speeds
• Meta Ridley destroys a Chozo stone structure by flying into it
• Meta Ridley causes a shockwave that destroys stone structures
• Meta Ridley destroys a large metal platform by divebombing

Metroid Prime &
Dark Samus

Samus was able to withstand various blows from Metroid Prime’s base form, only being overwhelmed once it was in its core essence. Similarly, Samus was able to damage and defeat Dark Samus twice before the latter absorbed enough Phazon to far surpass her in their final fight in Prime 2 and especially in Prime 3. That said, Samus was still able to damage Dark Samus and ultimately defeat her in their final confrontation thanks to the PED Suit. As a whole, Samus at her best can scale to both

• Metroid Prime burrows large holes in the ground
• Metroid Prime breaks down a large rock wall
• Metroid Prime’s death explosion causes an impact crater to collapse and explode
• Dark Samus blows up large steel structures multiple times
• Dark Samus collapses a bridge

SA-X

SA-X is repeatedly stated to have mimicked Samus at the strongest she’s ever been and is equal to her peak. As such, Samus should reasonably scale to SA-X’s feats, as her strength is being perfectly replicated

• SA-X’s missile breaks down a metal wall
• SA-X causes so much damage to the BSL research laboratory that it causes a notable chunk of the space station to fall off

E.M.M.I.

While Raven Beak reiterates that Samus is no match for the E.M.M.I.’s at their peak (and gameplay supports this, as Samus requires absorbing energy to form an Omega Cannon to do any damage), we know Raven Beak damaged the first E.M.M.I. Samus met in the game, and Samus at her peak overwhelmed and even killed the Mawkin with the Metroid Suit. It should be reasonable to scale her to their durability, as her greater strength compared to Raven Beak would mean she could damage them to a greater extent than he did

• E.M.M.I.’s are stated to be made of the strongest material in the universe, putting them above the material in the Tourian base that was intact, even after a massive country sized explosion (70.64 gigatons of TNT; Inapplicable, See Before the Verdict)

Miscellaneous Allies,
Enemies & Bosses

Throughout her journeys, Samus has encountered and defeated many beasts of varying shapes and sizes. Similarly, while other bounty hunters or members of the Galactic Federation try to stand up to her, Samus either proves her superiority either in direct combat or by defeating opponents much easier. While not as prominent as the above, many of them have impressive feats, and thus are easily surpassed by the bounty hunter

• War Wasp can shear steel
• Sheegoth can destroy a large rock wall
• Amorbis can burrow through solid rock
• Dark Phlogus can generate localized seismic shockwaves
• Boost Guardian, using the Boost Ball Power, can destroy some sort of structure by ramming into it
• Alpha Blogg can ram through and destroys a large metal cylinder
• Ingsmasher can pulverize steel plating by ramming into it
• Rundas freezes two Space Pirate ATC’s
• Rundas creates an ice pillar to stand on top on as well as a bunch of ice spikes for a battlefield to take place in
• Rundas shatters several ice spikes while creating a giant ice structure he swings around casually
• Ghor defeats a Space Pirate creature that blows up a steel door
• Federation Force suit melts ice structures
• Federation Force suit freezes molten rock
• Federation Force suit blows up a steel wall and steel debris
• Federation Force suit blows up an elite dropship
• Federation Force suit freezes the Adhkor Beetle
• Federation Force suit damages and defeats Cyranon, who was the cause of seismic disturbances in Bion
• Federation Force suit freezes an enlarged space pirate
• Diggernaut’s metal arm plows through solid rock
• Kraid burrows through solid rock upon his entrance
• Kraid smashes a metal platform with one swing
• Crocomire’s corpse breaks a large rock wall
• Security Robot B.O.X. jumping high destroys a steel ceiling (1.68 tons of TNT)
• Nightmare caused an explosion that greatly damaged Sector 5 of the BSL research laboratory (352.07 tons of TNT)
• Raven Beak slamming on a bridge platform collapses part of it
• Raven Beak makes a miniature sun-like construct (0.8 tons of TNT)
• Artaria Corpius can destroy a large statue by running into it
• Zegan Doh’s blade cuts down a building
• Joey deflects bullets

Firefly

Stellaron Hunters

Firefly, or rather, SAM, is considered to be the fiercest Stellaron Hunter in terms of raw combat ability. Where her teammates specialize in social infiltration, systemic cyber attacks, and raw, literally-undying resilience, Firefly’s whole M.O. is being the bruiser of the team. She’s even physically defeated and restrained Blade, proving her superiority as the group’s muscle.

• Blade has (somewhat) mentally endured the agony of constant near-death with no finality; Jingliu alone has slain Blade thousands of times
• Blade fought off Yanqing and Dan Heng at the same time in a 1v1v1 duel
• Kafka confidently opposed Fu Xuan, who was able to flick aside Kafka’s own bullets in mid-air
• Kafka moved in-tandem with bullets after they fired
• Silver Wolf BFR’d an Antimatter Legion goon the instant before it could strike Kafka

Astral Express

The Astral Express are the central protagonists of Honkai: Star Rail. As such, they are the core connective tissue between several distinct, unrelated planets’ worth of inhabitants, and therefore, feats. Firefly’s greater strength over Blade proves she can scale to the Express, as Blade himself has crossed… well, blades, with Dan Heng several times on equal footing. She’s also fought alongside the Trailblazer on equal footing, and defeated similarly relative opponents like Argenti.

• Alongside Hyacine, the Trailblazer and Dan Heng helped slay the weather Titan, Aquilla, in combat
  • Hyacine’s Memosprite Fat Fuck Little Ica is capable of parting storm clouds (35.36 Kilotons of TNT)
  • Aquilla once reduced an entire city-state to ashes (9.92 – 533.67 Megatons of TNT)
• Trailblazer fought and defeated the Knight of Beauty, Argenti, several times
  • Argenti was able to injure the Giant Sting, a massive Swarm insect capable of swallowing entire starships in its maw (4.51 Kilotons of TNT)
• Trailblazer, Dan Heng and March defeated the Silvermane Guard, Gepard
  • Gepard can create massive ice constructs in an instant 
• Dan Heng split an ocean apart (1.51 Kilotons of TNT) and parted massive storm clouds in the process (409.28 Kilotons of TNT)
  • The energy beam Dan Heng projected to achieve those feats propagated skyward at Mach 64.72.
• Dan Heng survived a crash landing when entering Amphoreus
• Dan Heng kept up with the Flame Reaver’s restricted self, who had slaughtered the  Chrysos Heirs millions of times over, including Tribbie & her sisters
  • Tribbie’s rocket attacks are fast enough to reach distant celestial objects in seconds (5.85% SoL) and powerful enough to destroy them (5.21 – 7.83 Gigatons of TNT)
• Alongside Yanqing and Yunli, March managed to somewhat stall the (weakened) beast warrior Hoolay in combat
  • Hoolay proved to be a legitimate challenge for Feixiao to defeat; Feixiao can run so fast, ordinary people seem frozen in place by comparison (Mach 49.17)
  • Feixiao straight up nuked some motherfuckers holy shit
  • Yanqing defeated Luka in battle; Luka likewise has defeated Seele, who can move so fast, a bullet appears frozen in motion(5% SoL)
    • (Bronya also blatantly moves in-tandem with said bullet, even if she needed saving. That’s GOAT right there fr)
• Himeko utilizes a satellite laser that creates a massive condensation cloud as a byproduct of the beam; the Astral Express have fought and damaged adversaries like Aventurine, who can tank this laser directly (1.18 Gigatons of TNT)

Weaknesses

Samus Aran

While no doubt earning her reputation as the greatest warrior in the galaxy, Samus is not unstoppable. The obvious issue is that, for as versatile as she is, she is limited on ammunition. This can be adjusted if she succeeds at a melee counter to grab some, but it means she’s working on limited time in a one on one fight. Even ways to restore her health or ammo, like Concentration or Crystal Flash, have very specific circumstances that make it hard to fully realize their utility.

As durable as the Power Suit and its energy shields are, they do still have a limit. If the Power Suit takes too much damage, Samus can outright lose access to some of her abilities and weaponry, forcing her to spend a whole game to search and get them back. There are even cases like in Zero Mission where losing her mental concentration stripped her of the suit as well. Worst case scenario, too much damage can disable or even destroy the Power Suit entirely. While Zero Suit Samus isn’t entirely helpless, she’s significantly weaker than even your average space pirate with only a paralyzer for a weapon, making her a much easier target. The Power Suit has also shown to be susceptible to hacking in Prime 2, and while it can reboot itself momentarily, it’s still a weakness and a moment of Samus being unable to access her weapons and leaving her wide open.

Finally, a lot of Samus’ more unique suits or abilities have caveats. Aeion Abilities drain an Aeion gauge completely, meaning she can only use one at a time. The PED Suit’s Hypermode, while an excellent strength booster, runs the risk of Samus being corrupted by Phazon if she’s not careful with expending it. The Metroid Suit, in spite of its immense power and energy absorption, also has the tradeoff of Samus being unable to use any of her other weaponry besides a giant laser and strong bomb, making her a lot less versatile at her best. 

Also she probably just has a “planets blow up” curse attached to her, it happens in every planet she walks into even when it makes no sense like in Dread.

Firefly

Try as she might, Firefly’s fate is still inherently predestined as a result of the Glamoth Empire’s failsafe protocol. Entropy Loss Syndrome will continue to slowly, irreversibly dissipate her physical form; while this doesn’t seem to impact her combat ability currently, it does restrict her to her medical cabin – SAM – to keep the ailment at bay. When exposed outside of her suit, Firefly’s progressing chronic dissociation is marked by a green scar on her cheek, indicating her vulnerability. Should SAM be compromised or otherwise destroyed, Firefly will be left nearly completely defenseless.

While Firefly does have some degree of resistance to various statuses and powers, she is not immune to any of them, either. She was rendered unconscious by Sparkle’s hallucinations, and Kafka’s Spirit Whisper can successfully control her mind. Even if her consciousness is resilient enough to withstand being crushed and reconstructed, she clearly has limits on what her unprotected mind can handle when it comes to manipulation and suggestion. 

Before the Verdict

Samus

Gorea Scaling

In Metroid Prime Hunters, there are various log entries Samus discovers on her journey through the Alimbic Cluster about Gorea. Long story short, Gorea crashed on the planet Alinos, busting up its core and ravaging the surface. It ravaged war with the Alimbic race, nearly bringing them to extinction due to its unique shapeshifting and ability copying. As a final resort, the Alimbic’s were able to defeat him by sealing him inside an object cleverly named the Seal Sphere, and then sealed the sphere within an alternate dimension called the Infinity Void. The hunters of the game like Sylax are trying to break him free of his prison to gain ultimate power, but Gorea ends up fighting back against them and Samus has to do battle with him after he’s unsealed. At some point, he even draws energy from the Seal Sphere itself, but Samus is able to defeat him with a last minute found upgrade called the Omega Cannon, powerful enough to finally end the threat of Gorea for good.

The important thing to note about Gorea is that the Seal Sphere isn’t just a generic sealing item; it’s one powered by massive amounts of psychic energy. Gorea’s huge psychic power (in conjunction with the Alimbic Order) is the engine powering the Seal Sphere, and because those psychic energies are powering / are ensnared in the Sphere, Gorea is immobilized and can’t break out. Essentially, his psychic powers are being drained by the sphere. Even in the final phase of the fight, he’s gradually absorbing the energy from the Seal Sphere to return to peak condition. 

This hurts scaling to Gorea’s big feat quite a bit, as it means that, when Samus is able to properly damage him, he’s nowhere near his full power yet, and is thus kind of just unquantifiably strong. And most damning of all, when he’s in the process of returning to full power in the final phase by drawing out the spheres remaining energy, Samus can do no damage to him at all with any of her current weapons, requiring a last minute save mind of the Omega Cannon to put him down… a weapon that was only found in an alternate dimension, that she never keeps or uses again, and is only found equipable again in a non-canon multiplayer game.

Ultimately, Gorea is weakened when Samus is able to do damage to him, and is unable to do proper damage back once he gets closer to his full power, requiring a very non-standard weapon (even more than usual) to achieve any damage. As such, while Gorea may have the most impressive feat in the series, Samus herself can’t scale to it

Light of Aether Scaling

A popular argument used for Metroid stats way back was the Light of Aether. To do a condensed TL;DR, Aether is a planet with planetary energy compromising solar, bio, geothermal energy, and potentially more to sustain life on the planet. This planetary energy is called the Light of Aether. A race known as the Luminoths arrived to colonize it on the planet, but realized that Aether’s planetary energy reached critical mass and would have destroyed the planet. To prevent this, they built several Main Energy Collectors to collect, regulate, preserve, and radiate the planetary energy all across Aether through a global network. They used this to live peacefully for many years.

Much later, Aether got hit by a Leviathan impact (not important what this is), and this distorted space-time around it and made a new planet in an alternate dimension called Dark Aether. Dark Aether gets inhabited by evil possessive monsters called the Ing, and also stole half of Aether’s planetary energy. The Luminoth and Ing go to war against each other, Ing steal more of Aether’s planetary energy to sustain Dark Aether while normal Aether is left without much of its energy and would soon collapse.

Samus arrives on the planet, recovers an Energy Transfer Module, and fights back the Ing and steals Dark Aether’s planetary energy to return it to Aether. This includes Emperor Ing, and once she steals it, Dark Aether undergoes planetary collapse. She fights Dark Samus, defeats her, Dark Aether is destroyed, and Aether + the Luminoth are saved.

Let’s just rapid fire the arguments for scaling so this doesn’t get too long.

Didn’t Dark Samus survive the
destruction of Dark Aether?

When Samus defeats Dark Samus in their final fight in Prime 2: Echoes, Dark Samus essentially dissipates into thin air. In the post credits scene, we see her reforming, confirmed as her regenerating from Phazon particles, which is consistent with log data saying she can come back from anything short of complete atomic destruction. There’s only two ways to take this, and neither really favors her.

• Dark Samus never really tanked anything. She was already reduced to particles by this point, and had to regenerate after the destruction of Dark Aether. There would be no planetary energy for her to survive
• Dark Samus was hit by it and was brought to such a state she was forced to regenerate. Which would make scaling it to her non-existent

This is ignoring that the destruction of Dark Aether risked killing Samus, and that Dark Samus, even if she did withstand the destruction and tanked it, was only exposed to a fraction of a fraction of the energy. Her surface area is miniscule to the surface area of the planet.

Didn’t Emperor Ing absorb the last remaining
planetary energy core of Dark Aether?

Sort of. It’s true that Emperor Ing was siphoning energy from the energy core, data logs say as much. However, the data logs don’t say he’s absorbing all of its energy, only vaguely drawing power from it. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest he isn’t taking in the whole energy; as soon as Samus defeats Emperor Ing and steals the final amount of planetary energy, Dark Aether undergoes planetary collapse immediately. Keep in mind, this is when Samus steals all of the energy. If Emperor Ing was absorbing any significant portion of the planetary energy, let alone all of it, Dark Aether would immediately be on the brink of destruction and he’d just die alongside Samus. And given the whole goal is Emperor Ing trying to stop Samus from stealing the planetary energy and protecting it, it makes no sense to assume he’s drawing in all of its power.

Doesn’t Samus absorb portions of Aether’s planetary energy?
Isn’t her Light Suit powered by the Light of Aether?

While it is true Samus steals back and absorbs portions of Aether’s planetary energy thanks to the Energy Transfer Module, it is only used to store and transfer the planetary energy. She never uses it or expends it in combat. As for the Light Suit, while it is powered by planetary energy, all we get is it is “energized by the Light of Aether itself.” Never once are we told the Luminoth are empowering or energizing or building the suit using the entire energy system of the Light of Aether. In fact, the entire plot of the story would significantly harm both arguments.

The Luminoth are on the brink of extinction, have been fighting the Ing for years, have lost nearly all their planetary energy, and can barely sustain life, all while Aether suffers collapse. They need Samus to return their planetary energy so that life on Aether can be sustained again, and so they can preserve it for as long as possible to save the planet and themselves. If the Light of Aether was actively empowering the Light Suit with all of its energy, or if the Varia Suit expended energy from the Light of Aether for its attacks, the plot of the game breaks. Samus would be expending their planetary energy, their only hope for life to return, with every single shot it makes, and Aether would never return to full stability. It’s an obvious narrative breaking tool to assume that Samus is actively weaponizing the Light of Aether, and combined with no statements that she’s being empowered by all of it or expending its energy, means just that; she doesn’t use it for combat

In total, while the Light of Aether as a whole is planetary, all arguments for scaling to the full energy source are faulty, and sometimes rely on ignoring the plot of the game.

E.M.M.I. = Tourian Explosion

You might have noticed in our scaling section the idea of E.M.M.I.’s scaling to a massive country wide blast at the end of Zero Mission. Summarizing it quickly, E.M.M.I. ‘s are made of the most durable material in the Metroid universe, putting them above whatever material was used to build the Tourian base on Zebes. That same base was still intact, albeit heavily damaged, as shown in Super Metroid, even though it was at the center of a massive self-destruct sequence that caused an explosion visible to the curvature of Zebes. This got around 70.64 gigatons of TNT, well within Island Level. And since Samus at her best was able to damage and kill Raven Beak, who heavily damaged an E.M.M.I., this means she’d scale to the full yield, right? On paper, maybe, but a big issue arrives with size.

The E.M.M.I.’s, while made of far tougher material, are also incredibly thin. They’re taller than Samus, but their metal plating is about a few centimeters thick. This is noteworthy because, while technically made of inferior material, the Tourian base is much bigger; in length, width, area, volume, everything. This includes thickness, as the walls of the base are about as wide as Samus is tall. The thickness and general size of an object, no matter the material, is a huge factor in durability, and even lesser materials can be harder to damage or dent if they occupy more space. Think about a metal spoon and a foot thick slab of concrete; one can bend a metal spoon with enough force, but a large concrete slab, even if it has worse resistance to blunt impact like metal, would be significantly harder to bend or dent due to its size and thickness rather than its composition. And we’re talking a 3 meter tall robot VS an entire underground base of operations.

In short, the E.M.M.I.’s are far too small in comparison to the base to fully scale to the yield, and given the durability of materials increase exponentially with thickness, it’s impossible to assign a quantifiable value to the E.M.M.I.’s.

Misc. MFTL Feats?

(Credit to Yves / Sunmellows for the silly sketch)

There have been many talks of Metroid reaching MFTL speeds across the years. You may have noticed a lack of any calc’s reaching that range, and that’s because there’s big flaws in pretty much all of them, either for scaling or viability. Let’s tackle this one by one.

Gorea laying waste to the galaxy

There are statements in Alimbic lore that Gorea could rampage the galaxy and wipe out all life in it, possibly even the universe. However, as established above, Samus doesn’t scale to a peak Gorea, so she wouldn’t get this. There’s also no timeframe for how long Gorea can do this, and he can also teleport, making it dubious if accomplishing this would require much, if any, physical travel on his part.

Dark Samus traveling from Aether to Tallon IV

Within the couple year or so timespan between Prime and Prime 2: Echoes, Dark Samus travels from Tallon IV to Aether in search of more Phazon. However, Dark Samus is stated to have a short range ‘warp’ that lets her accomplish this. This is consistent, given Leviathans, creatures of Phazon, are incredibly useful for their ability to generate wormholes and travel intergalactic distances. As such, any feats of Dark Samus for space travel, not just her first one, are dubious if they’re accomplished through physical speed. In fact, there’s more evidence implying it doesn’t.

Ships Traveling MFTL

This one is actually just true, there’s several instances in Metroid of ships traveling interstellar or even intergalactic distances in seconds. However, the problem comes in scaling. Ships in Metroid use a form of warp drive or hyperspace travel for pretty much all of their MFTL feats, most explicitly described in the original manga, Prime Hunters, and Samus & Joey. It’s even shown visually in plenty of games, including Prime Hunters that describes a ship having a warp signature. While these do make for legitimate massively faster than light speeds, the problem arrives in that nobody in Metroid reacts to or pilots ships moving at these hyperspace speeds. We know because part of this hyperspace travel requires the ship to de-materialize and then re-materialize in 3D space, which isn’t present in any of the feats where Samus or other characters scaling to a ships flight speed would be viable; not in Ridley outspeeding it in Prime, not Samus weaving around asteroids in Dread, and not even the interplanetary death race in Samus & Joey. The ship is still within 3D space in all of them, not traveling intergalactic distances. Thus, scaling to the ship’s hyperspace travel is unfounded.

Ridley flying from SR-388 to the research
station and then to Zebes

Perhaps the most famous argument for MFTL Metroid, and the one with most debate. The basic idea is that Ridley himself has shown flight, even in space with Prime, and given the lack of ship or other materials in his defeat at SR-388, he would have to fly on his own two wings, planet to station, then station to planet, within a few hours at most. One of the main problems with this is obviously we don’t see Ridley do the actual flying between planets on-screen in any game, and there’s a pretty big difference between flying somewhat in space to crossing interstellar distances. However, that also leads into Ridley flying being an assumption; we may not see Ridley park a ship at SR-388, but it could’ve been far away from the battlefield given his arrival is within the background. Similarly, we know Ridley and other space pirates have used ships for interstellar traversal. The Super Metroid Power Comic also depicts various space pirates on their ships surrounding Samus right after she leaves the space station, which leads credence to the idea that Ridley could have used a ship to travel these distances.

Admittedly, it’s a bit of an uncertainty given the lack of visuals. Ridley could have used a ship, but us outright not seeing him use one makes that debatable. Similarly, Ridley could have flown, but no outright depiction of that makes it debatable. However, it would ultimately be an outlier. It wouldn’t line up with any pre-established lore of the series and how interstellar flight is accomplished, and be the only feat in this category that’d be scalable. Combined with its vague nature on what exactly happened and that it’s doubtful Ridley accomplished it through physical movement, it’s ultimately much safer to dismiss it.

Rapid Fire Addressal

• Lasers + Light Beam: There are various laser related weapons within Metroid, but many lack definitive properties to be labeled light speed with certainty. They fire straight, and don’t explode, but lack anything else. Some of them are even 1 frame, making in-tandem movement impossible to determine. The best argument would be the Light Beam from Prime 2: Echoes, since it shoots out what’s described as a beam of light and burns enemies. However, ‘light’ in Prime 2: Echoes isn’t referring to the natural element of light, but rather an energy source, the Light of Aether. As explained above, the Light of Aether is the planetary energy of Aether as a whole, and consists of many sources of energy. This would mean it’s not natural, authentic light, and if you charge up the Light Beam, it doesn’t fire a straight beam, but fires a scattershot of light balls.
• 960x Gravity Zebes: Metroid Prime describes Zebes as having 4.8 teratonnes of mass and a diameter of 11700 kilometers (from a dead website rip), which, taken literally, would give it the equivalent of gravity 960 times greater than Earth. This is contradicted several times, most notably in the original manga where Samus, as a three year old child, before her Chozo enhancements, is able to walk on the planet just fine. The 2 Hours and 59 Minutes with Samus Aran guide also gives us a detailed report on Zebes’ diameters and mass, which, when applied, give it a gravity around 1.26 times greater than Earth’s, much more reasonable. In addition, Samus is affected by being submerged in water and is hindered in movement, requiring the Gravity Suit to move normally. If she can actually move in 960x normal gravity effectively, water should have no effect on her
• Mother Brain’s Shields VS Planetary Shield: Mother Brain’s capsule shield is made of Zebetite, the same material that surrounds Zebes in a large planetary shield that the space pirates required a micro black hole weapon to affect it through intense gravity. However, as explained in the section about E.M.M.I.’s VS Tourian, the thicker a material is, the more durable it is. In this case, Mother Brain’s shield is some centimeters thick, compared to an entire planetary shield. It visibly has much greater depth than the capsule, and so, Mother Brain’s shield can’t be scaled to the full durability of the planetary shield.

Firefly

What is the hierarchy of
power in Star Rail?

Honkai: Star Rail is a fully fleshed out, diverse universe of characters and factions resembling the overall structure of something akin to Marvel or DC’s comics. There are very pronounced disparities in power and overall potential spread amongst the cast; these differences vary from subtle to several orders of magnitude in severity. To figure out where Firefly sits in this hierarchy, we’ve broken down who exactly the key players are and what benchmarks of power we’re classifying them by; you can find the full document explaining these tiers here.

Oh, and don’t worry if you’re completely confused by all these proper nouns and terms and don’t want to read a whole yap-fest. If you just want an easier-to-digest summary, here goes:

The Star Rail universe’s god tiers represent forces or concepts like Destruction or Nihility. These gods shape reality and are capable of bestowing their power upon mortals, creating Emanators. Emanators basically draw power directly from their god’s might. In doing so, Emanators can incinerate galaxies or throw hands with those strong enough to chuck them, and are fast enough to launch galaxy-wide projectiles in seconds. The broader cast, like the main characters, are comparable to the Amphoreus characters; and the whole plot of Amphoreus has thus far culminated in their main cast being slaughtered billions of times over by a guy called Phainon, who has grown far stronger with each of his billions of kills, and only barely grew strong enough to fight an Emanator on even footing after countless cycles of doing that. Therefore, Emanators are far above the rest of the cast, with only rare circumstances allowing them to be defeated or stalled by weaker characters.

Several characters can operate somewhere in-between the Emanator tiers and the rest of the cast. The not-IRS faction in the game borrow fragments of an Emanator’s power via their respective mcguffins, and guys like Jing Yuan wield giant susanno Stands; basically an Emanator-level avatar bestowed from a god tier unto them. However, they have clearly defined limits: Jing Yuan’s summon may be Emanator tier, but he himself has been overpowered by a really good swordmaster (and GOAT), Jingliu. He was also almost killed by a weaker Emanator, Phantylia. In both cases, his susanoo summon did what he could not do physically, defeat his opponents for him, indicating a clear difference in strength between the man and his summon. As for the IRS guys, their fragment of power was very blatantly oneshotted by a true, fully realized Emanator (Acheron), even though he was strong enough to take on the entire Astral Express by himself. 

In short, there is a clear, insurmountable gulf between the general cast and the cosmic characters who make up the upper echelon of Star Rail’s hierarchy. Firefly falls into the former category; she is physically superior to the Stellaron Hunters and Astral Express who make up the broader scaling tiers, but has never demonstrated any feats proving she scales to Emanators, who make up the very highest echelons of power in the verse. If anything, her blatant incomparability to Acheron’s full power is paramount to the Penacony arc concluding how it does, providing hard evidence contrary to the notion of Firefly scaling that highly.

Addressing Miscellaneous
Star Rail Feats

Firefly Planet Bust

Perhaps somewhat infamously now, Firefly is regularly recognized as an unbridled, blatant as all-get-out planet buster. It’s not too hard to see why. In her animated short, The Embers of Glamoth, we see a flashback to the final days of the Glamoth Empire. The Iron Cavalry, Firefly included, fight until the bitter end; sacrificing themselves in a scorched earth protocol, activating an explosive that annihilates all life on the battlefield. All life, that is, except for Firefly, who – after some understandable traumatic paralysis – awakens her Complete Combustion form and flies out of atmosphere so fast, the mere shockwaves of her flight rupture the planet, inducing its complete annihilation.

Here’s the problem… it isn’t real. Well, some of it is, probably, or at least close enough to what actually happened. Let’s rewind a bit and look at Firefly’s in-game Character Stories, which give us some useful insight into the canon backgrounds of various characters.

Essentially, Firefly’s Part II and Part III stories match up closely with what her animated short presents. The Swarm Mother attacks, tons of Iron Cavalry die, a last resort nuke is set off to take everyone out. Firefly is incapacitated in the explosion, the planet is destroyed, and she’s left adrift and comatose in space until Kafka arrives to rescue her.

The obvious omission here in this outline of canon events is the entire second half of the animated short, wherein Firefly awakens her Complete Combustion form and a random, unexplained sprout grows, then she destroys the planet for some reason before conking back out again. And the answer here is really quite simple: she didn’t bust the planet herself. Don’t believe me? Take it from her. Directly taken from the Gentleness, the Name of Nocturne quest (and reiterated later on in Everything that Rises Must Converge):

According to Firefly herself, everything we see after the Swarm gets nuked in the animation – the scorched earth, the weird, unexplainable sprout, the arrival of the morning sun – it’s all metaphorical. 

To be clear, Firefly is technically incapable of literally dreaming, but that’s beside the point here; the sprout and morning sun are clearly metaphorical representations of her new lease on life post-Iron Cavalry. Despite her inability to literally dream, she does still have ‘dreams’ – when entering Penacony’s Dreamscape, she re-experiences her past events with the fall of the Iron Cavalry. This practically unconscious state, suppressed under intense memoria, essentially simulates her memories of her past. It’d make sense for the imagery she describes to have been what she ‘dreamt’ in as close to a literal way as possible, for her. The animation is simply presenting that in a more dramatized, cinematic way for the sake of being cool.

Therefore, this feat, SPECIFICALLY as it is presented in the animation, is invalid. Granted, she does still survive the planet’s destruction; she just is not the one responsible for busting it directly, as an unspecified yet-replicable bomb in the Iron Cavalry’s possession was used to that end. Taken alongside the consistent level of power shown by everyone around her in scale, that should be no surprise either.

Lastly, while we’re talking about high-scale cosmic destruction feats dubiously performed by Firefly, let’s talk about that time she may or may not have destroyed a star. According to Kafka’s own words, Firefly is the ‘reason’ for a star shattering. This is the full extent of context given in this off-handed mentioning of the feat. For the sake of fairness, if it ever were to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that this action was physically done solely by Firefly just being built different and yeeting a star out of existence, then she’d at minimum need to exert 3.68 Quettatons of TNT to overcome a red dwarf star’s gravitational binding energy. However, there are many, many ways a character can be ‘responsible’ for a planet or even star collapsing. Hell, in this very blog, Firefly’s opponent is constantly ‘responsible’ for planets exploding like a 9-5 job, but has themselves never actually physically busted a planet. Even in Star Rail, there is precedent for the Stellaron Hunters dismantling planets in a less directly literal way; which we’ll cover more in a bit.

Simply put, this feat is just too vague with too much room for logical doubt as of this blog’s version update cutoff. For now, this feat is considered inadmissible.

Doomsday Beast

One of the earliest enemies you face in Honkai: Star Rail is the Doomsday Beast, a big monster. It’s part of the Antimatter Legion, which is basically just the goon squad working under the Aeon of Destruction. If you recall, there are also some Emanators who work for that Aeon – Zephyro and Phantylia, who we covered earlier. Anyway, Doomsday Beast, big scary thingy yeah? Back when the game came out, players were immediately left with a strong impression of the verse’s power. After all, the Doomsday Beast was said several times to be a “planet destroyer”, and he’s the TUTORIAL boss! 

If you dig a bit deeper however, problems inevitably arise. For starters, one of those statements comes from a closed beta (pictured above). Sure, it is still Hoyoverse who wrote and approved the description, but they also stressed that the content present there would not necessarily carry over to the final product. And hey, doesn’t Dan Heng just say the Doomsday Beast is a planet buster anyway? What’s the big deal?

The issue here lies in the fact that Star Rail is a game written natively in Chinese, then localized to English. Naturally, this means there will be some translation shenanigans abound every now and then. We’re not about to say the original text is completely off-base, but it does make the topic more nuanced. After consulting a native speaker on the topic, we learned that the specific use of 离去 can generally refer to any kind of celestial body, as large as a star or small as a satellite. With that in mind, let’s talk about the time the Antimatter Legion attacked a planet: Jarilo IV, the first proper ‘world’ you visit in-game.

Essentially, in the distant past, the planet was attacked by the Antimatter Legion.  We know that the planet’s surface was razed, forcing the entirety of civilization to retreat into the unfinished city of Belobog. As the war grew desperate, the Stellaron on the planet resonated with the will of the people to activate the Eternal Freeze – an ice age. This forced the Antimatter Legion to yield, allowing the planet to survive in stasis up to the current timeframe. 

That should probably raise eyebrows if you’ve been tapped into the workings of this verse. The Antimatter Legion’s whole M.O. is to enact the will of their Aeon, the one who represents Destruction. That’s their purpose, they just go around spreading ruin and devastation across the universe. Mind you, the Doomsday Beast is not a unique, one-of-a-kind entity. Many of them exist, and if they could just point one at Jarilo-IV to destroy it, they would’ve had no reason not to. Especially after their ground troops were frozen over, halting a more traditional invasive force. And yet, Jarilo-IV still exists.

The Antimatter Legion do ‘destroy planets’, but if they were just zapping them out of existence, there’d be no need for ground troops at all. One of the Legion’s leaders, the Emanator Phantylia,  is even more proof that they don’t need to literally planet bust to ‘destroy planets’. She is well-documented as favoring internal sabotage and mental annihilation. This is the entire premise of the Xianzhou Luofu arc in-game! She still leaves worlds in ruin, just not through Dragon Ball-esque feats of power. (Though the game does depict her with planet-busting or greater animations, the cast who fought her did not face her at her best, nor did that weakened version of her show comparable feats outside of animations.)

Taken altogether, it’s clear that the Doomsday Beast is most likely not a literal planet buster. It has no actual feats of literally overpowering a planet’s gravitational binding energy. The Doomsday Beasts could very well be a major threat to civilizations as they are reputed to be, while still only razing the surface of planets. With all the context and scrutiny applied to the source text, we will therefore not be taking the planet busting statement at face value.

Himeko Satellite Laser

Another reasonable contributor to the early-onset hype for Star Rail’s prospective VS aspirations, Himeko’s ultimate ability leaves an impression for sure. At first glance, it certainly looks insane. I mean, it definitely is! We’re not about to insinuate that a goddamn satellite laser isn’t impressive, but it is important to gauge feats like this carefully beyond just a first impression. Most calculations of this feat assume her laser parts an absolutely absurd density of clouds on a continental scale based on the visual of the earth’s curvature. By then measuring the speed at which the perceived mass of clouds are parted, kinetic energy values tend to get into the high exaton range, if not higher. 

However, the devil is in the details here. 

Even before the initial red laser is active, we can clearly see the curvature of the clouds that will appear to be ‘parted’ shortly after. At this point, a laser has not begun to descend at all, so the cloud formation must just already be like that. However, it gets worse when viewed on a macro scale.

Here’s a before and after of the earth and the purported clouds. As you can see by the neighboring cloud regions (marked by the colored lines), the space in which Himeko’s laser descends lacked the dense cloud arrays seen elsewhere across the globe. That alone wouldn’t mean there are no clouds whatsoever all-the-way down, but combined with the formation of clouds seen from ground level, it starts to suggest her laser didn’t part nearly as high of a density of mass as originally assumed by initial calculations.

Actually, we should mention that on the right side of the above visual, what were assumed to be clouds being parted is actually more likely to be something called a condensation cloud. Basically, think of the white vapor-like cloud that you see when things like nuclear bombs are detonated. It occurs when a rapid change in temperature causes the surrounding air to form a visible cloud of moisture – complicated stuff, but the important part here is that this would be consistent with the in-game visual more than a trillion-kilogram cloud being moved at a fraction of the speed of light. And obviously, actual nukes that create this effect don’t need to have exaton-level payloads to achieve this. Even low kiloton bombs detonated underwater result in condensation clouds forming above the surface.

And that should make sense, right? After all, we do see the effect of the laser when it actually touches ground. It creates a pillar of flame and ruptures the ground, but in terms of environmental damage, it certainly isn’t consistent with continental level power. Even when Himeko has used the laser in canon cutscenes, this remains true: just look at when she attacked this giant mech, or Aventurine. (As an aside, it is certainly worth noting that neither were able to actually react properly to the beam even with its telegraphable nature, suggesting it is unreliable for scaling in terms of speed) 

All in all, it would certainly be impressive; 1.18 Gigatons of TNT, but a far cry from perhaps what you would’ve expected at first glance.

Rapid Fire Addressal

• Dan Heng defeating a star-devouring monster – Technically legit, this did canonically happen. The issue is primarily that the monster in question is never specified beyond being described as “huge”, which isn’t super helpful. Contextually, all we know for sure is that Dan Heng was aboard a spaceship when he encountered the big chungus, and that he defeated the big guy, impressing Himeko who was nearby. This is more than likely a combination of hyperbolic and localization language making it seem more impressive than it is; we can refer to the time Argenti was able to harm a similar giant monster himself, one that certainly could colloquially be described as even greater than a star-devourer; but the actual on-screen measurements make it clear that’s not literal.
• Nikador’s strikes can destroy worlds – Mydei says that, but Nikador’s strike does also just blatantly not destroy Amphoreus when it lands and craters the ground. Also, it’s an entire plot point that the people of Amphoreus cannot leave their planet (it’s a whole thing), so how would bro even know this to be verifiable lmao
• Stellaron Hunters can destroy a planet – Very obviously not literal. Kafka’s Myriad Celestia trailer pretty much shows exactly how the Stellaron Hunters operate; their individual skills let them dismantle world governments and sabotage important mcguffins. The epic gamer girl can ‘destroy’ a world by hacking the infrastructure, the sword & gun mom can ‘destroy’ a world by mind controlling world leaders to self-destruct, and Blade… he literally can’t die, he’s got all the time and stubbornness in the world to rip a populace up from the inside out. Firefly herself has a Light Cone explaining her contribution to the Jepella Rebellion; she basically just blew up weapons caches, causing ground-level destruction. Also, the original “destroy a planet” statement comes from an IPC transmission (propaganda); basically the space IRS who have beef very specifically with the Stellaron Hunters as an organization. This one is just a basic media literacy test, folks.

Fight Script

Feel free to check out this blog’s accompanying fight script! Spoilers, obviously.

Verdict

For physical stats, Samus herself has lifted the several ton Vorash into the air and parry strikes from the massive Kraid. Her weapons can freeze enemies instantly, destroy chunks of steel and rock, melt large amounts of metal, and even vaporize humans. In particular, the Volt Driver can fire multi-terawatt electrical blasts, ranging from 956 tons of TNT to 1.4 kilotons of TNT. She’s also defeated Nightmare, who destroyed much of Sector 5 in the BSL research laboratory in a single blast, which gets 352 tons of TNT for consistency. However, her best strength feats would come from Samus & Joey.

Samus’ Power Beam explicitly powers a giant bomb rocket at such high speeds that it escapes the planet’s escape velocity and reaches space in seconds. Given the size of the rocket and the speed it was accelerated, the kinetic energy would result in 67.7 kilotons to 1 megaton of TNT. Given the rocket was powered by Samus’ own Power Beam, this would scale to her energy shots and the durability of her Power Suit. Most impressively, with her willpower amping her physicality and endurance, she was even able to survive a giant nuclear factory exploding and causing a country sized blast. While Samus may not have been at the epicenter, even at her distance and accounting for surface area, the energy she’d have to withstand is within 9.135 gigatons of TNT. Given she was able to hurt others who damaged her armor, at least with her willpower amp, this would scale to her energy attacks when enhanced in such a mindset.

For speed, Samus has various feats of evading gun fire and even dodging sound waves underwater, which moves faster than sound in air. However, Samus & Joey likewise provides our bounty hunter with her best speed scaling, as she was able to pilot around and maneuver her Gunship going at max speed in a dangerous space race around obstacles and enemy shots. By the end, her Power Beam was able to cross the distance between her ship and an equally fast enemy ship and land before the ship moved away. This would allow Samus to scale to the speed of her Gunship outside of Hyperspace in reactions and even the speed of her energy blasts. The Gunship has various impressive speed feats, but most notable is it escaping the orbit of the exploding Zebes in Super Metroid. Coupled with the speed increase it gained for the space race, the ship at that time, and thus Samus’ reaction speed, would reach speeds of Mach 5076.

For support, Samus is able to move in tandem with the dissipation of the Imperalist, a quantum cascade laser that shoots actual light speed lasers. While there is some oddity in nature due to the dissipation being multiple frames but the actual act of shooting it being 1 frame, moving in tandem with the dissipation would have a combat speed of around 1.75% the speed of light.

Firefly for direct physical feats is able to cause massive fire pillars, vaguely part a group of clouds, and vaporize swarm insects. However, her best strength scaling would come from scaling to other powerful warriors in Honkai Star Rail. With Kafka’s help, Firefly was able to straight up kill Blade at least once; the same Blade who put up an even fight against the ocean-and-cloud-parting Dan Heng. Firefly herself is also shown to be a match on equal footing with the Trailblazer and similar threats to them such as Argenti, who could pierce the stomach of a gargantuan monster. Through matching the Astral Express’ best, Firefly can scale to vastly more impressive feats,even those found on the planet Amphoreus. There, the Trailblazer & Dan Heng have fought on equal footing alongside the Chrysos Heirs against Titans that can nuke entire city-states off the map (9.9 to 533.6 Megatons of TNT). Hell, one of the Chrysos Heirs themselves can bust small moons apart with their attacks! Using some angsizing and assuming the ‘in-universe’ Amphoreus is similar in scale to Earth, we can determine that Tribbie’s rockets carry a payload of 5.21 – 7.83 Gigatons of TNT! 

For speed, Firefly herself has been stated to break the speed of sound and can even reach escape velocity, making her travel speed within Mach 33 at least. Same with the above, being able to match other fighters in her universe allows her to reach greater speeds, most notable of which being Seele blitzing bullets and making many sword slashes at speeds around 5% the speed of light. For consistency, Tribble’s rockets are able to travel to other celestial objects at 5.85% the speed of light on the high end.

For durability, the SAM armor would of course scale to its attack potency, but it’s worth noting it was able to protect Firefly from a planet destroying bomb. While the blast completely vaporized the armor and left Firefly in a coma, the fact it was able to shield her enough to not kill her proves it is an upper most durability limit, and would have to shield her from around 6 exatons of TNT (accounting for surface area!). Of course, this is only the max durability limit of the armor, and not its striking power. As of the version update cutoff for this blog’s research, Firefly has not matched the strength of a foe strong enough to actually damage her armor to the same extent as the planet-busting explosion.

These numbers, frankly, surprised us. Samus at her best can dish out and withstand 9 Gigatons of TNT VS Firefly scaling to the Chrysos Heirs, packing nearly 8 Gigatons of TNT. On the flipside, Firefly is 5.8% the speed of light VS Samus’ 1.8%, a noticeably larger gap than their strengths. Similarly, the SAM armor’s travel speed of escape velocity is far more impressive than any personal mobility speed feat Samus has, even with the Speed Booster. However, even with a speed loss, Samus has a variety of ways to end the fight (we’ll get into specifics soon!), and could still win if Firefly weren’t tough enough to destroy the Power Suit in a timely manner. Turns out, the last Iron Cavalry has a perfect tool to flip that near-equal strength tie in her favor.

Firefly’s ace in the hole in this department is her defense shredding abilities, found in several aspects of her in-game moveset and equippable gear. Her trademark power kit in-game revolves around the Break Mechanic; essentially, everyone has a passive ‘shield’, and Firefly’s specialty is forcefully implanting a weakness to Fire onto her opponent, shredding that shield, and leaving them dazed and unable to fight back while they take increased damage. Similarly, she has Light Cones that can ignore 36% of Samus’ durability whenever she lands attacks. With all of her def-shredding abilities active, Firefly’s kit can reach a maximum of 76% def-ignore, bringing Samus’ durability well within the range for Firefly to do some serious damage, given she’d be hitting a dazed, unmoving target to boot. They might be near equal in strength, but Samus’ normal weaponry won’t so much as scratch Firefly, while Firefly can very much shred apart Samus’ armor.

We should note that the feat responsible for Firefly’s stat advantage comes from a single source, Tribbie’s in-game Ultimate animation. The nature of a JRPG attack animation means some people will naturally have different interpretations on what is ‘real’ or valid for scaling. Even if you disregard Tribbie’s stats completely, Firefly would still scale to Seele, who performs a relativistic feat (nearly identical in value) in a canon cutscene, and would compare to Himeko, whose orbital laser is similarly used in canon battles and appears identically to its Ultimate animation. These values are slightly lower than those afforded by Tribbie, but are still relative enough for Firefly to be faster and overcome Samus’ defenses in accordance with her defense-shredding abilities.

Overall, these two are far more closely aligned in speed and power than you likely expected. However, despite being slightly weaker, Firefly’s far greater survivability and speed mean she’d definitely get the chance to activate her defense-shredding attacks, more than enough to bridge the small gap keeping Samus’ armor protected. Firefly takes Stats.

It should go without saying that Samus has a much, much wider arsenal of abilities, suits and resources to call upon; that’s to be expected from pitting a veteran of the gaming industry up against a supporting character from a relatively new franchise. Still, there is no shortage of pertinent topics to cover here.

For starters, let’s talk about Firefly’s main method of attack: fire. Duh. Most would reasonably expect Samus to comfortably resist heat-based attacks thanks to the Gravity Suit, but it is important to remember: a resistance to heat is not the same thing as an immunity to heat. In Star Rail, Firefly can regularly engage in combat against foes who ‘resist’ fire – basically, as long as their Toughness shield isn’t weak to fire, they take reduced damage from it – but she has an excellent counter. Firefly’s whole kit is based around breaking those weakness-based Toughness shields, and to achieve that, she has the ability to impose fire weaknesses onto any enemy she strikes. In other words, the Gravity Suit’s resistance to heat is insufficient as a means to prevent Samus from taking serious damage to her protective shields. 

While we’re on the topic of Firefly’s kit, let’s talk about her Light Cones, which is where the bulk of her combat-relevant abilities come into play. Depending on the Light Cone she has equipped (which can only be one at a time), she can heal herself with any strike she lands, deal increased damage, and add on an extra 36% defense-shredding to her attacks, just for having the Light Cone equipped. As we discussed in stats, that defense shred is nothing to scoff at, though it is worth emphasizing that she cannot have that large, crucial sum of shredding simultaneously with her healing or extra raw damage output. 

Comparatively, Samus’ arsenal isn’t as incongruent with each other, but there are still compromises she has to make here. For instance, she obviously can’t have the PED Suit’s abilities whilst using the Metroid Suit. Many of her abilities are context or area-sensitive, like her Light and Dark suits, or Aeion abilities powered by an energy found in abundance on a very specific planet. To be clear, we are still factoring these in, but just as Firefly can’t reap all the benefits of her items concurrently, the same is true of Samus.

Even so, Samus is certainly not struggling to match and surpass Firefly’s options. She has Reserve Tanks for on-demand healing, has her own damage boosts with heavier artillery and higher-grade suits, and while Samus lacks an exact match to defense-shredding, she arguably has something even better: attacks that bypass conventional defenses altogether. Namely, the Wave/Nova Beams and Ice Beam. 

Let’s cover the Ice Beam first. Those of you who are particularly well-read on your Metroid trivia will know that, according to some relatively obscure official statements, the Ice Beam doesn’t just freeze objects, but straight up halts an object’s entropy, placing the afflicted target in a space-time stasis. That is, of course, insane, and against most foes, it would be incredibly difficult to counter or resist. Against most foes.

Recall that Firefly’ suit, the SAM armor, is not just a weapon, but rather, a medical cabin for her. She suffers from Entropy Loss Syndrome, a genetic disorder that, as shown in her Eidolons, will essentially dissipate her body into thin air. By staying inside her medical cabin, Firefly’s condition remains stabilized; therefore, the SAM armor would logically counteract the Ice Beam’s entropy-manipulating effects. It’d have to, or else Firefly would’ve already been dead a long time ago. Oh, and, ironically enough, Firefly has explicitly stated that she can feel extremely cold external temperatures even inside her armor, so actually, it’d be more beneficial for Samus if the Ice Beam were just a bog-standard freeze beam!

That being said, Firefly lacks a real answer to the Wave or Nova beam bypassing said armor in the first place. Really, she lacks much of a resistance against the majority of Samus’ kit, weirdly-specific-entropy-stuff notwithstanding. Phazon? Firefly’s armor protects her from radiation, to a degree, but she’s shown no true immunity to corruption. Phase Drift’s time slow? You can affect SAM in-game with time freezes just fine. Metroid Suit’s energy draining? You guessed it, energy draining effects work perfectly on Firefly in-game, too. All of these are major, notable game-winning abilities in Samus’ court, to boot. We haven’t even touched on Samus’ visor, whose scanning abilities are frankly absurd; nearly instantaneous and conveniently approaching omniscient in the detail and strategic value they offer. There’s no doubt Samus could discern Firefly’s armor is insanely durable with a simple scan; she’s done exactly that against foes like Omega Ridley before.

When framed in that light, it should be no question that Samus has the better, more impactful arsenal of options here. Firefly’s kit is paramount to her ability to keep up with Samus, but for every one win-condition the Stellaron Hunter has, the legendary bounty hunter has several more in quantity. Samus takes Abilities.

In terms of experience, Samus has been trained by the Chozo in the strategies of battle since she was young, and has been a bounty hunter under the Galactic Federation for about a decade, even up to her late 20s. In that time, she’s fought Metroids, space pirates, X-Parasites, the Ing, Phazon monsters, other bounty hunters, and even two aliens with much of the same abilities as her. 

Firefly by comparison, is implied to be of school age (less than 20), and despite being genetically engineered for combat, has only fought a specific species of enemies in the Swarm for most of her life. Outside of that, she’s fought fodder robots and soldiers, none of which are as strong as Samus. While she’s fought alongside with and against other humanoid fighters like her, and could have been fighting in more battles than Samus, she lacks the same variety of foes and years of battle to match up to the bounty hunter in formal experience.

Skill is a bit more up in the air. Firefly has dialogue implying she’s proficient in firearms, and she’s even able to hold her own against more experienced and skilled fighters, like the 700 year old swordmaster Blade. Perhaps most impressively is piloting the SAM armor; even expert reality warping hacker Silver Wolf found the suit difficult to pilot, yet Firefly has found no issues using it for years. 

In comparison, Samus is considered the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, and earned a position in the Galactic Federation that only one-in-a-million get. Even other space pirates well trained in close and long combat are inferior to her, and her fighting style focusing on acrobatic movements and grabs / grapples, melee counters, and own hand to hand combat showcase are a lot more well-defined and showcased than Firefly’s own skill feats. Even her marksmanship without auto-targeting is good enough to disarm space pirates or shoot out two ricocheting bullets from outside a salon. While piloting the SAM armor could be more skilled given the statements of difficulty on how to use it, Samus’ own skill feats being more demonstrable and useful in this fight would give her the edge in this field.

That said, it’s worth noting despite her own physical showcase, Samus is very much noted to struggle against physically overpowering threats, like Ridley, Kraid, Crocomire, and Raven Beak. Ridley required Samus giving everything she had, and Raven Beak made a fool out of her once he took the fight seriously, and it’s only through the surprise awakening of the Metroid Suit that she ended up winning. Against someone faster, tougher, more mobile, and with ways to overwhelm her defenses, Firefly can most certainly prove herself to be a struggle for Samus to keep up, even with her greater skill and experience.

In terms of endurance or stamina, this actually matches up more evenly. Samus herself can survive a barrage of power shots, withstand atomic disintegration, and her Power Suit abilities being ripped out her body, with enough willpower to either stand right back up or power through for one final attack, though obviously with heavy damage. Even her Power Suit is able to withstand sulfuric acid and deep underwater pressure without fully crumbling for quite some time, though standing up against the pressure took much effort on her part. 

Firefly herself can survive millions of times more atmospheric pressure than normal, and could withstand her consciousness being crushed and reconstructed through a pain noted as worse than death. Even other Iron Cavalry can still keep going after deep impalement, though obviously with extreme pain. While their willpower is likely comparable in giving them the adrenaline to power through extreme pain, Firefly’s armor withstanding much greater pressure without any issue and much deeper wounds would likely give her an edge over Samus in this category. And in a fight this close, being able to withstand pain and pressure better than your opposition is a noteworthy advantage for the Stellaron Hunter to land her win-conditions first.

All in all, Samus has the better demonstrable tactics and skills, and the greater provable resume against a wider variety of foes. Firefly is definitely no pushover, and would be able to keep up thanks to her extreme durability and pain tolerance, but Samus should edge this field out all the same. Samus takes Tertiary Factors.

Conclusion

“We are all bound by our experiences. They are the limits of our consciousness. But in the end, the human soul will ever reach for the truth… that is what Adam taught me.”

Advantages:

• Weirdly enough, slightly stronger
• Far more diverse and useful arsenal of weapons
• Greater demonstrable skill and employment of tactics in combat
• Superior scanning capabilities
• Several strong abilities could win the fight (life drain, BFR, etc.)
• Can compensate for a speed gap with time-slow
• Greater experience against other hunters in battle
• Dominates range and area-of-effect

Disadvantages:

• Slower (at a baseline)
• Less durable armor and worse endurance
• Worse melee and CQC
• No defense against Weakness Break shredding her defenses down
• Worse mobility and air control
• Cannot defend from Firefly implanting a weakness to Fire on her
• Less reliable healing
• Prime 4 is a myt- wait holy shit

 “The tombstone that belongs to me once bore the inscription ‘Glamoth’s Iron Cavalry,’ then it changed to ‘Stellaron Hunter,’ but one day… It will bear the name “Firefly” and the brilliance she showed at the end of her life.”

Advantages:

• Faster (at a baseline)
• Much more durable armor and greater pain tolerance
• Far greater aerial mobility and maneuverability
• Weakness Break-based defense shred can mitigate Samus’ greater durability
• Resists Phazon to some degree; immunity to entropy-based Ice Beam
• Healing abilities counter life-draining
• Potentially has a greater density of combat experience in general
• Probably made Hoyoverse more money in a single day than the Metroid franchise’s entire lifetime earnings

Disadvantages:

• Does not resist several key abilities of Samus’ (time slow, BFR, corruption, etc.)
• Worse range and AOE
• Less experience against a wider variety of opponents
• Less demonstrable techniques and skills 
• Worse resistances
• No match for the inevitable all-encompassing onset of gacha game powercreep

Taken as a whole, this is a far closer fight than anyone – even us, the researchers of this blog – could have anticipated. Samus is legitimately stronger than Firefly, has better demonstrable skill and experiences, and make no mistake: with her vastly wider arsenal, she technically has a wider variety of win conditions available to her. Even with a speed disadvantage, she can use Phase Drift to slow time, putting her on more even footing with her silver-armored adversary.

So, who wins, then? Let’s look at it like so: Is it better to have several winning moves spread across several specific suits and abilities, or is it favorable for ones’ win-conditions to be packed into a single, linear and broadly-applicable moveset?

Samus has a number of game-winning attacks, from sustained Phazon corruption to energy draining disabling the SAM armor, to specific beam types like the Nova or Wave beam bypassing its superior defenses. Because Samus is starting off 3x slower, she’ll also need to use her Phase Drift liberally in order to keep up. On the flip side, every attack Firefly lands will contribute to shattering Samus’ Toughness shield (by Star Rail mechanics), which she will ensure Samus has thanks to her ability to forcefully implant elemental weaknesses. It doesn’t matter if Firefly punches, kicks, shoots fire, slashes with swords, or simply yeets Samus like a ball; all of that will have the defense-ignoring properties found in her kit.

Remember, Firefly’s strength is near-equal to Samus’ durability. By attacking Samus’ elemental weakness, Firefly can temporarily stun and disable Samus’ abilities for a period of time, giving her all the room in the world to end the fight then and there. Just by doing in combat what she’d be doing anyway, and has always done, against any foe she’s ever fought. Samus’ wincons are greater in number, sure, but she will still need to scan, strategize, and avoid a faster, more mobile foe all the while. Even worse, Samus has demonstrably struggled against faster, physical threats before, like Ridley and Raven Beak, whereas Firefly has maneuvered around fast-flying projectiles at range before. 

And while both Firefly and Samus suffer from being unable to use ALL of their items, suits and gear concurrently, this technicality certainly hurts Samus more than Firefly. A single Light Cone alone affords Firefly 36% defense shredding, which would obviously be her best, optimal choice to use. Samus has several ‘best’ choices she’d need to discern from – the PED suit, Metroid suit, various beam types, miscellaneous abilities – and many of them cannot be used in conjunction with each other. If Samus tries to use Phazon, she can’t use Phase Drift. If Samus tries to use the Metroid Suit, she can’t use her light-speed or durability-bypassing beams. 

So once more, is it better to have more win conditions on paper, or one win condition that is guaranteed to be a factor from the start? This is a razor-thin margin here, admittedly. There are absolutely plenty of outcomes where Samus would legitimately win here, being able to perfectly identify, analyze, and exploit Firefly’s suit, all while leveraging her speed differential to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Unfortunately for the galaxy’s feared bounty hunter, we think Firefly’s more straightforward, tried-and-true ‘ol reliable strategy of “hit it really, really hard” is more likely than not the outcome to bet on. Frankly, it all comes back to speed. If Samus were faster without requiring the need of Phase Drift, she’d almost certainly win with far less ambiguity or room for doubt. However, she is facing a notable 3x speed gap here without the use of Phase Drift. And while Phase Drift is insanely useful and would legitimately close the gap, it is one ability out of dozens, acquired in a very specific locale, incompatible with several tools Samus needs to actually pierce through Firefly’s brick wall armor. 

Let’s put this in perspective a bit. When talking about characters casually defying physics and punching with the force of a nuke, it’s easy to get a bit ‘lost in the sauce’ so-to-speak and forget just how impactful a simple 2x gap in stats really is. You can test yourself pretty easily right at home by watching a boxing POV video, and playing around with the playback speed. At 2x speed, punches that normally give you a split second to register now arrive almost instantly. Three-punch combos that occur over a second are compressed into half a second. A faster opponent standing still seems to practically teleport in short bursts of speed, and once they lock someone into close-range, it’s pretty much impossible to respond accordingly on the end of the slower fighter.

That’s just a 2x speed gap, mind you, and we’re talking about an over 3x gap here to start. Even with the ability to time slow, Firefly’s immediate tactic in battle will be to close the gap and land melee strikes, which will give Samus very little time to scan, strategize and develop a counter to her opponent. And ultimately, that is why we believe that, in this incredibly tricky battle between hunters, it is the last Knight of Glamoth who will – just barely – live to fight another day. The winner is…