Demonic Spiders/Action Adventure Games/Metroid

Some enemies make the player, as opposed to Samus, want to curl up into a little ball.

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• Power Troopers in the first Prime and their pallete swaps. Thankfully they get easier as you upgrade but their introduction is still a surprisingly painful endurance test.
  • Wave Troopers are by FAR the worst. Power Troopers get knocked around by Super Missiles, Ice Troopers freeze and shatter with a charged shot and a missile, and the Plasma Beam is powerful enough to tear Plasma Troopers apart quickly. The Wave Beam, on the other hand, fires (and charges) slowly, so you can't just spam it, and the missile combo guzzles missiles, making it almost useless unless you're close to 100%. If you're battling more than one of them, the charged shot's temporary stunning is rendered almost completely useless. Infuriatingly, these are the most common out of the four, and on Hard Mode, the outcome of the Omega Pirate fight will hinge upon how many of the troopers he summons are Wave Troopers.
• While Mega Turrets (Prime) aren't too bad on Normal, on Hard they're a nightmare. Uncannily accurate, taking six missiles each(!), screwing up your visor every time they hit you. and coming in either pairs or groups of four(!!!). Thankfully, there are panels to shut them down, but they're fairly easy to miss.
• Fission Metroids. Oh God, Fission Metroids. At first they're about as tough as an ordinary Metroid, but then they split into two mini-Metroids... which can only be harmed by one of your four beams. Most players resort instead to just vaporizing the lot of 'em with a Power Bomb, but in the room in which they're encountered, they infinitely respawn, and Power Bombs are a rare commodity.
• Bloggs, especially Dark Bloggs, in Metroid Prime 2. They have a ridiculous ability to hit you. What? You'll just side-dodge? They get you even if you attempt to side-dodge, even with the Gravity Boost to maneuver in the water, and the damage count is fairly high too. And they have only one weak spot, which isn't even vulnerable except while they're charging at you, and ridiculous health for this no less. And the boss version of them is That One Boss...
  • Don't forget the Grenchlers. Way too much health (I swear those things don't take extra damage from the Dark Beam), obscenely damaging, will chase you into the water if you accidentally fall in (very easy in some of the rooms), plus they generally come in groups of three and have frighteningly broken hit detection. Oh yeah, don't even think about escaping to higher ground. They'll jump all the way up to you. And if you are at a distance, they will use an electricity based ranged attack.
• The Rezbit mechanoid in Echoes. Tough, agile flying with powerful attacks, an at-will instant-deploy deflector shield, a 'no lock on' mode where you could only hit it with manually aimed beam attacks and beam combos, and an Interface Screw attack it almost invariably used after entering the aforementioned mode. They stop being Demonic Spiders once you encounter them enough...but still remain an annoyance. The Screw Attack and Power Bombs can OHKO them, which makes them less of a threat once you have those two abilities. Until then, entangler shots and missiles are the way to go, just to make the fight quick.
• Dark Pirate Commandos. They're fast, have powerful attacks, and spam EMP grenades that can mess up your visor for several seconds. On top of all that, they're tough, and can become invisible to your normal visor. Thankfully, the Dark Visor makes it possible to see them, but until you get that, they're hair-rippingly difficult to fight. Thankfully, if you can't kill them, they'll eventually leave the room in two or three minutes. Like with the Rezbits, the Entangler makes these guys far easier.
• The Hunter Ing. Their attacks don't hurt that much compared to some other enemies, but they constantly phase out the way of your attacks, meaning you have to either just shoot it constantly, or draw it into a charged light beacon. But sometimes they won't go in (before annihilator beam, which is end-game near enough, which draws them into the charged beacons, thank god - though the Dark Visor can also track them, but they still take hits stupid well), and they have a ranged tentacle attack which is just plain annoying. And sometimes they'll knock you into poisonous water. Yaaay. Grenchlers are nowhere NEAR this annoying.
• Hunters has the Guardians, which appear whenever you enter a room where an enemy Hunter was before but isn't now. They jump around at near-lightspeed making it insanely hard to hit them with anything let alone a zoomed-in Imperialist while blasting you with charged shots from their weapon. Their weapon which you never know which one it is until they start shooting at you. Plus, if you do attempt to get a headshot with the zoomed-in Imperialist, their "head" is actually above their eye, the latter of which would be the obvious target. Your best bet for doing so is to wait until they just stand in front of you shooting you at point-blank range, then finish them off with a zoomed-in Imperialist headshot.
• The Ki Hunters in Metroid Fusion are wasp-like creatures Samus encounters when trying to restore the power to the BSL. They come in two varieties: hopping and flying. Each is just as demonic as the other. They take multiple hits to destroy and each hit from them takes out NEARLY AN ENTIRE ENERGY TANK!! Meanwhile, when you first encounter them your movement is hindered by vines clogging up the engine room, making it hard to dodge their attacks. They become almost no problem once you get the Plasma Beam and Gravity Suit, but they can really be a bitch to deal with beforehand.
  • In a refreshing instance of the developers being aware of this, the room immediately after you get the Plasma Beam consists of several of these enemies in small boxes--perfectly lined up for you to test out your new weaponry on. Samus won't laugh maniacally, but you may.
• There's also the SA-X. You encounter it at several scripted points in the game, most of which can be dealt with by hiding and waiting for the ominous ambience to stop. However, if it starts chasing you (and there's two encounters where you must alert it to proceed), it can easily chop off huge amounts of health with its Ice Beam (that travels through walls). Ice Missiles will freeze it for a very short period of time. Better know what you're doing...
• Metroids. In the sidescrollers they are completely invulnerable to all weapons except the Ice Beam (if you don't have it, you're screwed). After being frozen, it takes five missiles to kill them, and they thaw much faster than other enemies will. If one manages to grab you, the only way to get rid of it is to drop a bunch of Morph Ball bombs to dislodge and quickly freeze it before it grabs you again...which is insanely hard when they attack in groups. The Prime versions lack the invulnerability, but still obscure your vision when they latch on and require bombs to dislodge.
• Kyratians in Metroid: Other M. Reptilian monsters with a pair of Electivire-like tails, they hop around like nobody's business while spewing powerful energy attacks in your direction. Your best bet is to nail them with multiple charged shots, but this is far from easy; they are seemingly capable of Sense Moving just like Samus, and will dodge your shots whenever possible, returning fire all the way. Making matters worse, they move too quickly to Overblast most of the time, and, once you freeze their tails, they sheath themselves in electricity and become invincible. Just touching it hurts, and the only way to stop this is to either wait it out or fire a Missile at them (rendering yourself stationary for a moment). When you get the Screw Attack and can kill them instantly, it comes as a huge relief.
  • Other M in general is chock full of enemies who are made exponentially tougher because of a punitive health system and the learning curve involved in using missiles without getting creamed. But no enemy causes as much grief as the Desbrachians: large and strong beetle-like enemies that appear in the post-game every time you break a power bomb door, who can turn invisible, take a ton of damage and can only be killed while in their crouching pose - but if you don't rush in and break their face with a fully-charged beam in an action command or have a super missile charged up quickly, they'll retreat into a shell and regain all their health, unless you can get off a Power Bomb faster than it can get out. They get far easier once you learn that they have a brief moment of vulnerability just after they spawn, just long enough to charge up a Super Missile. Follow it up with a couple of Charge Shots and the Lethal Strike will off it.
  • Your only hope in some situations is to use the Power Bomb, then get to the other side of the room, miles away from the spawning Desbrachian, and spam Super Missiles to easily win. As you can imagine, they are much more dangerous in smaller rooms where they will get to you quickly...
  • Rhegodians can be just as bad when you first encounter them. Stupid fast and usually encountered in cramped areas. They have two different beam attacks that do ridiculous damage, and have wide-ranging claw attacks (again, cramped area, not good). Once you power up some more, though, they become laughably easy. By the time you face them in the post game, you can one shot them with the Screw Attack or Power Bombs.
• Black Pirates from Zero Mission are immune to every single type of attack other than the Plasma Beam, rendering the Screw Attack, Missiles, and Super Missiles that make Samus so powerful useless. Oh, and a pair of them wait right outside the endpoint of the final level, forcing you to beat them first. Many people find them more difficult than the Final Boss. The only way to kill them easily is by abusing an AI Breaker.
  • If the player is taking them on in a non-15% run, all he needs to kill them is just to rapidly hit the B Button, and dodge when necessary. On a 15%, one way to deal the most damage is to sit on a ledge and shoot them while they attempt to reach you.
• The Chozo ghosts are a nightmare to fight the first time you see them (Prime 1). They like to teleport, shoot you while you're distracted, and Making loud shrieking noises. Especially since they appear in multiple rooms, require tons of power beam fire, and usually come in threes. Not so hard upon obtaining the X-ray visor, but even then it doesn't help much. Navigating the Chozo Ruins (until you're ready to get the Ice Beam) is not recommended during their "appearance" phases, as you only fight them after you first encounter them in the Elder Hall.