It’s been almost five years sinceCupheadwon our hearts with its retro cartoon-style, vintage soundtrack, and tough-as-nails boss battles that transform innocent animated figures into powerful foes. Now, with aNetflix series adaptationand theDelicious Last CourseDLCon the near horizon, it’s time to get back to the original game and suffer its challenges all over again. Of course, the moment is also ripe for us to praise the bestCupheadbosses, an arduous work considering the overall quality of each encounter.
RankingCuphead’s best bosses is no easy task. Should we take into account the most memorable fights? The style or the substance? Maybe how fair a battle feels to the player? How about mixing all of this? Considering how each boss battle ofCupheadis as polished as a game can be, offering a unique trial of skill, it’s impossible to escape some personal preferences when raking the game’s boss. So, an entirely different version of a rank ofCuphead’s best bosses could very well exist and be reasonable. With that in mind, get ready to wallop some of the most creative bosses ever developed in a video game.
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9. Cagney Carnation
While the bosses of the first world ofCupheadare impressive in their own way, most of them feel mechanically simple. This is expected, as the player is just getting used to Cuphead’s challenging gameplay and needs some time to adjust. However, that’s part of what makes Cagney Carnation so memorable. The final boss ofCuphead’s first world is the first real challenge the player will have to face. And even though Cagney Carnation will wipe the floor with you dozens of times in a row, it’s impossible to get made with it. Cagney Carnation changes quickly from a cute and innocent flower to an evil and thorny plant, and it beats the player with such personality that it’s impossible not to love it.
8. Dr. Kahl’s Robot
Dr. Kahl’s Robot is one of the most despisedCupheadbosses. The reason is that Dr. Kahl’s is arguably the hardest boss in the game, beating even the Devil in the rank. However, when we leave our frustration on the side, we appreciate this boss’s magnific design. The giant robot has different attacks during the first phase, each related to a specific weak spot. Destroying a specific weak spot prevents the boss from using certain attacks, but it also makes the remaining ones more powerful. The player, then, needs to dodge a bullet hell of lasers, bombs, and magnetize metal while thinking carefully about what they want to destroy first. It’s a nice change of pace from bosses with a single weak spot, and well deserving the praise.
7. Phantom Express
Even though the Phantom Express has four distinctive combat phases, the boss is not particularly challenging. However, the Phantom Express deserves all praise for two reasons. First, it’s somewhat impressive that Studio MDHR designed four different apparitions around the same concept of a moving train, making each of them play and look unique. Secondly, the Phantom Express uses the parry ability to its most, allowing the player to change their positioning by successfully parrying a train cart. A parry is only a defensive tool in most boss fights, but in the Phantom Express, players are forced to parry even to expose the final ghost weak spot. For all that, Phantom Express deserves to be remembered as one of the most creative bosses inCuphead.
6. Captain Brineybeard
Captain Brineybeard is the perfect example of a layered boss fight. At first, Brineybeard has only a couple of attacks that the player must memorize and evade. However, as the boss’s health gets depleted, new attacks get added to the mix, one by one, forcing the player to pay attention to an increasing number of damage sources. We can’t always appreciate howCupheadadds new layers to bosses to increase difficulty in the middle of the battle. However, Captain Brineybeard does this better than any other boss, keeping the same arena and most of the same patterns during the whole fight and only gradually increasing the pacing.
5. Baroness Von Bon Bon
Baroness Von Bon Bon is the typical tyrannical ruler, sending her subjects to fight against the player in her place. Before getting a violent audience with the ruler of Sugarland Shimmy, the player must defeat three of the Baroness’ subordinates. However, there are five possible subordinates to fight, which means the player must adjust their strategy depending on which foe they need to defeat at the time. The candy-inspired enemies are each unique, and they all have their way of challenging the player. With such diverse challenges, Baroness Von Bon Bon’s fight is potentially different every time you face her, which makes her both more challenging than otherCuphead’s bosses but also more interesting to fight over and over again.
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4. Sally Stageplay
Sally Stageplay’s fight happens on a theater stage, going through all three acts of a play to the public cheering at the end. Besides being a unique boss, Sally Stageplay’s fight also offers an ever changing scenario that adds a new challenge every time the player moves to a new phase. Sally Stageplay is also one of the fewCupheadbosses in which the player action can lead to a whole different outcome. The first act of the play is Sally’s marriage, and players can either kill Sally’s soon-to-be husband or leave him alive. That means the second act of the play is either Sally becoming a housewife or a nurse. Besides that, the third act will either feature Sally alone in the afterlife or together with her husband, turning this boss fight into the perfect example of howCupheadcan hide incredible secrets even in a game without much exploration.
3. Wally Warbles
Contrary to most airplane levels, there’s little randomness in Wally Warbles' attacks. That means the player is in complete control of their actions and will never feel cheated if they die. That would already be enough to make a great boss fight. However, Wally Warbles' fight also surprises with its unique design. After destroying a giant cuckoo house with, well, a giant cuckoo inside, the player must fight a baby bird with a floating shield of eggs and a ray gun. That’s right, Studio MDHR took all the randomness from the gameplay and applied it to the boss design. And it gets even better, as once the baby bird is defeated, the big bird comes back, featherless, in a hammock carried by two birds dressed as paramedics.
2. The Devil
The Devil is the culmination of all the player’s efforts. You can only challenge Hell’s ruler after beating every single boss in the game, which means that if you got to this point, you already masteredCuphead’s mechanics. Even so, the Devil will not go down easily, as he’ll pull every trick on the book to defeat the player. Although there are tougher fights inCuphead, the Devil is a magnificent challenge that adds new layers of difficulty throughout the first big phase of the battle, until it turns everything upside down and forces the player to adapt to a new arena and whole new moveset.Cupheadends up on a high note, thanks to the glorious battle against the Devil and the feeling of accomplishment it gives the player.
1. Beppi the Clown
What could be more evil than the devil? The answer, of course, is a clown. Using multiple carnival attractions to attack the player, Beppi The Clown turns innocent rides into tools of destruction. There are ballons, carousels, roller coasters, and even shoot-the-duck targets to make your next trip to the carnival filled with hellish memories. That’s the reason why Beppi is so beloved byCuphead’s fans. Besides that, there’s something about Beppi’s manic laugh that makes the clown stick with you a long time after he’s defeated. The fact he’s one of the first bosses ofCuphead’s second world, which highly increases the challenge, also helps him become so memorable. After reaching Beppi, players can no longer count on luck to get out alive, and the evil clown will teach you to either learn the game or give up.
