The Best Final Bosses of the 2010s

After somewhat falling out of vogue for several generations, the video game “final boss” made a triumphant comeback during the 2010s, mostly due to FromSoftware’s Dark Souls and the industry-wide paradigm shift that game helped trigger. Following Dark Souls‘ arrival in 2011, the final boss was officially back, as evidenced by the sheer number of amazing final boss encounters players had waiting for them as the culmination of some of the decade’s best games. Whether it’s for their mechanics, their importance to a game’s story, or simply for the apex challenge they present for players to overcome, these are the best final boss fights of the 2010s.

• Game — Dark Souls
• Release Date — September 22, 2011
• Developer — FromSoftware
• Publisher — Bandai Namco

After facing off against an entire gauntlet of challenging and memorable bosses, Dark Souls saves the best for last with the final encounter. The fight against Gwyn is memorable for all the right reasons — the music, the arena, the significance it carries for the game’s story and the player’s place in an unending cycle of death, decay, and rebirth – and it’s also a perfect skill check for one of Dark Souls‘ most important mechanics: the parry. If you’ve mastered the parry by the time you fight Gwyn, this battle is mostly a breeze. Otherwise, be prepared for Dark Souls‘ final boss to live up to his legacy as the Lord of Cinder.

• Game — Undertale
• Release Date — September 15, 2015
• Developer — Toby Fox
• Publisher — Toby Fox

As far as the best games of the 2010s go, Undertale is unique in that it has not one, but three different potential final bosses based on how players actually progress through the game. The best of them all, though, is the one that most players will likely face their first time through the game, Flowey, who ends up being the final encounter for anyone with a “Neutral” playthrough that mixes both pacifism and combat. Mechanically, the encounter against “Omega Flowey” (otherwise known as “Photoshop Flowey”) is pretty similar to most other fights in Undertale, but its nightmare-fuel appearance is the kind of stuff that you can’t as easily shake from your memory.

• Game — Marvel’s Spider-Man
• Release Date — September 7, 2018
• Developer — Insomniac Games
• Publisher — Sony Interactive Entertainment

Insomniac’s approach to making the Spider-Man games undoubtedly borrows heavily from the framework established by Rocksteady Studios and its excellent Batman: Arkham trilogy, which includes how the game handles its bosses. While most of the boss encounters in Marvel’s Spider-Man boil down to one specific gimmick or strategy, the final battle against Doctor Octopus significantly ratchets up the difficulty but does so without any additional frustration. The fight against Doc Ock is a perfect example of how to make a mechanically complex and challenging boss fight and have it still be both incredibly fun and thrilling, no matter how many times you’ve faced off against Peter’s former mentor.

• Game — The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• Release Date — November 20, 2011
• Developer — Nintendo EAD
• Publisher — Nintendo

For as little recognition as Skyward Sword gets as one of the better Legend of Zelda games, it’s worth pointing out that not only does it have some of the best dungeon and boss design in the entire series, but that its final encounter against Demise is arguably the series’ best final boss battle (outside Tears of the Kingdom‘s, of course). Having to go toe-to-toe against both Girahim one final time and then immediately face off against Demise puts players’ skills with Skyward Sword‘s motion controls to the ultimate test, but that’s just part of the appeal. The battle against Demise carries some of the heaviest thematic weight in the entire Zelda series, kicking off the curse of immortality for Link, Zelda, and Ganon that will see their struggle of good vs. evil endure for eternity.

• Game — Hollow Knight
• Release Date — February 24, 2017
• Developer — Team Cherry
• Publisher — Team Cherry

Like any good Soulslike, simply getting to Hollow Knight‘s final boss is a challenge in and of itself, and then the game pulls back the curtain to deliver its most complex encounter yet. The Radiance is the ultimate test of the Knight’s (and, by proxy, the player’s) abilities and toolkit, putting both your combat and platforming skills to the test in a fight that barely ever lets up during the entire duration. But there again, the thrill of successfully overcoming that challenge, and the sense of accomplishment that it instills, are nigh-unmatched by any other game. There’s a reason people have been eagerly anticipating Silksong ever since they first cleared The Radiance; it’s a feeling unlike any other.

• Game — God of War
• Release Date — April 20, 2018
• Developer — Santa Monica Studio
• Publisher — Sony Interactive Entertainment

While the fights against the ultra-challenging (and ultra-fun) Valkyries are perhaps the best boss battles in 2018’s God of War reboot, they don’t carry the narrative significance and spectacle of the game’s true final boss battle against Baldur. Knowing Kratos’ past, it’s hard not to emphathize with Baldur’s crusade against the god-killer, even if his methods and approach make him one of the series’ most hateworthy villains. And in typical God of War fashion, the brawl between Kratos and Baldur is visceral in a way that few other games can attest to, with each hit feeling like it would absolute decimate a lesser creature.

• Game — Bloodborne
• Release Date — March 24, 2015
• Developer — FromSoftware
• Publisher — Sony Computer Entertainment

Considering that the Moon Presence is Bloodborne‘s “secret” final boss and only necessary for the game’s hidden third (and best) ending, it’s only fair to put Gehrman as the game’s true final boss, and what a fight it is. Gehrman is the first Hunter, which means he has access to the entire combat sandbox that the player does. Lots of fights in Bloodborne are challenging for different reasons, but the fight against Gehrman really feels like an evenly matched test of skill in which FromSoftware asks the player “do you have what it takes?”. Getting the timing down for Gehrman’s wildly powerful scythe swings and countering them with a pistol is sublime, as is eliminating him and ending the Hunter’s Dream forever.

• Game — Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
• Release Date — February 19, 2013
• Developer — PlatinumGames
• Publisher — Konami

PlatinumGames might take a different approach to boss design from a studio like FromSoftware, but both developers have a clear reverence for the challenging encounters of old. No other PlatinumGames title makes that more clear than Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, where the fights against both Jetstream Sam and the final battle against Senator Armstrong are just as challenging as anything in a Soulsborne game, despite sitting firmly in the character action genre. Senator Armstrong’s battle is a fast, anxiety-inducing showdown between Raiden and a hulking megalomaniac that also happens to feature some of the most outright ridiculous dialogue in a game that’s already not shy about being over-the-top.

• Game — Dark Souls 3
• Release Date — March 24, 2016
• Developer — FromSoftware
• Publisher — Bandai Namco

When it comes to the lore of the Dark Souls trilogy, the Chosen Undead of the first game canonically links the First Flame, extending the curse that’s befallen Lordran. So when the player takes up the mantle to finally break that cycle in the third game, the final foe you have to face off against is none other than the manifestation of your player character from the first Dark Souls. It’s a cathartic full-circle moment in one of the most powerful and important video game trilogies of the 2010s, and the fight itself is both mechanically dense (with plenty of challenging combos and abilities to learn the dodge or parry timing for) and accompanied by one of the series’ most moving scores.

• Game — Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
• Release Date — March 22, 2019
• Developer — FromSoftware
• Publisher — Activision

As great as the fight against the Soul of Cinder is, it falls just short of what’s both FromSoftware’s best final boss encounter and one of the best final bosses of the 2010s — Sword Saint Isshin from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Unlike other FromSoftware games, Sekiro essentially gives you every tool you’ll ever need to succeed right at the game’s outset and simply challenges you to “get gud” with the abilities you’ve been given. By the time you reach Isshin, you will have mastered Sekiro‘s combat sandbox, which FromSoftware responds to by delivering one of the most challenging and demanding boss battles in the history of the medium. But once you defeat Isshin and reach Sekiro‘s conclusion, you can claim mastery over one of the most perfect action games ever created.