The Final Test: Ranking the Greatest Final Boss Fights in Games from 2020 to 2025

A great final boss isn't just a hard fight. It's a statement. It's the game looking you dead in the eyes and asking whether you were paying attention. The best ones tie together everything — the mechanics, the story, the music, the visuals — into a single encounter that feels like it couldn't have existed anywhere else in that game.

We've spent time with the heaviest hitters from 2020 to 2025, and we're putting out a definitive ranking of the final boss battles that actually delivered. This isn't just a difficulty ranking. We're judging on mechanical creativity, narrative payoff, visual spectacle, and the thing that matters most: how it feels to finally drop the boss.

Spoilers throughout. You've been warned.

What Makes a Final Boss Actually Good?

Before the list, let's establish the criteria. A mediocre final boss is just a regular enemy with more health. A good final boss challenges you in familiar ways with higher stakes. A great final boss does something you didn't see coming — mechanically, narratively, or both.

The best final encounters share a few traits: they feel like the natural conclusion of the game's design language, they have a visual identity that's distinct and memorable, and they give you a story reason to care about winning. Difficulty matters, but it's not the whole picture. Some of the most iconic final fights aren't the hardest ones — they're the most meaningful ones.

S-Tier: Encounters That Redefined the Standard

Malenia, Blade of Miquella — Elden Ring (2022)

Yes, technically an optional boss, but her role as the de facto final challenge for most players earns her a spot at the top. Malenia is the rare boss that manages to be genuinely punishing while still feeling fair — eventually. Her Scarlet Rot bloom, her lifesteal on every hit, and her two-phase structure pushed players to their absolute limits. More importantly, she became a cultural moment. "Let Me Solo Her" became a legend. That kind of community mythology doesn't happen around forgettable design.

Gehrman, the First Hunter — Bloodborne (2015, but still being discovered)

Alright, 2015 predates our window, but the discourse around Gehrman never stopped — especially as the PS5 generation brought new players to the game. His fight is a masterclass in emotional boss design. He's not a monster. He's a tired old man trying to do you a kindness. The music, the setting, the revelation of what he is — it all lands. FromSoftware has never made a more melancholy final encounter.

Radahn (Consort) — Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (2024)

The DLC's final boss became one of the most debated fights of the year — initially criticized for its damage output, then patched, then re-evaluated. What remained was an encounter with genuine spectacle: a two-phase fight that pivots into something almost cosmic, with a visual design that burned itself into players' memories immediately.

A-Tier: Brilliant Fights That Nearly Hit the Top

The Nameless Puppet — Lies of P (2023)

Lies of P was the Soulslike that finally proved the formula could work outside of FromSoftware. Its final boss is a testament to that ambition. The Nameless Puppet fight is technically demanding, visually gorgeous, and emotionally resonant in the context of the game's Pinocchio-inspired narrative. The question of what it means to become "real" hits differently after you've spent the whole game making moral choices.

Astel, Naturalborn of the Void — Elden Ring (2022)

Astel gets points purely for spectacle and surprise. Dropping into that arena for the first time is a genuine jaw-drop moment, and the fight itself is one of the most alien encounters in modern gaming. It rewards aggression but punishes recklessness — a balance many bosses fail to find.

Nightmare King Grimm — Hollow Knight (2018, but widely revisited)

Again, technically outside the window, but Hollow Knight's enduring presence in the competitive community means Grimm continues to define conversations about boss design. His fight is pure pattern recognition pushed to its absolute limit — a ballet of aggression that rewards mastery like almost nothing else.

B-Tier: Solid, Memorable, But Not Quite Legendary

Margit, the Fell Omen — Elden Ring (2022)

Margit isn't the final boss, but he functions as the game's real skill check — and for millions of players, he felt like a final boss. His design is textbook quality: readable attacks, punishing aggression, and a clear lesson that the game expects you to play differently than you might expect. He drops a tier because he's not actually the finale.

Kupala — The Witcher 3 (various end-game encounters)

The Wild Hunt's climax has always been a slight letdown mechanically compared to the journey that preceded it. Narratively excellent, visually strong — but the actual fight doesn't match the story's stakes. A reminder that narrative payoff and mechanical satisfaction don't always arrive together.

What Separates Legend from Forgettable

Looking across this list, a pattern emerges. The fights that achieve genuine legend status almost always do one specific thing: they make the mechanics mean something.

In Malenia's case, the lifesteal mechanic forces you to stay aggressive even when your instincts scream at you to back off. That tension is a direct expression of who she is as a character — relentless, powerful, and designed to punish hesitation.

The Nameless Puppet's fight in Lies of P escalates in ways that mirror the game's central theme of transformation and identity. The mechanics aren't just mechanics — they're storytelling.

When a final boss fails, it's usually because the fight is disconnected from the rest of the experience. More health, more damage, maybe a second phase — but nothing that says something new about the game world or challenges the player in a way that feels earned.

The Verdict

The best final boss fights aren't obstacles. They're arguments. They're a developer making the case that every hour you spent getting here was worth it, and asking you to prove it one more time.

From Malenia's unrelenting aggression to the Nameless Puppet's emotional gut-punch, the standout encounters of 2020 to 2025 have raised the bar for what a finale can be. The games that get this right become the ones people are still talking about — and still running — years later.

Drop the boss. Then think about why it mattered.