8 Boss Battle Difficulty Spikes That DESTROYED Players

5. The High Priest - Beyond Good & Evil

beyond good and evil
Ubisoft

Another final boss fight that can absolutely do one at the end of an otherwise entirely manageable game is Jade’s face-off against the DomZ High Priest at the tail end of Ubisoft’s 2003 action-adventure Beyond Good & Evil.

There can be something exciting about a boss battle that throws you a curveball by including a combat mechanic you’ve either rarely or never encountered in the game so far. Take Nathan Drake’s end game sword fight against Rafe in Uncharted 4, for example, which you probably either loved or hated. While that one wasn’t an enormous pain in the ass compared to the game so far, the curveballs Ubi had to throw at you from the big bad DomZ had us wishing we skipped leg day.

That was a clever play on words that referred to both DomZ the alien and DOMS the post-exercise muscle soreness. Anyway.

The enormously frustrating fight takes place on a tiny little platform where in its second phase you need to execute consecutive hits against the boney bastard while he teleports around you without taking damage. Mess up and you’ll have to start the sequence again. How do you know to do this or that you need to either dodge back or find another solution when it’s above you? Just fail fast, and pop health-fueling K-Bups like there’s no tomorrow. Assuming you bought loads which you probably didn’t because you didn’t realise this was all going down. Right when you think you have a handle on him, the final boss stage requires you to do that whole sequence bit again but with your controls reversed. 

This is a lot easier if you turn your controller upside down but you know it’s a bitchy final boss for better and worse when that’s the best solution.

 
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Jess has been a journalist and content creator in the games industry for over 15 years and has been WhatCulture's resident Australian import and sorry cop since 2020, upping the quotient of swearing and apologising in WhatCulture Gaming's annual blooper videos considerably. She previously worked at GameSpot for 10 years, most notably hosting GameSpot News in addition to E3 live shows, and PAX panels. She regularly livestreams a variety of games on her 'jessmcdonell' YouTube and Twitch channels and hosts the 'Do It On The Day' podcast. She has won awards for her news and feature work in gaming as well as an accolade for her comedic writing (likely an admin error). She can be found on X at @jessmcdonell and Instagram at @jessicamcdonell sharing her current videogame fixations, industry insights, and videos of her cat, Karma.