Summary
Just when you think you’ve experienced all there is in the challenging and stressful boss fights games like to throw at you, new ones come along and continue finding more ways to wow and delight you with their well-executed designs. 2024 is no exception when it comes to presenting you with some masterful bosses.
It’s proven to be a year of clever and phenomenal boss fights; not just in the fantasy RPG and Soulslike category but also in the horror, roguelike, and sci-fi genre. Here is but a sample of those battles from games you most likely have already played.
Batman: Arkham Shadow was the underdog DC game of 2024 sinceit was designed only for VR, yet it knocked out fellow Rocksteady’s installment, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, with its reviews and overall better enjoyment. Coincidentally enough, there was also a boss fight entailing a giant nightmare version of Batmanreminiscent of the one in Suicide Squad, but with even better gameplay here.
The developers did a seamless job of recreating the familiar mechanics of the Batman Arkham games into a VR experience, and this fight with Batman’s Shadow (courtesy of the fear toxin) really shows it off. You start by gliding and grappling toward the arena across the floating ruins of Gotham. During the fight, the giant nightmare Bat will vomit up minor shadow enemies, including flying ones you’ll need to grapple and punch. Shadow Batman will also fight hand-to-hand with you and throw a large batarang right from its chest.
The Lyle Bolton boss battle (aka Lock-Up) is another terrific VR fight in Batman: Arkham Shadow. Bolton has a stun baton attached to a chain and electrical apparatus that he swings at you like the Gladiator boss from Doom Eternal.
Alan Wake 2 had two DLC expansions in 2024,which both brought new boss fights. In Night Springs Episode One, titled ‘Number One Fan,’ you get to play Rose Marigold and live out her Alan Wake romance dream, with her boss being the evil twin of Alan Wake - The Bad Boy - who’s kidnapped the titular author.
He can transform into a werewolf and so can his bike, so you’ll have two wolves to fight, which were one of the most annoying enemy types in the base game; plus, you’ll need to dodge waves of explosive heart projectiles he likes to send out to Rose. What’s great about this fight compared to previous Alan Wake bosses is its comedic tone and lighthearted nature instead of placing you in a more terrifying situation.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a sequel that ultimately surpassed the original due to its reinvigorated combat design featuring a variety of giant mythical creatures you encounter throughout your journey. One of the newest ones introduced here is Talos, or the Guardian Gigantus, a giant living statue that emerges from the sea and seemingly the most daunting threat you can face.
Like with any of the main monsters, you’ll have to climb up and target its weak spots to defeat Talos, which are spikes along its body marked by gemstones. Or even better, just simply use Medusa’s head against it to turn stone into stone. If you ever wanted to live out your Jason and the Argonauts fantasy by fighting Talos, Dragon’s Dogma 2 delivered, and that’s what makes this one so amazing.
For post-game content, Dragon’s Dogma 2 offers what are calledPurgener bosses in the Unmoored World, which are equally as epic to take on.
Black Myth: Wukong is a gorgeous Soulslikecreated in Unreal Engine 5with too many boss battles to count. While the large-headed golden giant Elder Jinchi is perhaps the most famous, Erlang, The Sacred Divinity is the better-designed boss battle. He’s the very first boss you face at the beginning of the game in a cinematic spectacle, but you can have a rematch with Erlangas a secret boss in Chapter Three.
Erlang proves quite the challenge and isone of the hardest bosses you’ll face in Black Myth: Wukong. That’s because his movesets are extremely unpredictable and chaotic. He’s got a giant spear and sword, as well as a flurry of fancy kicks.
One of the most distinct features that sets his battle apart from others is his ability to teleport, duplicate himself, shoot lasers from his third eye, and manifest an enormous version of Kratos' Leviathan axe to rain down on you.
Video games are art, but there are some games that utilize actual art and paintings in the design of certain characters and environments, which is the exact brilliance of Atlus’s Metaphor: ReFantazio. Some of the bossesare art-inspired ‘human’ bosses, and the coolest and most creative among these is Homo Avades, which is based on The Garden of Earthly Delights painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
Translating the painting into a living, breathing boss that has multiple phases works seamlessly with the art style and animation of Metaphor: ReFantazio. The overall design also produces a perfectly grotesque visual aesthetic.
The mechanics of striking at the boss' heart, which has NPCs encircling it like in the original painting, and then cracking the shell to reveal even more enemies inside the body of Homo Avades is a masterstroke of genius.
Supergiant’s highly anticipated Hades 2 finally launched in 2024 in Early Access, and the bosses already available in this version proved to be even more phenomenal than some from the original. Among the most captivating new bosses in Hades 2 is Oceanus’s Scylla and the Sirens,based on the Scylla and Charybdis myth from The Odyssey.
Scylla is an amazing fight because it’s also a musical sequence. The theme is that Scylla is the lead singer of her band and you have her mermaid drummer and guitarist (The Sirens) as additional enemies to defeat. Scylla likes to retreat and hide in her clamshell (it also blocks your attacks) and her projectile and area attacks unleash complete chaos,but the song ‘Coral Crown’ makes everything perfect.
Stellar Blade isone of the best sci-fi games and PS5 exclusivesthat launched in 2024. It’s a Souslike title heavily inspired by NieR: Automata, and its sword-fighting combat system really does live up to the name. The attacks are graceful and have satisfying visual feedback, andone of the most enjoyable fightswhere it’s all on full display is the Elder Naytiba fight.
Elder Naytiba is really the final and true form of Adam, which has an amazing and detailed design that looks like something ripped from a FromSoftware title. This is a large white angel knight with a multiple set of wings and arms protruding from the sides to hold a set of four giant spears.
Elder Naytiba will also have the power to summon some cannon fodder angels for you to shoot, and the arena cascaded in white is just gorgeous.
The enemies became more terrifying than everin Bloober’s remake of Silent Hill 2, but the boss fight that really stood out was Abstract Daddy, the source of Angela’s trauma in Silent Hill. The updated design of Abstract Daddy is deeply disturbing, and the fight itself is another major improvement over the original version, which was confined to one room with not much to do other than shoot.
Bloober’s Abstract Daddy fight is a far more intense and harrowing experience, as it’s at the start of the Labyrinth area, and you have to essentially run, dodge, shoot, and then continually escape the creature in a claustrophobic space while destroying TVs, to only then face its final phase in a boss room. The whole fight is longer and more cinematic and becomes one of the scariest moments next to the Pyramid Head chases.
Eddie Dombrowski’s fight in the meat locker, where you have to eerily follow his voice to find him in all the fog and rows of carcasses hanging throughout the room, is also well-crafted. It’s very disorienting, and he can be a hard target to hit, yet he will deal a lot of damage to you. His dialogue is also very chilling throughout the fight.
Before you get to the inevitable Sephiroth battle in Rebirth, you must first go through Jenova, a tough extraterrestrial beast that looks like a cross between something you’d see in Lovecraft’s mythos and the Doom games.
However, this would be the second Jenova fight with the Lifeclinger variant, and, like Jenova Emergent, it too gets a complete graphical overhauland looks much more disturbing than the original version.
The reason Jenova Lifeclinger ultimately ends up being the better fight over Sephiroth is the entire moment being one long, cinematic fight with your party, featuring a thrilling section where you get to switch off between each character to attack Jenova from different angles as you and the creature are falling.
Jenova also fires lasers and fire projectiles from its gigantic pair of wings, which are super majestic and beautifully designed, as is the whole arena.
Sephiroth is still a highlight final boss of the game. For his fight, his arena is a majestic celestial space between worlds. After his initial phase, he’ll become Sephiroth Reborn, and it turns into a David versus Goliath battle, as his new design is gigantic and monstrous, with a Bahamut Arisen Whisper also joining in. Then, you have one final phase with Sephiroth, and the whole experience is a climactic fight like no other game can offer.
For this boss sequence and gaming moment alone, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was worth it. Talk about a fantasy game delivering a perfect dragon fight, where you not only have to deal with one but a duo boss of dragons, one of ice and the other of fire. The cinematic quality of the fight as it moves through the stages and the animations on the dragons and their AI are spectacularly done.
You genuinely feel like you’re in a Game of Thrones ‘dance of the dragons’ moment throughout the entire boss battle. You start with the Icetalon and then, in the next stage, Seartooth will join in, and each dragon will have an individual health bar, making it one of the most difficult fights to manage in the game. But then some allies arrive just in time, and you get the poisoned ballista bolts as an extra aid to defeat them.
