Top 10 bosses of the 2020s
Posted: May 30th, 2026, 21:56
copy-pasted from my substack
Dishonourable Mentions: Malenia, Blade of Miquella and Simon
Elden Ring (2022.) and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025.)
In Croatia, which is where I’m from, we have this concept named ‘‘preseravanje’’ (lit. over-********), which is overdoing something for the sake of appearing a certain way, but ending up making it stupid. That is the best word to describe these two bosses. They’re both their game’s respective superbosses, meaning they’re optional and meant to be exceptionally difficult, but in my opinion, both are poorly designed and go for a level of difficulty neither game’s combat system is equipped to handle.
Well, Malenia almost isn’t. Her moveset is mostly okay. Easy to understand, but hard to dodge, as it should be. But there is one attack, named the Waterfowl Dance, which requires either dumb luck or cheat code-level esoteric techniques to dodge. Simon, on the other hand, is just excessively long and punishing, requiring hundreds upon hundreds of perfectly timed parries to take down. You may handle one or two turns well enough, but considering his enormous health bar, you’ll eventually get bored and slip up. After getting wiped out for the 500th time because you missed one milisecond on attack 982 of 3874, you’ll decide the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
I wouldn’t rag on it, but I suspect the reason they are this way was to pander to these git gud kids who think hard is automatically good. Elden Ring and Clair Obscur are both good games, but considering the culture that exists around games like this, it wouldn’t surprise me. Either way, both of these games can and indeed did do better, so seeing them seemingly stoop to that kind of philistinism is offputting.
#10. - Prince Dion/Bahamut
Final Fantasy XVI (2023.)
Final Fantasy XVI has this thing called Eikon battles, which are boss fights where both you and the enemy transform into giant monsters with elemental powers. They’re unapologetically not RPG battles, as your build isn’t taken into account, and are made more for the spectacle than anything. But that can work too, if done right. Hence: Bahamut, the Warden of Light.
In this fight, you switch between playing as protagonist Clive’s Ifrit, a devil-like melee fighter, and his brother’s Joshua’s Phoenix, who flies and shoots in a Panzer Dragoon gameplay style. The mechanics on both are kind of basic, hence why the boss is only number 10, and it’s not all that difficult, but it is still fun. His moveset only gets wilder and more imaginative as the fight goes on. The flying phase especially surprised me; I didn’t know there were still people who could make these.
But it’s really the style that put it above the rest. It’s gorgeous to look at, with the blue and black environments contrasting with Ifrit and Phoenix’s fire. It has a crucial role in the story, serving as the long-awaited reunion between the two brothers, and them just working perfectly together after being apart for so long was an adorable story detail. Musically, it’s an absolute slam-dunk, giving you a full course of the usual boss theme, then this banger signifying the return of Joshua, and finally a majestic quasi-waltz imbuing Bahamut with his due dignity. It’s a playable concert, I tell you. It’s Fantasia 2023.
#9. - Dragonlord Placidusax
Elden Ring (2022.)
Speaking of Elden Ring and superbosses, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Placidusax is hidden off in an obscure corner of the Crumbling Farum Azula level, and you’re not meant to fight him until you’re level 100 or so. Presentation-wise, he justifies being a secret boss. The arena, the music, and his moveset denoting abilities and intelligence far beyond your garden variety dragon, all point to him being some sort of deity you should not be able to meet in the flesh. The lore even supports this.
If you’ve played the Dark Souls games, you should have a basic idea of how this fight plays. The dragonlord is still a dragon, after all. Fire breath, swooping attacks, claw strikes. Though, I’d argue he has one of the better dragon movesets in the series, thanks to his ability to turn to mist, two heads instead of one, and extended claw reach due to his lightning magic. You may even get an attack that’s so powerful it interrupts the music - see, details like that are what turns good games into great games.
#8. - Labyrinth Sentinel
Remnant 2 (2023.)
If you ask me about Remnant 2, I’ll say it’s either God’s gift to the world or an unconfident soulslike with the personality of a cardboard box depending on what mood I’m in. But one thing that can’t be disputed is that it has one of the most original boss battles in this or any genre: Labyrinth Sentinel.
Imagine it as a mix of Pac-Man and Bloxorz, but within third-person shooter gameplay. You’re trapped in a small maze, where four stone cubes tumble around in pre-set patterns. Getting crushed by one is instant death. You have to shoot them all in their glowing weak points, which will create a hole in that side, rendering it effectively harmless. In addition, you have a set of flying cubes pelting you with normal attacks, ensuring you can’t stay in one spot for too long.
Written out like this, it’s easy to deride this boss as gimmicky, but it works. It’s a blast having to map this maze out in your mind, from a perspective where you can’t see it all at once. It’s precisely how action and puzzle elements should mix, and not to mention, the music is awesome.
#7. - The Dentist
Split Fiction (2025.)
A product of one of the new faces of video game auteurship, Josef Fares, the Dentist fits into his style of kaleidoscopic two-player puzzle platforming to the degree that that is possible. It takes place in a side story, which are short, optional levels taking place in random stories written by one of the two protagonists. This is in one that Mio, the grumpy one, wrote as a little kid.
Not that this is the first piece of media to ever dramatize childrens’ fear of dentists, but it’s amazing how well it made it work in the context of a game. How you start off in a candy world and summon him by drawing a pentagram on a birthday cake, how your protagonists take the form of walking teeth and he attacks them with dental drills, how he immobilizes you with globs of toothpaste, or how he uses wind-up teeth1 toys as weapons. He’s a bit on the easy side, but the energy, creativity, and whimsy more than make up for it, especially coming from a developer who seeks to deliver exactly that. Don’t ever change, mr. Fares.
#6. - Jackenstein
Deltarune (2025.)
‘‘You’re taking too long’’ - Jackenstein’s catchphrase, and one that sadly encapsulates Deltarune’s release schedule. Though, luckily for us, Toby Fox can still bring the thunder when he wants to. He’s been at this diplomatic bullet hell JRPG style for a decade now, and in the fourth and latest chapter of Deltarune, he has brought his most inspired and well-crafted boss battle yet.
A halloween-themed boss, Jackenstein is fought in the dark, and is immune to your basic attacks. The way to take him down is to play his bullet hell segments until you power up an illumination spell. Said segments, contrary to the usual fare, take the form of one of those Atari maze/horror games - if you watch the AVGN, you’ll know which ones - where you have to dodge obstacles and collect powerups with very limited vision, and run from a jack-o-lantern on the way out. One objective advantage this fight has over the rest of Deltarune is the amount of different attacks - most bosses will have four or five attack patterns, but Jackenstein has ten, and nine of them don’t ever repeat. That, combined with the spooktacular music, Scooby Doo-esque eyeballs in the dark, and mountains of hilarious jokes, makes this the most entertaining fight in Deltarune, and one of the best in any indie game, period.
#5. - Adam Smasher
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020.)
In the original 2020. release, Adam was a passive and unintelligent boss. Not much to write home about. In 2023., CDPR released an update that rehauled him completely, inspired by the brutal interpretation of the character in the animated series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which I have not seen. That being said, the Adam Smasher we have now is violent, intelligent, difficult, and most importantly of all, flexible.
Designing the final boss of an RPG is not easy. As RPGs are all about build variety, it requires you to keep a lot of variables in mind - is it too easy for quickhack users? Is it too hard for stealth builds? Would it be fair for him to be immune to poison? This steely skinhead is one of the few that got it all right, no ifs, ands, or buts. If you’re built for direct combat, he’ll give you a frenetic, grueling gunfight. If you can do remote hacks, he’ll counter you with his own - alternatively, you could hack the dormant automated turrets in the room to distract him. If you’re a sneaky ninja, you can pull of some trick where you blind him, then get a short opportunity for a sneak attack. Three of those, and you win - they even have their distinct custom animations.
Adam has a lot less going on artistically than most of the bosses on this list, but the design is just so **** good, it earns him this high of a spot.
#4. - Samur Maykr
Doom Eternal - the Ancient Gods part 1 (2020.)
Would you believe me if I said this is the only 10/10 fight in a pure FPS that I know of? It’s crazy. Despite having some of the best action games ever made - Shadow Warrior, Titanfall 2, Serious Sam - none of them have had a single stop-the-presses-level quality boss2, barring this little Seraph who could.
Samur is a form of Samuel Hayden from Doom 2016., a character whose best asset is his intelligence. It was shown at the end of that game that he is somewhat of a match for the Doom Slayer, his tricks and traps can find a ***** in his armour, and this battle reflects that. It takes place in a room rigged with laser grids, rising and falling platforms, electric floors, portals to summon in demons, magic that slows you down. It’s Saw, it’s Superman vs Lex Luthor, it’s Jaden vs Bastion, it’s Perry the Platypus escaping a trap. Samur is a cheater. Sometimes he fights you himself, sometimes he hides behind shields. At one point, he straight up teleports out of the arena and has you deal with a gauntlet of cacodemons. It works, because that’s what Eternal’s gameplay is built around: constant movement. It’s satisfying having to keep a constantly changing mental map of this death room, hard because of the amount of hazards you have to avoid, but not too much because you do still get an occasional chance to recover.
Also, the music was composed by Andrew Hulshult, who was the composer for DUSK. He was generally brought over for the DLC, and did a fantastic job.
#3. - guess
No, really. Guess who’s next.
Give yourself 10 seconds. See if you can get it right.
…
#3. - The Reaper
Vampire Survivors (2022.)
^this noonie
No, I’m dead serious.
Ok so here’s the deal with this guy. Vampire Survivors is a rougelite where each round is timed at 30 minutes. After those 30 minutes are up, the Grim Reaper swoops in and instakills you. Except, not really - it’s not an instakill, his damage output is just really high, and you’ll likely see damage numbers coming off him if your weapons happen to have been firing at the moment he does you in. The seed has been planted: you can kill him.
Figuring out how is a good brain teaser, and encourages you to get familiar with the game. All the weapon combinations you can make, all the ways you can skew the odds in your favour. There’s a weapon that can freeze enemies, there’s one that blocks the first this or that many hits. You can reduce weapon cooldown. These two hard-to-reach powerups seem to be made for one another, but what do they do? This one character has two extra revives - would that be enough? How do I deal with his insane health pool? I’m not going to spoil how I beat him, but if you play the game for long enough, it’ll become clear to you too. It’s doable.
I just want to point out that the third best boss of the decade is from a game that costs six dollars. Ave Luca Galante, put him in a museum next to Dante and Da Vinci.
#2. - Erlang, the Sacred Divinity
Black Myth: Wukong (2024.)
The top two fights on this list are both superbosses, and both are straight up perfect. First, let’s examine Erlang, the Sacred Divinity, a soulslike hack ‘n’ slash fight that embarrasses the competition.
He is set up in the game’s prologue, where you play as the original Sun Wukong. It’s just a tutorial fight that you can’t lose, but it lets you know where he stands in the game’s lore - the entire game basically taking place in that fight’s shadow. Though the actual final boss lets you test yourself against Sun Wukong and become worthy of his name, you can’t escape the feeling that there’s still unfinished business - would the Monkey King deny himself the chance to get even?
The path to Erlang is rather cryptic, and that makes it all the more shocking how much effort went into this entirely missable fight. His first form alone has four distinct phases, every phase transition occurring with a special, tailored attack. His moveset only gets deeper and deeper, adding magical floating weapons to the mix, alongside eye lasers, a hunting dog, and lightning magic. It’s all animated in a way that you can easily figure out the dodge timing, but it takes really good reaction time. On top of that, he has a number of tweaks, such as a depleteable shield that protects him from the front, or special attacks that break you out of your transformations if you don’t dodge them on time. All of that is peppered with mountains of well-written, well-acted dialogue, portraying Erlang as a spirited, extroverted, and charismatic character. He will have a different taunt for each transformation you try.
And that’s just his first form.
Well, the rest is like the Eikon battles from FFXVI. More about the spectacle than the challenge: you transform into a giant stone monkey, spar with the Four Heavenly Kings, then fight two phases of Erlang as a giant lion-man. It’s easy, but it’s imaginative and exciting. It’s hard not to crack a smile when one of the kings turns his umbrella into a stormy sky. Not to mention, you get to spend more time around Erlang. And you even part ways peacefully despite how hard you bodied him - good. If I had to kill this legend, I could never forgive myself.
#1. - Raphael
Baldur’s Gate III (2023.)
Here are the reasons why Raphael is the best boss battle of the 2020s:
He’s theatrical.
He sings his own boss theme.
He has 666 hit points.
He hates kittens. I **** you not, he actually says that.
He was a dangerous presence in the game since the first chapter. He would badger you to make deals with him, and BG3 being the kind of RPG where your choices matter, the danger of getting gypped out of your soul is very real.
He offers you easy solutions to major questlines. The temptation to take up his offers is real.
The choices you made in the quest regarding his client-turned-enemy, Yurghir, come into play. If you played your cards right, he will be a valuable ally.
The preceding level, the House of Hope, strikes a great balance between being amusingly spoopy and genuinely uncomfortable.
The fact that he’s a devil is woven into the fight intelligently. For example, he can invoke debtors to act as cannon fodder, and absorb energy from enslaved souls to turn himself into a more physically powerful demon - something Doomguy would fight. It actually feels like you’re fighting a devil, not some prick that happens to have ‘‘devil’’ written on his character profile.
He’s genuinely hard. The cambion minions, mixed with the soul pillars scattered around the arena, force you to spread your party around. And none of them are pushovers - you have to prioritize targets and assign combat roles intelligently.
There’s an extra party member named Hope, one of Ralphie’s prisoners you helped break out. Not only does that add a layer of complexity that isn’t present in other fights, or weave the story into the gameplay, or give it a sense of gravity because the devs put in that bit of extra effort… it does all that, but most importantly, Hope and Raphael’s powers complement each other. She can invoke divine intervention, a powerful and tempting spell, but there’s a high probability that she’ll die if she uses it because Raphael has the Punish Divinity power. It’s an RPG, sometimes you gotta roll the dice.
He’s a theatrical devil with 666 hit points who sings his own theme song and hates kittens. How do you top that?
