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Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
Cuphead may look adorable with its 1930’s rubber hose style animation and its eclectic mix of charming characters, but don’t let its innocent appearance fool you. It’s a gauntlet of fast-paced challenges and hardcore boss battles that rivals the difficulty of games that usually have the word “Souls” in their title.
Each boss battle is unique, requiring the player to identify different patterns and master different mechanics, but which ones are the hardest? We love Cuphead here at High Ground. We put it on our lists of the best platform games, best games made with Unity, and best co-op games for Switch.
To back our glowing recommendations, we decided to make a list of Cuphead bosses ranked easiest to hardest so you’ll know which of these monsters will be a breeze and which will test your finger-gunning skills.
All Cuphead Bosses Ranked From Easiest to Hardest
The devil is waiting. Are you ready to repay your debt? It’s time for our list of all Cuphead bosses ranked by difficulty!
19. Goopy Le Grande
First on our list of Cuphead bosses ranked is the easiest boss in the game, Goopy Le Grand. Goopy is one of two possible first bosses. He’s an adorable little blue blob who hops around the screen like flubber, occasionally lurching his head forward.
Goopy eventually gets bigger and turns into the tombstone in his final phase, but none of these modes present much challenge. Simply dash out of the way of his crushing strikes, and you’re golden!
18. The Root Pack
The Root Pack is the other option for your first boss battle. Each part of the fight is a different enemy. In the first part, you fight an Idaho potato that will routinely shoot three clumps of dirt and a worm at you. These are easy enough to dodge while you hold down the shoot button.
Up next is an onion who’s a little too sensitive to be a fighter. As soon as he emerges on the field, he bursts into tears — you’ll have to dodge the water droplets as they rain from the sky.
The third and final phase is against a hypnotic carrot. Just shoot down the homing carrots, dodge the beams of hypnotic energy, and aim for his vitamin-rich face.
17. Cagney Carnation
Cagney Carnation is a thorny orange flower that alternates between a delightful little dance and turning a crank which morphs his face into a civil war era machine gun that shoots seeds into the air. All of this occurs while new little plants sprout from the ground, releasing buds with teeth reminiscent of Mario’s Piranha Plant.
After a while, Cagney starts shooting some homing seeds and eventually shoots his thorny vines into the ground, forcing you to dodge between the three available platforms while he simultaneously fires tufts of pollen. It’s not easy, but it’s a cakewalk compared to everything that comes after.
16. Werner Werman
Want to do battle with a WWI German mouse in a Campbell’s Soup can? Well, you’re going to have to if you want to beat Cuphead.
Werner Werman pilot’s his can of chicken and stars like an A7V tank, launching bits of debris and cherry bombs. Eventually, Werner’s can will break, and you’ll have to avoid spinning soda-bottle caps on sticks as the bruised and battered mouse launches a flamethrower attack.
Observant players will have noticed a large yellow eye peeking through the gaps between the boards in Werner’s home. A massive cat comes bursting through and swallows ze German mouse whole at the end of phase two. He attacks you with a big wavy paw from either side of the arena and then uses his necromantic powers to summon the souls of dead mice to drop marbles on you. You know — normal cat stuff.
15. Ribby and Croaks
Two on one? How is that fair?
Ribby and Croaks represent one of the earliest challenge thresholds in the game, so you may want to get a guide. They are a pair of frogs wearing boxing gloves and karate belts (so you know they’re tough).
The fight starts with them taking turns attacking you. Ribby will launch a series of boxing gloves at you. Then Croaks will spit out a bunch of flaming bugs that will slowly zero in on your position. Croaks starts spinning wildly after a while, either drawing you in or pushing you away while Ribby simultaneously launches spinning balls of energy.
The two then fuse into a slot machine which will start firing coins at you. You’ll need to pull the lever to make the slot machine vulnerable to damage, but this also initiates a spiky, ring-based attack.
14. Sally Stageplay
Salley Stageplay is a personal favorite and one of the few bosses that are actual-person-sized. Salley is a lovely young blonde woman with a blue dress, an orange umbrella, and a mouth that occasionally swallows her whole, making her disappear and reappear behind you like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.
She blows some cartoon kisses at you and drops some windup mice to try and trip you up, but the real challenge comes in part three when Salley dies, goes to heaven, and returns as a cardboard cutout set-piece. She floats around the top of the screen, making her difficult to hit while her umbrella spins around like a giant top and she drops roses on you. Bravo.
13. Hilda Berg
The first flying level isn’t an easy one. You’ll face off against Hilda Berg, a red zeppelin with the face of a woman, riding a unicycle through the air backward while shooting several smaller zeppelins, tornados, and laughing the word “HA” in giant letters that you’ll also need to avoid. She’ll eventually sneeze out a constellation — whichever set of stars you get dictates the shape she will take. Torus gets a bull, Gemini gets twins, etc.
Her final form is an evil-looking clockwork moon. You’ll need to dodge the stars as tractor beams rain down from the UFOs overhead.
12. Rumor Honeybottoms
Rumor Honeybottoms is one of those bosses that some people have a tough time with, while others get past her without too much trouble. Digitaltrends ranked her as the third hardest boss in the game! We think she ranks somewhere in the upper-middle.
You need to dodge several “worker bees” dressed as police and office workers as you climb a hive that’s quickly filling with honey. Rumor will shoot glowing purple triangles at you, which can be tricky to manage, and then a swarm of bullet-shaped bees will swarm the stage.
Rumor transforms into a fighter plane that shoots fists at you from the bottom of the screen in her final form. This can be especially tricky, as you’ll need to shoot her without accidentally dropping through the bottom of the platform you’re standing on.
11. Baroness Von Bon Bon
Up next on our list of Cuphead bosses ranked is Baroness Von Bon Bon in her pastel-colored Candyland-gone-wrong. Before you can fight her, you’ll need to get past a jawbreaker, a waffle, a candy corn, a gumball machine, and a cupcake as they each come marching out of the candy cane-toothed frosting castle. Only then will Von Bon Bon herself appear on the battlements.
The castle will start crawling after you like a Demon Wall from Final Fantasy as the Baroness begins pulling off her own head to throw it.
Von Bon Bon is far from a pushover, but things get a lot harder from here on out.
10. Phantom Express
Phantom Express is another fight that some people find easy, while others have an incredibly difficult time getting past it.
You’re on a cart following a train with a ghost hanging out the window and hurling his eyes at you. After a while, the ghost will retreat, and a giant skeleton in a conductor hat will pop out of the roof. Mr. Skellington slams his hands on the ground with an attack that takes up two-thirds of the arena. After that, you get some lightning-breathing evil heads and homing-sheet-ghosts.
The train engine will start galloping like a horse at this point. Hitting the lightbulb on its tail reveals a human heart in the furnace where one would traditionally feed coal. This part is especially tricky — you have a narrow window to hit the heart, and the engine is constantly moving.
9. Captain Brineybeard
Captain Brineybeard is up next on this list of Cuphead bosses ranked, and he wants to assure us that the pirate’s life is not for you.
The red-nosed and impressively bearded captain will squeeze pellets at you out of a pink octopus while a rope suspended barrel tries to drop on you from above.
Then things get crazy. Fish jump out of the ocean in front of you. A shark will leap up onto the dock from behind, the ship will chew up and spit out cannonballs, and a squid will occasionally jump up and make it start raining ink. Then the ship with get angry, ditch the captain and start shooting frickin’ laser beams out of its throat.
8. Wally Warbles
Wally Warbles looks like someone took the reverse-shrink-ray from Honey I Blew Up the Kid and used it on a bird still inside his birdhouse. He shoots eggs, bullets, feathers, and tiny birds with nails strapped to their backs at you.
Once Wally’s plucked, a tiny bird in a hovering nest surrounded by an orbit of eggs takes his place. This part can be challenging as the eggs are hard to avoid while shooting the tiny bird, and he’ll occasionally pull out a ray-gun to zap you with.
The plucked chicken returns after that, spitting garbage from a gurney carried by two little bluebirds in nurse hats.
7. Djimmi the Great
Djimmi the Great is an orange genie with a floating golden chest that spews spectral scimitars, treasure, and the occasional cat sarcophagus. He also occasionally launches his own skull at you, a move that takes up a third of the screen.
You’ll then need to shoot your way through a series of pillars to get to Djimmi’s next form, a clam-like blob in a sarcophagus that shoots mummies and planets. After that, he turns into a puppet with a finger gun just like yours!
The final phase features Djimmi’s giant face on the right side of the screen while three pyramids dance around the remaining free space shooting purple plus-shaped beams of energy. Djimmi will interject with the occasional telekinetic blast from the gem in his turban.
6. Beppi the Clown
If you weren’t afraid of clowns before, you will be now. Beppi the Clown starts out trying to ram you in a bumper car. You have to jump the car without running into the shooting gallery ducks hovering overhead.
After crashing his tiny car, Beppi will return as the unholy combination of clown and balloon. Animal balloons will fly at you while a horrifying rollercoaster with a screaming face passes underfoot. After Beppi-balloon floats away, he returns riding a merry-go-round donkey that shoots horseshoes.
In the final phase, Beppi manifests as a giant parasol ride that regurgitates little green stuffed birds who throw baseballs at you. Like I said, nightmare-fuel.
5. The Devil
Surprised to see the final boss at number five? There’s a lot going on in the battle against ol’ Beelzebub, but the prince of lies is actually not that bad compared to some of the other bosses in the game.
You start out battling Satan in his golden throne as he makes three attacks. When he grows goat horns, you simply have to duck as his arms come smashing together from both sides. Sometimes his snake-like head comes noodling at you from one side, and sometimes he’ll pop his head off, at which point it will grow sider legs and belly flop around the arena. Then he’ll summon some blue floating orbs for you to dodge, jump out of his own skin, and dive into a pit with five floating platforms for you to hop around on.
At this point, he reincarnates as a massive floating redhead. Poker chips will rain down from the sky. Bats and demons eventually join the fray, but if you keep calm, dodge, and keep shooting the devil in the eyes, you’ll eventually be able to escape the terms of your Faustian bargain!
4. Grim Matchstick
Grim Matchstick is an adorable floating dragon who will have you pulling your hair out in no time. He shoots fireballs and tracking beams while occasionally taking a break to try and impale you with his tale. Grim will then roll out his tongue and release a marching band of fireballs that will jump up at you.
All of this reaches a climax when Grim grows two extra heads in the third phase. He will begin belching fireballs that explode if you shoot them, occasionally interjecting with a massive fire-blast that consumes a third of the screen.
One thing that makes this fight especially tricky, and the main reason it ranked so high, is that the clouds that serve as your platforms can get easily lost in the cloud-painted background, making it easy to lose your footing and fall to your death.
3. Carla Maria
Coming in at number three is Carla Maria. Don’t be fooled by this mermaid’s long lashes and delightful octopus-perm. She can be insanely difficult. She starts by summoning orange pufferfish from the murky depths of the sea for you to dodge as she squeezes fireballs out of an orange sturgeon. She has several attack combinations at her disposal, such as pirate-ghosts, a seahorse, electric eels, and a turtle that shoots sea-mines out of its back. Luck definitely plays a factor in which combination you get here.
More eels appear after a while, and Carla goes from mermaid to Medusa. The octopus tentacles turn into snakes, and she shoots a petrifying beam that takes up most of the screen with her eyes. It gets even more difficult to avoid when her head detaches from her body, and you are forced to follow her in a narrow cave that gives you almost no room to maneuver.
2. Dr. Kahl’s Robot
Dr. Kahl’s Robot takes second on our list of Cuphead bosses ranked, and he is a doozy. Tiny spaceships, nuts, bolts, beams of energy, and bombs with a massive blast radius litter the field, giving you very little room to fly. The robot’s head will pop off and start flying around the arena once you’ve exposed and taken out his heart. Avoiding the bombs while shooting the head is more than a little tricky. This next part is where it gets insane, though.
Dr. Kahl will face you himself, floating in a contraption that would make Robotnik proud and branding a diamond that shoots oblong beams of energy while giant electric walls block your path.
You know the term “bullet hell”? This game actually takes you to hell, but Dr. Kahl’s Robot is a hundred times worse.
1. King Dice
The number one spot on our list of Cuphead bosses ranked goes to King Dice. This fight can be a royal pain because it’s actually a bunch of different fights mashed together and a lot of it comes down to old-fashioned luck.
King Dice will make you parry a spinning die, and whatever number it lands on dictates which of the nine — yes, nine — different mini-bosses you’ll have to face before you even get a shot at the king himself.
There are two things that make this fight the toughest on a long list of very tough fights. The first is that the randomness of the bosses makes it nearly impossible to get a rhythm going the way you do against other bosses. You might die in other boss battles, but learn how to dodge the attack that killed you. With King Dice, you’ll learn one enemy’s move-set only to have to face a completely different one the next time around.
The other thing that makes it so hard is just how long the fight is. Cuphead isn’t a forgiving game at the best of times, but this fight is 10+ minutes long, and you have to start over at the beginning if you die at any point.
Then there’s King Dice himself. You need to hop from ace of hearts to ace of hearts in a conga line of marching cards, all while shooting up into the king’s face and doing your best not to trip up and lose what hearts you have left. Good luck.
Give the Devil Our Regards
Thanks for reading our list of all Cuphead bosses ranked. We hope you enjoyed it and maybe even picked up a couple of hints to help you give the devil his due. Be sure to follow High Ground Gaming for news, reviews, and more lists like this one.
Happy gaming!
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