Bosses, particularly final bosses, are always a sore subject when it comes to Resident Evil. There have been some truly great ones like Nemesis or Mr.X who stalk you throughout the game, always being a presence that you need to watch out for. It makes for a tension-filled game when you never know when they are going to pop out at you.
Not all of them are as memorable, though. There's been a few that just make you go huh, and others that are just so dreadfully boring. Having a boss who's just a bullet sponge isn't the worst thing in the world, but they can't be the final one, as is the case in more than a few cases. The final boss should always feel epic rather than ending with a thud.
10 Hardest: Queen Leech
The Queen Leech from Resident Evil Zero isn't hard in the traditional sense, as it's still a bullet spongey battle, and you start with plenty of room between you and it. The problem is that it's three stages long, and ammo isn't exactly something you have an unlimited supply of.
It doesn't help that, by stage three, you are mostly just goading the queen into attacking Billy over Rebecca rather than fighting it. This isn't so bad if you have the ammo, but, if you don't? Well, best be ready for some very frustrating retries.
9 Underwhelming: Uroboros Mkono
The term "underwhelming" describes a lot of Resident Evil 5, but that goes double for this fight. Design-wise it's pretty cool and should provide for a fun encounter. Only, it doesn't due to how painfully easy it was made out to be. You're supposed to burn it with fire to expose its weak points, which is something you can do easily with the flamethrower you have or the surplus of explosive canisters around it.
If that weren't easy enough, you could also just buy yourself a rocket launcher and shoot it once. Yup, that's all it takes, one shot and your boss fight will take about three seconds.
8 Hardest: U3
It's regarded as one of the best in the series for a reason and the character design in Resident Evil 4 is part of the reason why. So, many of the bosses were so unique, Salazar taking the cake, but it was U3 that brought the most challenge.
The close-quarters combat makes him incredibly difficult to deal with, especially since you have to make it past all of the cages before you can truly start to damage him. Up until that point, he's as invincible as Nemesis is. Add in the fact there are quick-time events tied to him, and he's not a boss you'd want to face twice.
7 Underwhelming: Ricardo Irving
It's unfortunate that Resident Evil 5 has so many underwhelming bosses, and that's exactly what Ricardo Irving is. What makes it worse is the fact that he should have been a truly epic encounter. He turned into a giant sea monster, for God's sake, how could that not turn out good?
Well, as it turns out, quite easily when all you need to do is mow it down with the boat machine guns. There isn't even some special weakness; you just light him up, and he eventually dies.
6 Hardest: Derek Simmons
Now, the word "hard" doesn't always necessarily mean good, as the fight against Derek Simmons was about as good as the entirety of Resident Evil 6. That said, it was a difficult fight for one reason and one reason alone. It felt like it was never going to end, as it lasts up to 30 mins. It was like Capcom just saw some of the multiple phased battles from Dark Souls and said that's what we need! What they made was a convoluted mess of a battle where it looks like you kill Simmons at least twice before he gets right back up again.
5 Underwhelming: Ndesu
Ndesu has the look going for him and his size certainly makes him feel epic, as does his introduction where he takes out almost all of Chris's team. The problem is that bigger isn't always better.
More often than not, bosses this large feel cumbersome and tend to feel too easy to beat given their size, usually always requiring you to shoot a weak point. It doesn't help that he's kind of just a bigger version of Gigante from Resident Evil 4, who happens to be a far superior boss.
4 Hardest: Nemesis
Nemesis will always be the gold standard when it comes to how to do a Resident Evil boss. He's properly built up throughout the game as a force to be reckoned with, one you'd rather run from rather than try to square up with.
It's that buildup that makes him such a good boss, getting progressively more difficult to deal with with each encounter. By the end, you deal with him in his grotesque final form and are forced to do a fair bit of ducking and dodging until you get to finally blow him away in the most satisfying fashion.
3 Underwhelming: Tyrant
Age isn't always kind, and that's the case with Tyrant, the original bullet sponge that Resident Evil so readily trots out there as bosses. His battle tactics are fairly simple: you shoot him, and you keep shooting them. That's really all there is to it outside of occasionally having to dodge an attack or chugging a healing item because you couldn't. It doesn't exactly lead to the most thrilling of encounters, very reminiscent to the tank and spanks from MMOs.
2 Hardest: The T-078
Anyone who has ever played Code Veronica knows about this guy, the true test of commitment when it comes to completing a game. Everyone got murdered mercilessly by him more than a few times. It's not even that he's that hard, it's the level design around him. It's just not even fair, fighting something like him in such a tight space, especially in a time when you can't just roll away in a dodge. What made the tight space even worse is that, by now, you are already going to be running low on ammo. It's the epitome of a hard boss battle.
1 Underwhelming: Eveline
Resident Evil 7 was such a nice return to the roots that made the series great, washing away the stink of the actionfest that was six right away. It even seemed like they were going to avoid their stereotypical end boss until Eveline had to rear her ugly head.
It wasn't even necessary when you consider the narrative had wrapped up before her. Unfortunately, you got to get the big shooty gun battle in, and that's all she is. You just shoot her in the face until she dies.