Every Boss Fight in Saros, Ranked

Housemarque's Saros proved to be yet another monumental cornerstone for the developers as well as PlayStation Studios, considering the game lived up to many as a worthy successor to Returnal (including myself), albeit with some very minor hiccups or personal gripes depending on the player.

But with such riveting gameplay additions and QoL improvements to make it feel more Roguelite-ish, you also had a roster of new bosses to take down across the various biomes; each one more cosmically terrifying than the other, with punishing attacks and a trifecta of HP bars/phases.

With this list that I've prepared, I'll be looking at each of the mainline boss fights in Saros and rank them based on their presentation, difficulty, and how well each one keeps you engaged, as well as slightly factoring in their overall memorability as a boss battle.

9 Rhabdom

Talk About a Filler Boss

This is honestly one of my least favorite boss fights in the game, and no, it obviously isn't related to difficulty, but instead, the opposite, really, because of how basic this entire thing feels compared to most of the other ones in Saros.

Understandably, the Shattered Descent biome is also linear in design and acts as a transitional level to the next region, so it is fair that Rhabdom is designed like this. Plus, his main moveset consists of continuous AOE slams and a slash projectile combo at close range.

However, even all of that gets thrown out the window with the arena design, letting you infinitely grapple hook across the four points in the corners. Negating any threat level of the boss fight, or rather, the "mini-boss" itself. Everything is such a cakewalk that Rhabdom and the biome itself are the ideal pair to let you score the Untouchable trophy, where you need to beat a biome and its boss without getting damaged.

8 Consort

The Tutorial Welcome Party

Debated on even including this guy, but since we're doing every boss, I had to put this one somewhere, and rightfully at the bottom of the bracket is completely fine.

That's mainly because Consort isn't anything special, really. By all means, he's a great boss fight to showcase Arjun's fiery and determined resolve at the start of the game. And if you manage to conquer it there, you can get your hands on a free Halycon resource to use at the very start of your expedition.

That's about it, because in the final biome, the Yellow Shore, you'll encounter Consort again. This time, he's a mini-boss that's supposed to be the last gatekeeping challenge from your showdown with the King. This version also has bite-sized HP, so you can see where I'm getting at: this boss isn't on par with what the rest offer here.

7 Bastion

It's Literally a Turret

Not to downplay the whole underground bunker aesthetic of the Derelict Depths, but surely no one would've expected the second biome's boss in Saros to be a... turret, right? Just Me? Bastion is the second boss fight you encounter, and after powering through and getting to it, you realize it's pretty much just a stationary target, but hey, at least it does have some quirky mixups and gimmicks.

Bastion loves to shoot out the AOE ring attacks as well as several walls of homing and non-homing projectiles, and all of those require you to take advantage of the jump pads in front of the boss to swiftly evade them. It even has a laser attack that can catch you by surprise during your first few runs.

Most importantly, each transitional section to the next phase requires you to take out a bunch of the smaller turrets around the arena to continue the fight. It keeps the fight refreshing in a sense, but again, not much changes with the main battle itself, so you're pretty much just repeating the same phase back-to-back.

6 Legion

The Attack of the Squids

Legion is the main boss of the Blighted Marsh biome, straight after you beat Rhabdom, and yet again, it doesn't have much to offer besides the main gimmick being that you need to take down the dozens of little squids in order to (optimally) dish out damage to the big alpha one.

But I will say it does deliver somewhat in the spectacle department. Legion has a couple of red orb attack patterns that you can easily parry off of, and the little squids tend to form a circle around you for some rhythmic attacks to jump and evade.

If you're using any weapon that has splash damage properties or just the auto-aim feature, it is a cakewalk. If you're using a high-level Prominence here, consider it the icing on the cake. The only other downside is also how Blighted Marsh itself is actually more awful than the boss, with a hideous Soulsborne-esque poison swamp map hazard and a runback that will have you stuck on the encounters there more than the biome's boss itself.

5 Prophet

Your Memorable First Obstacle

Alright, now that we have the bottom feeders out of the way, Prophet is easily one of my favorite bosses in the game, but I won't just push the allegations under the rug of how his mechanical sense is akin to Ophion from Returnal.

See, both of these bosses require you to shoot glowing weakpoints to open up their main damage-dealing spot, and both provide occasional HP drops. And if that wasn't enough, yes, both have three phases. I'm not objectively opposed to reskinned additions in a game, but Prophet still manages to make a name for itself on presentation alone.

That, and it is a great one to have as the first biome's boss, truly testing a player's grit and tenacity with its simple yet increasingly difficult attack patterns. Another plus point is how well-executed the third phase is: it kicks in fast, encloses most of the arena, makes you survive a coordinated set of attacks under high tension, and the music amps up considerably to give you a burst of that adrenaline rush.

4 King

The Battle for the Throne

The King is the final boss in Saros, and if it may upset some players with me including it in the middle here, don't be, because all the bosses after Prophet on this list are all extraordinarily amazing, even despite their minor flaws or my personal gripes.

It genuinely feels like the culmination of everything that the game has taught you as you face off against this guy in an epic showdown at the Yellow Shore. You have a barrage of different attacks that push you to utilize both the shield and parry mechanics, as well as a stream of those ground shockwave ring attacks that the King throws at you from afar or amidst his other string of attacks.

The first phase feels like an afterthought. But once the second phase kicks in, it's all gas and no brakes, since you'll need to break the King's shield at close range with your melee at times to continue damaging him, as well as most of his projectiles being red orb ones. Definitely a fantastic final boss, much better than Ophion from Returnal, but presentation and music-wise, we've got slightly better ones.

3 Priestess

Offering One of The Best Setpieces

The Priestess gets teased in your prior run-in with her, which, spoiler alert, is originally Arjun's wife, Nitya, before she rebels against the Yellow King. The version we fight here isn't actually her but one of the colonists in the Cathedral who replaced her. With the lore significance out of the way, this is honestly one of the best boss fight arena designs I've seen from Housemarque.

All three phases have something unique going on; the main gimmick of the first one is taking down two clones to DPS the main Priestess, while the second one switches things up, where you need to hit a couple of red switches on mini platforms to be able to open up damage opportunities. And finally, it comes down to the crazy and grandiose setpiece of the third phase, where you continuously hop between platforms and take down another set of red switches to dish out damage to the Priestess.

I love the fact that the initial phase has you in such a condensed arena that you need to carefully navigate through the projectiles and take care of the two clones. The Priestess' attacks aren't that difficult either, since the second and third phases can largely be cleared with ease if you're hitting those switches and are handling the barrage of attacks correctly while dropping between those shifting platforms.

2 Shepherd

Nobody Told Me We'd Be Fighting the Kraken

Between Shepherd and the next one, this was honestly a tie in favoritism for me, but this Lovecraftian sea creature has one of my favorite boss fight phases that weirdly reminded me of the transitional moments of Hyperion from Rerturnal, who's one of my all-time favorite bosses in video games.

Once you reach the end of the Acolyte's Haven biome, you get this really cool intro cinematic for Shepherd, showcasing just how we're possibly fighting a giant beast with tentacles. And you sure are, because the initial half of the first phase involves damaging the tentacles so that you can expose the health bar of the Shepherd.

Then comes the second and third phases, which turn this entire fight into a dance-off of sorts as you're constantly moving and jumping between the incoming orb clusters, the sweeping projectile walls, and the shockwaves coming off the enclosed walls. Couple all that with the crashing ocean backdrop, and the feeling of battling a cosmic entity on a sinking ship with a creepy skeletal face at the epicenter—yeah, that's a concoction for an amazing boss fight presentation.

1 Architect

Fight or Flight, Do or Die

The Hyperion parallels didn't just end at Shepherd for me, because the whole buildup or climb to the Architect's arena in the end tower of the Desecrated Fortress is almost similar to the buildup of Hyperion in Returnal, as the organ music grew deafeningly loud.

Unlike earlier bosses that mostly test your damage output or movement, the Architect is a full-on survival exam because the fight gradually shrinks your available space across multiple phases. And what makes it stand out even more for me personally is its sheer sense of scale, almost like a lovechild between a Kaiju and a horrifying space entity.

The boss spends much of the fight airborne, looming over the arena like some ancient cosmic machine, while filling both the screen and the ground with a relentless amount of projectiles, with its glowing eye being the main weak point for damage.

And by the second and third phase, you'll need to deal with further mixed-up mechanics, such as the Architect doing some grounded attacks as well as launching you off the arena to survive via the multiple grappling hook points. It all culminates in a boss fight where the game feels most intense, but with a fair mix of spectacle and skill challenge from you.