When you come across a huge arena, then see a massive creature that towers above you in comparison, it can be a bit intimidating, but often their size doesn’t matter.
Sure, they can be a hassle to navigate around, but if you just take a deep breath and employ some strategy, they aren’t so scary and are rather easy to topple over.
8 Final Boss Fights That Are Actually Optional
The final boss in a game is usually the end point, right? Well, what if it didn’t have to be? Let’s check out.
Whether it’s due to a distinct lack of defense, incredibly slow attacks, or a focus on being visually intimidating rather than putting up a real fight, there are plenty of big softies out there.
I’ll be ranking these bosses from how difficult they are compared to how much they tower over the player, and they’ll score especially high if the giant in front of you gets knocked over by a single stone.
Metroid Dread
If you’re a Metroid veteran, you probably shared Samus' reaction upon seeing Kraid again inMetroid Dread, now pitifully locked up against a wall. This is the biggest he’s ever been, yet he’sone of the easiest bossesin the game.
Unlike most other bosses on this list,Kraid is only a pushover by contrast, as this game sets an incredibly high standard for its difficulty, then has Kraid do nothing but toss projectiles at you.
You can negate all his attacks by spamming your gun and having a little bit of spatial awareness, and if you’re good enough at the game to have done a sequence break before this, you can instantly kill him in phase 2.
Even if you don’t, firing directly in his mouth and tanking hits is a functional strategy for most of the boss, and if you’re decent at video games, you’re probably not struggling at living up to Samus' slick moves.
9Ender Dragon
As the only boss in the game with any interesting gameplay, the Ender Dragon is still a pushover that makes me believe we’ll truly never have a great boss inMinecraft, for what that’s worth.
Just don’t be stupid, and you’ll beat this fight deathless 100% of the time. You don’t need to be a speedrunner and try to quickly kill it with beds while it’s perching; you can just prepare beforehand and trounce it.
10 Games Where You Can Fight The Final Boss Immediately
Skip the whole game and fight the big bad.
Simply take out the open-air crystals with a bow, pillar up for the rest, and stay underneath the crystalso you don’t take damage, then shoot the dragon to death. It’s genuinely just that simple.
Even if you still die somehow, you can just bring slow-falling potions and make the fight a pitifully easy occasion. It’s fine for spectacle and a final objective, but it’s underwhelming as hell on the hundredth playthrough.
8Yaldabaoth
Persona 5 Royal
Maybe this is a hot take, but I think Yaldabaoth was one of the easiest bosses in the entirety ofPersona 5, and made even easier with the advent of Persona 5 Royal’s new additions to the gameplay loop.
It’s supposed to throw a ton of status effects that make you change your strategy to counter it, but9 times out of 10, you’re able to face tank the debuff and heal with Morgana or Makoto, then be perfectly fine.
If he lowers your stats, have heat riser on deck. If he does any of his oddly specific deadly sin debuffs, just wait it out. Throw out whatever multi-target attacks you think are safe, and type-effective single-target attacks.
Maybe it’s justRyuji’s confidant making grinding piss-easy, so you’re obscenely over-leveled by the endgame, but I thought I spent a pretty normal amount of time with Royal, and ended up not struggling in the slightest.
7Wall of Flesh
Maybe I’ve playedTerrariafor way too long, but The Wall of Flesh always gets so hyped up asa huge, difficult eventonly to be taken out in a few minutes if you’ve done proper preparation, and it’s just a game of patience.
If you’re comfy with the fight,grab a demon scythe, hellwing bow, hornet staff or night’s edge, down a water walking potion, and you shouldn’t have much trouble taking it down with minimal prep.
If you find the fight hard, though, I want you to remember that Terraria is a Sandbox game where you’re allowed to modify the environment. In other words, build a flat bridge across hell and stop being lazy.
You can kill this thing with a handful of dynamite and a bunch of blocks. It’s genuinely only a problem if you rush into things and don’t want to put in the work to prepare, which is how you get your ass kicked by every Terraria boss.
Shadow of the Colossus
It would be a shame if the game best known for having gargantuan colossi to take on didn’t have an entry on this list, but luckily,Shadow of the Colossushas Hydrus, which will lose all intimidation on a second playthrough.
Don’t get me wrong, the aesthetics and atmosphere of this fight are unnerving and masterfully done, but if you ignore that for a moment, you’ll find this is the most painfully straightforward encounter possible.
Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on taking on Hydrus: Wait in the water, wait for the tail to surface from the water, grab it, gradually make your way up the eel, stab the electric spikes, and repeat three separate times.
This is boring,it presents zero challenge if you don’t get in the way of the obviously dangerous spikes, and this is superbly easy to get down in one cycle without falling off as long as you keep stabbing the thing in the open air.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
While the bosses inThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomare certainly a step up fromBreath of the Wildin terms of vibes, most of them are pushovers, especially when it comes to Colgera.
Theboss of the wind templeseems pretty hard, a massive Wyvern that you’d think requires good aim in order to defeat, but it’s all bark and no bite.Fuse wings to your arrows, aim directly at the massive circles, and profit.
Even if you don’t have those, go for eye arrows, or just dive directly into the holes by aligning Link right above the boss, and both of them will shatter one of the three ice crystals with minimal effort.
It can shed spikes from these crystals, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten hit by them, and I genuinely forgot they existed. The music is awesome, the vibes are on point, but you can end this dude in a couple of minutes, and it isn’t hard.
Super Mario Galaxy
Whenever I think of bosses inSuper Mario Galaxy, I think of the fight against Megaleg, a massive robot far larger than the planet it’s stomping around on, and yet it shares the same vulnerability everyone does: Bullets.
Simply put, you climb up this dude’s legs,avoid the incredibly obvious and slow Bullet Bills, then direct one of the Bills at the top to the cage on Megaleg’s head, before being yelled at by alarms and forced to do it again.
Sure, Mario bosses aren’t known for being hard. I get that. It still doesn’t stop the grim atmosphere and incredible music leading to one of the most straightforward fights from being a heavy disappointment.
The second round gets a tiny bit challenging, sometimes making you jump a bit to guide the bullet bill. That’s it, though, and it doesn’t even get the typical 3 hits of most Nintendo bosses, going down after two rounds of pitiful action.
Sonic Frontiers
The first three fights inSonic Frontiersare some of the most bombastic, incredible boss fights in the series' history, and they all could’ve been an incredibly satisfying final boss, but the fourth and final boss just kinda sucks.
Supreme is built up to be an incredible challenge, but it’s justa modified model of the first boss in the game, with sick laser wings it doesn’t use, and absolutely zero potential to be challenging for anyone.
I’ve had times when I damaged Supreme so fast that the game couldn’t register it in time, making both of us awkwardly wait for a few seconds before it played the mid-fight cutscene, then I shredded it again right after.
I wouldn’t even mind it being a glass tank, but it barely uses the awesome gun it has, and it doesn’t move enough to evade the homing attack that has Marth’s Melee grab range, and it makes the game go out with a vine boom sound effect.
2Little Horn
Super Meat Boy
Admittedly, a massive conglomeration of your corpses piled together into a fleshy abomination is one ofSuper Meat Boy’srawest ideas for a fight, but Little Horn genuinely sucks no matter what.
If you’re a beginner, it’ll feel like an awful game of reaction time that’s unpredictable and tough to crack. But if you’ve ever watched a Meat Boy speedrun, you’ll know this dude is the worst, easiest boss ever put in a video game.
10 Great Games With Terrible Boss Fights
Not every developer can be FromSoftware.
You canstand in one particular part of the right-most platform, slightly left of its center, and you cannot be damaged by any attackother than the sweep that covers the entire arena at once.
Whenever he keeps a hand up for a little while, just jump over it, and bam, you’ve learned the entire fight. This turns itfrom annoying and frustratinginto boring and mind-numbingly easy, despite how cool it is.
1Rock Titan
Kingdom Hearts
If you’re a Hercules fan who has playedKingdom Heartsbefore, you’re probably just as disappointed as I waswhen you walk into the Colosseumand see Rock Titan, only to find he’s a pitiful pushover.
Rock Titan shows up in the Hades Cup, one of the final challenges in the entire game, and shows up after the guy the cup is named after, only to be defeated by stubbing his toe on the keyblade and getting a little headache.
I’ve never been damaged by his shockwave with an incredibly drawn-out animation, and I haven’t been hit by one of his dysfunctional heads either. It’s genuinely a bit sad watching him struggle as I beat him to death.
InKingdom Hearts 3,Rock Titan was given tutorial boss status and is defeated entirely by a rollercoaster with a few fireworks, and I don’t know if I find that funny or sad. Either way, it’s a massive waste of earth.
