10 Hardest First Bosses In Video Games

Nier: Automata boasts one of the most head-scratchingly unforgiving video game prologues ever, because above all else you need to beat the 40-minute segment without dying due to the lack of checkpoints.

Were Automata's intro a fairly ho-hum glorified tutorial that might be fine, but given that you have to defeat the towering Goliath-class machine Engels before you're able to save, it lurches into arguably excessive, if not downright unreasonable, territory.

Considering how easily the Engels Goliath can kill you, especially on higher difficulties, this is quite the maddening boss fight.

It will test your reflexes and attentiveness, and while absolutely setting you up for the rest of the game, it does rather feel like director Yoko Taro had a bit too much fun at the player's expense here.

Unsurprisingly many players ultimately opted to just cheese through the prologue on Easy difficulty rather than having to slog through it again and again ad nauseum.