How to beat Phantom Ganon in Tears of the Kingdom

A classic returns

Nintendo is no stranger to bringing back classic Zelda enemies, and Phantom Ganon is one of the more popular ways to bring the series big bad to the forefront without forcing a climactic end fight. Here’s how to beat Phantom Ganon in Tears of the Kingdom.

You’ll find Phantom Ganon in the Hyrule Castle throneroom

After reaching Hyrule Castle’s throneroom, a brief cutscene will play and the battle will begin.

The fight with “Phantom Ganon” is actually a bout with multiple clones of the phantom itself: all of which act similarly.

Coming into this fight with all of the Champion abilities will make the boss significantly easier

At the start of the encounter, hang back and see where your Champion avatars go. They’ll generally snap to one of the clones, taking care of them while you’re left to fight the remaining one (it’ll typically aggro toward you, denoting which one you’ll need to focus on/target).

Phantom Ganon clones have a few attacks at their disposal, mostly of the melee variety. There’s a spin attack, a rushdown attack, and a teleport attack (where they turn into smoke, then reappear near you and strike). All of these abilities can be dodged, and most of them can be blocked directly.

Think of Phantom Ganon as a really strong melee mob that’s multiplied. If things get really out of hand, it can deal a lot of damage very quickly. But if you focus up on just one clone at a time, you can easily dodge, flurry attack, and strike (one or two times to be safe) in a hit and run fashion.

Each clone also has a finite amount of health. Take one out 1v1, then move to the next unsuspecting clone. Rinse and repeat until you enter phase two, where the real fun begins.

All the clones will respawn, and two new gimmicks will occur in phase two.

You’ll need to look out for a specific ability in phase two, where one of the phantom clones fills the entire arena with gloom. To stop it, hit them in the head (with a critical hit) with an arrow. A regular arrow shot will stall them (they’ll go back to spreading gloom again afterward), which is a great strategy while you’re running around on the fly, trying to dodge and line up a better shot. For this phase, keep an eye on the entire arena and nip any attempts to spread gloom in the bud immediately. This will allow all of your Champions to keep fighting (if the gloom hits them they’ll be incapacitated) and distracting all of the other clones.

The clones can also swap weapons in this phase, which could change the timing of your dodges just a tad. Fall back on the water shield ability from Sidon while you learn the new cadences of each fighting style. Be vigilant about stopping the spread of gloom and you’ll take out Phantom Ganon in no time.

You’ll get a Heart Container out of Phantom Ganon when you win

Like most core bosses in the Zelda series, you’ll earn a Heart Container for finishing off Phantom Ganon.