Every Boss in Hyper Light Breaker, Ranked

Hyper Light Breaker has quite a selection of boss fights under its belt, with three in every run, and a few unique fights it can select from to fill those slots.

These bosses are intense, and don’t pull their punches. They’ll throw tons of enemies, massive attacks, and huge sword swings your way with no warning. Think “bullet hell versions of Dark Souls fights“.

I’ll be ranking these bosses by how fair their challenge is, the design of the boss and their arena, and generally, how good of a fight it is.

The rewards for bosses are somewhat random, with the only set reward being the cloaks that let you unlock characters so I won’t be factoring that into this ranking of every boss.

4 Crown of Tears (Re-Fight)

Dried Up

Despite what the UI would suggest, whenever you hop into a world, there are only two bosses in the game, and the Crown of Tears gets two different re-fights with the same mechanics.

The first re-fight is by far the worst boss in the game, throwing you into a U-shaped cave with a bunch of crystals, taking out the opening cutscene, and being nearly identical otherwise.

It has a slightly beefier health bar and defense, and I believe more dogs spawn in a slightly more congested arena. This all just contributes to this fight feeling awful and not needing to exist.

They could have just made the Crown of Flames the second boss on every run, instead of a first boss on some runs, and removed this re-fight entirely, and that would’ve taken less effort for a better result.

Instead, we have a mildly more difficult Crown of Tears that only challenges you by being outside the arena it’s supposed to be in, and tires you out from potentially fighting it three times in a row.

The attacks don’t get any more interesting, the arena is boring and isn’t attached to the lorel, and I hope it gets removed in a future patch.

3 Crown of Tears (Re-Fight 2)

Undue Reward

The “final boss” of the game in Early Access is, in fact, just the stupid dog man again, and it’s very deflating to walk into the arena with your camera pointed the wrong way and immediately get jumped by the leap attack.

I only find it better than the first re-fight due to the more interesting arena, taking place in a very odd-colored chapel with destructible pillars that make for great kiting and help deal with the enemies.

That’s about all the unique merit it has, though. It’s still the same fight but with slightly faster attacks, more shockwaves, and a health bar that takes too long to get through, even with the best gear.

I had a build that practically one-shot the Crown of Flames, and even with that power this fight still took a long time because it refused to let you get in, spamming ranged options and small enemies.

The shockwaves get on my nerves, the enemies are as much a nuisance as ever, and there’s nothing original to it outside the arena, which feels pretty similar to the first Crown of Tears arena regardless.

I just wish this fight, with its shred of potential, had been pushed to be something truly unique from the first encounter, but it never is.

It ends up being a pale imitation that leaves me sick of playing the game after finishing a run.

2 Crown of Tears

Surefire Sadness

More often than not, the Crown of Tears is the first boss you’ll encounter in Hyper Light Breaker, giving a pretty middling first impression regarding boss fights.

It’s got quite a bit going for it, being a corrupted, war-torn wolfman, with a sick design, especially on the sword. Fighting it in a cathedral adds a lot to the atmosphere.

Their attacks are also incredibly well choreographed, with clever cues that tell you whether it will be doing a single or double sword slash, or jump back and create shockwaves.

Where this boss falls apart is the massive number of dogs flooding the arena.

These dog enemies already have pretty awful cues for when they’re going to attack, so throwing them in this arena sucks.

The design forces you to either play defense for several minutes or have enough firepower to one-shot every enemy.

I’d love to see the timeline where there weren’t any standard enemies randomly thrown in these otherwise great boss fights, and maybe some extra attacks to vary up the game plan.

All the Crown of Tears does is slash at you and occasionally jump to make shockwaves.

Both things are predictable, and even though they want you to parry, you can easily dash out of the way.

It doesn’t help that you have to fight it several times, with some runs having three separate encounters that all feel just as boring and frustrating as the last, and no other bosses in sight.

I’ve gotten so tired of parrying its attacks on raw instinct, watching it tank all of my attacks without staggering once and trying not to die despite the hounding going on.

Overall, it’s got an incredible atmosphere and seems like a good basis for a boss. It’s just a pretty bad way to introduce bosses, forcing the player to be overpowered to have any confidence in fighting them.

1 Crown of Flames

Power Scaling

I tend to enjoy my time with the Lizard-esque Crown of Flames more than the Crown of Tears, due to the more aggressive approach and open arena that encourages fighting very head-on.

The enemy spawning thing isn’t any less annoying here, but the far larger arena enables more movement and allows you to kite around them and lure them into a bigger attack, which is a cool strategy.

The boss is a way cooler fight than the dog, having this lizard man rush you down with huge punches in a massive colosseum is such a powerful aesthetic, and in practice, parrying his attacks is pretty fun.

The only bad parts of this fight are the same bad parts in every fight, namely the annoying enemies, the far too strict parry timing, and the fact that dying makes you go collect new loot again.

Once you get over those hurdles, though, it’s very fun to aggressively chase him down, parrying whenever he punches you, weaving around the huge tornadoes he summons, and fighting to the death.

It’s like a proper sparring match with a foe that sees you as an equal, rather than a large and overpowering enemy, and it does a lot to cement it as my favorite fight in the game.

If you’ve got a weapon capable of dealing good single-target damage and dealing with a crowd of enemies, this fight will feel fluid, fun, and fair, but otherwise, you’re probably not winning anytime soon.

Breaking past that oppressive nature with something that can tear through enemies with ease is a great feeling, even if it is born from frustration.

In a perfect world, this fight would feel like the best one on one match between you and an equal opponent. If they were to tone down the enemy spawns, punish you less for experimentation, and make parries stagger, it’d be incredible. That’s not what we got, though.

At the very least, there are zero rematch fights with this guy, which automatically makes fighting it a far less exhausting affair.