Gears 5 Matriarch Boss Guide - How to Defeat the Matriarch

At the conclusion of Chapter 2 in Gears 5, Kait and Del find themselves facing off against a huge Matriarch Locust. In this Gears 5 Matriarch boss guide, we'll be walking you through the fight in full, detailing the exact steps you need to perform in order to put the boss down for good.

Gears 5 Matriarch Boss Fight

Before we kick things off, we should mention that this boss fight with the Matriarch becomes significantly easier if you've got a second person to play as Del. If it's only yourself playing as Kait, then buckle up for one hell of a tough boss fight. Going forward, this guide assumes you're playing Gears 5 solo.

When the Gears 5 Matriarch boss fight kicks off, the boss will instantly drop down into the icy waters, freezing up instantly. If this hasn't alerted you to the fact that it can be frozen solid, then Del drops a handy voice hint right after. But it's what you do when the boss is frozen that's critical.

Gears 5 Matriarch Weakness

As soon as the Matriarch is frozen, you need to run around to the back of the boss. The Matriarch's back will now be visible and exposed, as a glowing weak point for you to fire on. In fact, this is the only way you can actually damage the Matriarch.

Be warned though, the Matriarch won't stay frozen for long. We estimate the boss stays frozen for roughly 8 seconds, before bursting back out of the ice and onto dry land again. You need to rinse and repeat this process if you want to deal any significant damage to the Matriarch.

If you're tempted to use the Cryo gun to freeze the Matriarch in place, we'd advise against this. Because the Matriarch can rush at you so quickly before you can freeze it using the gun, you want to shoot the ice underneath the Matriarch when it charges towards you, so it's submerged in the ice and instantly freezes solid.

Three times during the Matriarch boss fight, Kait will be overcome by visions, and her sight will be temporarily impaired. When this happens, don't run, but instead strafe your way around the Matriarch where you last saw the boss, since it doesn't typically move very far if you're not firing at it.

But the final time this happens, near the conclusion of the fight, Kait's vision will stay impaired until you slay the Matriarch. When this happens, you've got to be extremely quick on your feet, dodge rolling out of the way of the Matriarch when it enters your vision, and shooting the ice under it immediately once it finishes charging at you, in order to finish it off for good.

If you want to see what we made of Microsoft's latest entry in the franchise, you can check out our own Gears 5 review. For guides to the sequel, you can head over to our Gears 5 collectibles guide, or our guide to the Gears 5 Matriarch boss.