Boss fights aren’t seen as the strongest suit of the Assassin’s Creed series, as the games are more well-known for the open-world they offer and the unique assassinations available. And yet, there have been plenty of bosses seen in the series.
For this list, we’re looking into the boss fights players engage in rather than the villains in the story. Taking that into account, we’re counting down the most powerful bosses in gameplay across the games and also listing the weakest of the bunch. You might be surprised to find the names on either pile, so here are five each for both categories.
10 Weakest: Haytham Kenway
After setting up the fight between father and son Haytham and Connor Kenway, the game couldn’t live up to the expectations of the final confrontation. Here, the sequence began with a bunch of pratfalls that simply interfered with the fight.
Eventually, Connor and Haytham were left to duke it out albeit severely injured. For this reason, Haytham came across extremely weak as all one had to do was block out his attacks and then retaliate with their own. Eventually, it was mainly a waiting game for Haytham to attack and for the player to repeat the same moves before the quick time event prompted to kill Haytham.
9 Powerful: El Impoluto
Hoo boy, now that was a boss fight that could still keep you up all night for how insanely challenging it was. In fact, it was so difficult that Ubisoft made an update to Black Flag to remove the possibility of players jumping on the ship and killing the crew to avoid the actual boss battle.
In case you don’t remember, the El Impoluto was the most difficult of the legendary ships available to battle. Making this such a powerful boss was the ship’s ability to chase the protagonist’s ship to no end. Once engaged, El Impoluto never lets up and you have almost no chance of outrunning its barrage of attacks.
8 Weakest: Rodrigo Borgia
As the overall antagonist of Assassin’s Creed II, Rodrigo Borgia was engaged in the story at numerous times before the final confrontation came about. Here, Ezio was trapped in the vault with the villain and they had their clash.
Rodrigo turned out to be quite weak in gameplay, though, as his reliance on the Pieces of Eden meant he was very predictable. All one had to do was unleash a flurry of attacks on Borgia in order to deny him any opening to land a hit on you. Even within the story, it turned out Borgia was more bark than bite.
7 Powerful: Giant Snake
You’d think you’d landed in the Shadow of the Colossus world when first catching sight of this enormous creature, and the snake packed in the power department too. With Bayek’s vessel in motion, the snake thrashing in and out of the water didn’t allow for much room in aiming.
Its real power came from when the snake attacked head-on, draining a huge chunk of the player’s health. Once on solid ground, the snake’s constant coiling around on pillars and disappearances in the water made it even more unpredictable.
6 Weakest: Deimos
He wasn’t a cakewalk (yes, the canonical character is male), but Deimos wasn’t anything different compared to the enemies players had already faced when this boss came out. His attacks were hard-hitting, but had an easily discernible format.
Deimos’ main form of attack was in close proximity, so battling him from afar utilizing arrows and quick moves meant he never really posed a threat. Within the story, Deimos was only seen as a tool to use for the Cult, meaning he wasn’t set up as a very powerful enemy by the game either.
5 Powerful: Al Mualim
Perhaps players of today - who have become very well versed in Assassin’s Creed - might have an easier chance with Al Mualim, but he was a tough cookie when we first fought him. Altair might be wise, but he was very ill-equipped in gameplay for this to be easy.
Al Mualim then showed off his awesome power by controlling Altair’s movement, and creating multiple functioning copies of himself to overwhelm the player. Navigating around the manipulations of the Apple of Eden was far from simple, and Al Mualim chose his attacks at the precise time when this came about.
4 Weakest: Vieri De Pazzi
Vieri lived as a coward and it was perhaps fitting he fought and died as one too. He was never powerful in persona or skills either, and chose to hide behind his henchman during the boss fight as well. Unlucky for him, Ezio was just too skilled for this to be a challenge.
All one had to do was sneak from behind where Vieri and his goons were standing and launch a quick assassination of Vieri’s muscle. From there on, all that needed to be done was counter Vieri’s attack, which triggered his assassination.
3 Powerful: Medusa
Even if you haven’t encountered Medusa thus far in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey you can tell that there’s going to be something involving her stare. What made her so powerful was her ability to charge in extremely quick.
Just when you think you’ve gotten a reading on Medusa’s attacks, she unleashes the stone-turning powers to severely hinder your charge. It’s more of a battle of patience as attempting to outright attack Medusa without being defensive was a recipe for disaster. By this point, players would have been inclined to favor offense than defense, which ended up making Medusa more powerful than she actually might be.
2 Weakest: Cesare Borgia
No matter how many times narration in the game attempted to make us see Cesare as a threat, he only came across as a weak-willed whiner. With hardly any execution of power in the story, the expectation was this would come in the gameplay - it most certainly didn’t.
The only thing powerful about this boss was how he seemed to be able to absorb a lot of abuse, as it took repeated attacks to get Cesare weakened. Other than that it was all up to how you could take out the guards surrounding Cesara without getting hit too much. Cesare himself was easily killed by a few button prompts.
1 Powerful: Erymanthian Boar
This isn’t a joke by any means: this is the most difficult boss you’ll find in the whole Assassin’s Creed series. While the boar seems to be easy at first sight, its ability to let out poison gas makes it almost impossible to beat.
Any attack you inflict only spells your own doom as the boar releases further gas and makes that particular spot uninhabitable. Halfway through the fight, the entire area is guaranteed to be filled with poison gas, meaning there’s nowhere for you to go other than keep having your health reduced. The most favored strategy fans have been able to come up with is by luring in bounty hunters and have them kill the boar!