The WORST Boss In Every Assassin's Creed Game
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VOICE OVER: Aaron Brown
WRITTEN BY: Caitlin Johnson
These "Assassin's Creed" boss fights were some of the lowest points in their respective games. For this list, we're looking at the worst bosses in Ubisoft's series, whether they make us rage quit or are pathetic let downs. However, we aren't including any ship bosses. Our list includes The War Elephants from “Assassin's Creed Origins” (2017), Ahmet from “Assassin's Creed: Revelations” (2011), Rodrigo Borgia from “Assassin's Creed II” (2009), and more!
Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at the worst boss in every “Assassin’s Creed” game. Some will make you rage quit, while others are a pathetic let-down. We’re also NOT including any ship bosses.
Do you like to heal your character when you play a video game? Well then, good luck trying to get through the original “Assassin’s Creed” without raging at some of the encounters. Altaïr’s only way of healing is to flee combat long enough to regain his health chunks – and, oh yeah, it takes ten seconds per block to return. Each time you fight de Sablé, both when it’s Maria in disguise and the man himself, he’ll also have a dozen Templars and guards to back him up. And with an inconsistent countering system combined with the fact that, to kill the target either time, you need to switch to your hidden blade mid-fight, the controls definitely make this way more frustrating than it needs to be.
We’re still not sure why Ubisoft decided to go down this route for the final boss of their blockbuster sequel, even over a decade on. After already besting Rodrigo in combat more than once, only to be defeated when he gets the Apple of Eden anyway, Ezio follows him into the secret chamber below the Sistine Chapel. There, he decides they’re going to fight without any weapons or magic tricks, mano a mano. Unfortunately, without his sword or Pieces of Eden, Rodrigo isn’t a very skilled combatant, so this fight descends into Ezio beating on him with no resistance for a few minutes. And after all that, he lets the guy live.
There’s really only one actual boss in “Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood”, Cesare Borgia, but on balance, he’s definitely not one of the worst bosses the series has ever had. So, instead, we’re going to give the honor of worst boss to ALL of the Borgia Captains. There are twelve Borgia Towers you need to destroy, first by assassinating the Captain and then setting the tower on fire. Some of those Captains will fight Ezio upfront, but most of them are cowards who’ll run away. If they do, they’ll quickly despawn, and the game won’t just reload you like it would a normal mission. No, you need to leave and come back later to try again, which can make the process of eliminating them all a real chore.
Thus begins the string of “Assassin’s Creed” games where all the final boss fights were basically just chases. While in past games you could often avoid doing a chase if you were quick enough on the draw, that’s not so here, where you’ll have to do long, scripted chases just for the chance to assassinate that final target. Worse, this time, it’s not a foot chase, but a wagon chase followed by a parachute segment, and then a long fall from a cliff. We get that they were trying to be cinematic, something they’d later do a lot better in “Assassin’s Creed III”, but it just seems to go on forever. And after all that, it’s not even Ezio who kills Ahmet.
Unlike Ahmet, this is a chase that you WILL have to do on-foot, when it’s finally time for Connor to assassinate Charles Lee. Upon seeing Connor he immediately flees and you have to pursue him through the harbor, dodging soldiers all the while. Slip up just once through the burning ship or around the tedious, wooden platforms and you might lose him, making you reload the checkpoint. As with many climactic “AC” chases, it goes on just a little bit too long. At least in the later games they finally get opponents who will stand their ground instead of showing themselves to be complete cowards.
He makes our list because he’s just that annoying, both to catch and kill and to interact with at all. Kenway’s ship sinks and he washes up on a beach, where he quickly encounters fellow castaway Duncan Walpole, an Assassin. Though Walpole initially wants to pay Kenway to help him, he quickly tries to shoot him with his busted flintlock. And then you have to chase him across the island in typical, classic “Assassin’s Creed” style. And despite being a Master Assassin, he’s easily bested by Kenway, who promptly strips him and steals his gross clothes to wear for the rest of the game. What a pushover.
Shay and Liam join the Brotherhood together, but things quickly take a turn when Shay, horrified by their actions, ditches the Assassins and turns coat. The whole game is leading up to a climactic fight against Shay’s childhood best friend, who you have to chase through a collapsing Isu vault. And then, at the end of all that, do you have a dramatic showdown, beyond having to hide in cover while he tries to shoot you? No, you both fall off a cliff and Shay lands on top of Liam, killing him apparently by accident. It's not a very worthy death for Liam, and is a pretty terrible excuse for a boss fight. The Storm Fortress might be a nightmare, but at least you feel satisfied when you finally defeat it.
Another fight where basically all you do is hide behind cover, it seems Ubisoft was taking some inspiration from “Batman: Arkham” when they designed this. You’ve got to sneak up on him and perform assassinations multiple times, only for him to then teleport away and into the catacombs. What follows is ANOTHER fight where you have to repeatedly assassinate him, only this time, Arno does such a bad job that he gets Élise killed in the process because he’s stuck under some rubble. It seems that the Assassins and Templars were both too useless to kill him any of the ten previous times they tried.
Captain of industry Crawford Starrick is built up a lot during “Syndicate”, as we frequently see what he’s plotting in cutscenes between sequences. But he’s not exactly a great boss when you finally get to fight him. He’s hiding in an Isu vault underneath Buckingham Palace, having just recovered the Shroud of Eden, but the fight that follows is… confusing. It’s not really difficult, but it’s not always easy to work out what’s going on, even when you’re winning, thanks to the bizarre area-of-effect attacks and force fields Starrick is using. The music is fun, though.
Now, the War Elephants aren’t badly designed fights, nor are they the most difficult enemies you’ll come across, but we just can’t support Bayek going around and killing so many elephants. Of all the creatures you could have made legendary foes, it had to be these majestic giants. This was “Origins’” equivalent of the legendary ships we’d gotten used to before, but it was quickly replaced by a bigger legendary animal hunting system in both “Odyssey” and “Valhalla”. As well as that, the elephants are unreasonably large, at least three times bigger than an actual African elephant – and they’re already huge to start with.
Yes, we know, the Sphinx isn’t a real boss fight. But that’s exactly the reason why it makes our list! In Greek mythology, the Sphinx is a terrible foe, who holds the city of Thebes to ransom until someone can solve its riddle. If you get the riddle wrong, it will eat you. In “Odyssey”, Kassandra meets the Sphinx as one of the four Isu experiments needed to open the door to Atlantis, and it will challenge her to a riddle. But the riddles are extremely easy and worse, getting them wrong results in a cutscene where the Sphinx insta-kills you. There’s not even the option of a fight to best this monster, even though you can defeat Medusa, the Minotaur, and the gods themselves.
Dag clearly cares about Sigurd a lot more than Sigurd does about him, and gets increasingly angry about Eivor taking over the Raven Clan, despite the fact Sigurd is nowhere to be found for most of the game. This all culminates in him challenging Eivor to a fight to the death for control of the clan himself, but obviously, Dag isn’t the main character here. Dag’s an obnoxious character throughout, always challenging Eivor, but he’s also not particularly tricky to beat. Though the game wants to build up to this being a dramatic encounter, it just falls flat, not helped by Dag’s overwhelming unpopularity.
Robert de Sablé
“Assassin’s Creed” (2007)Do you like to heal your character when you play a video game? Well then, good luck trying to get through the original “Assassin’s Creed” without raging at some of the encounters. Altaïr’s only way of healing is to flee combat long enough to regain his health chunks – and, oh yeah, it takes ten seconds per block to return. Each time you fight de Sablé, both when it’s Maria in disguise and the man himself, he’ll also have a dozen Templars and guards to back him up. And with an inconsistent countering system combined with the fact that, to kill the target either time, you need to switch to your hidden blade mid-fight, the controls definitely make this way more frustrating than it needs to be.
Rodrigo Borgia
“Assassin’s Creed II” (2009)We’re still not sure why Ubisoft decided to go down this route for the final boss of their blockbuster sequel, even over a decade on. After already besting Rodrigo in combat more than once, only to be defeated when he gets the Apple of Eden anyway, Ezio follows him into the secret chamber below the Sistine Chapel. There, he decides they’re going to fight without any weapons or magic tricks, mano a mano. Unfortunately, without his sword or Pieces of Eden, Rodrigo isn’t a very skilled combatant, so this fight descends into Ezio beating on him with no resistance for a few minutes. And after all that, he lets the guy live.
The Borgia Captains
“Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood” (2010)There’s really only one actual boss in “Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood”, Cesare Borgia, but on balance, he’s definitely not one of the worst bosses the series has ever had. So, instead, we’re going to give the honor of worst boss to ALL of the Borgia Captains. There are twelve Borgia Towers you need to destroy, first by assassinating the Captain and then setting the tower on fire. Some of those Captains will fight Ezio upfront, but most of them are cowards who’ll run away. If they do, they’ll quickly despawn, and the game won’t just reload you like it would a normal mission. No, you need to leave and come back later to try again, which can make the process of eliminating them all a real chore.
Ahmet
“Assassin’s Creed: Revelations” (2011)Thus begins the string of “Assassin’s Creed” games where all the final boss fights were basically just chases. While in past games you could often avoid doing a chase if you were quick enough on the draw, that’s not so here, where you’ll have to do long, scripted chases just for the chance to assassinate that final target. Worse, this time, it’s not a foot chase, but a wagon chase followed by a parachute segment, and then a long fall from a cliff. We get that they were trying to be cinematic, something they’d later do a lot better in “Assassin’s Creed III”, but it just seems to go on forever. And after all that, it’s not even Ezio who kills Ahmet.
Charles Lee
“Assassin’s Creed III” (2012)Unlike Ahmet, this is a chase that you WILL have to do on-foot, when it’s finally time for Connor to assassinate Charles Lee. Upon seeing Connor he immediately flees and you have to pursue him through the harbor, dodging soldiers all the while. Slip up just once through the burning ship or around the tedious, wooden platforms and you might lose him, making you reload the checkpoint. As with many climactic “AC” chases, it goes on just a little bit too long. At least in the later games they finally get opponents who will stand their ground instead of showing themselves to be complete cowards.
Duncan Walpole
“Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” (2013)He makes our list because he’s just that annoying, both to catch and kill and to interact with at all. Kenway’s ship sinks and he washes up on a beach, where he quickly encounters fellow castaway Duncan Walpole, an Assassin. Though Walpole initially wants to pay Kenway to help him, he quickly tries to shoot him with his busted flintlock. And then you have to chase him across the island in typical, classic “Assassin’s Creed” style. And despite being a Master Assassin, he’s easily bested by Kenway, who promptly strips him and steals his gross clothes to wear for the rest of the game. What a pushover.
Liam O’Brien
“Assassin’s Creed Rogue” (2014)Shay and Liam join the Brotherhood together, but things quickly take a turn when Shay, horrified by their actions, ditches the Assassins and turns coat. The whole game is leading up to a climactic fight against Shay’s childhood best friend, who you have to chase through a collapsing Isu vault. And then, at the end of all that, do you have a dramatic showdown, beyond having to hide in cover while he tries to shoot you? No, you both fall off a cliff and Shay lands on top of Liam, killing him apparently by accident. It's not a very worthy death for Liam, and is a pretty terrible excuse for a boss fight. The Storm Fortress might be a nightmare, but at least you feel satisfied when you finally defeat it.
François-Thomas Germain
“Assassin’s Creed Unity” (2014)Another fight where basically all you do is hide behind cover, it seems Ubisoft was taking some inspiration from “Batman: Arkham” when they designed this. You’ve got to sneak up on him and perform assassinations multiple times, only for him to then teleport away and into the catacombs. What follows is ANOTHER fight where you have to repeatedly assassinate him, only this time, Arno does such a bad job that he gets Élise killed in the process because he’s stuck under some rubble. It seems that the Assassins and Templars were both too useless to kill him any of the ten previous times they tried.
Crawford Starrick
“Assassin’s Creed Syndicate” (2015)Captain of industry Crawford Starrick is built up a lot during “Syndicate”, as we frequently see what he’s plotting in cutscenes between sequences. But he’s not exactly a great boss when you finally get to fight him. He’s hiding in an Isu vault underneath Buckingham Palace, having just recovered the Shroud of Eden, but the fight that follows is… confusing. It’s not really difficult, but it’s not always easy to work out what’s going on, even when you’re winning, thanks to the bizarre area-of-effect attacks and force fields Starrick is using. The music is fun, though.
The War Elephants
“Assassin’s Creed Origins” (2017)Now, the War Elephants aren’t badly designed fights, nor are they the most difficult enemies you’ll come across, but we just can’t support Bayek going around and killing so many elephants. Of all the creatures you could have made legendary foes, it had to be these majestic giants. This was “Origins’” equivalent of the legendary ships we’d gotten used to before, but it was quickly replaced by a bigger legendary animal hunting system in both “Odyssey” and “Valhalla”. As well as that, the elephants are unreasonably large, at least three times bigger than an actual African elephant – and they’re already huge to start with.
The Sphinx
“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” (2018)Yes, we know, the Sphinx isn’t a real boss fight. But that’s exactly the reason why it makes our list! In Greek mythology, the Sphinx is a terrible foe, who holds the city of Thebes to ransom until someone can solve its riddle. If you get the riddle wrong, it will eat you. In “Odyssey”, Kassandra meets the Sphinx as one of the four Isu experiments needed to open the door to Atlantis, and it will challenge her to a riddle. But the riddles are extremely easy and worse, getting them wrong results in a cutscene where the Sphinx insta-kills you. There’s not even the option of a fight to best this monster, even though you can defeat Medusa, the Minotaur, and the gods themselves.
Dag Nithisson
“Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” (2020)Dag clearly cares about Sigurd a lot more than Sigurd does about him, and gets increasingly angry about Eivor taking over the Raven Clan, despite the fact Sigurd is nowhere to be found for most of the game. This all culminates in him challenging Eivor to a fight to the death for control of the clan himself, but obviously, Dag isn’t the main character here. Dag’s an obnoxious character throughout, always challenging Eivor, but he’s also not particularly tricky to beat. Though the game wants to build up to this being a dramatic encounter, it just falls flat, not helped by Dag’s overwhelming unpopularity.
