Cyberpunk 2077 Boss Guides#

This page lists only the bosses and tough enemies on Cyberpunk 2077’s main quest chain that you are guaranteed to face head-on, ordered by story progression. The whole page deliberately skips health, damage, XP, and recommended-level numbers — those values drift with patches and difficulty settings, and a wrong number does more harm than none. What stays reliable across versions is each boss’s phase cues and the counterplay built on them. Read the cues and you can adapt your approach on any difficulty.

Main Story Bosses and Tough Enemies at a Glance#

The Pickup: Royce#

For most players this is the first real slugfest of the early game. Royce is the Maelstrom boss holding the All Foods plant, heavily cyberized from head to toe, and V and Jackie — picking up the goods for Dexter DeShawn — run straight into him deep inside the factory.

Trigger and avoidance:

1. The meeting itself is a negotiation — paying his price, haggling him down, or leaning on the right lifepath dialogue options can all keep this fight from ever starting
2. Combat only begins if talks collapse or you pick a fight yourself; leave your save before entering the plant so you can come back and play the negotiation route later

Phase cues:

• The arena is the workshop floor between assembly lines and shelving — dense cover and layered height differences favor hit-and-run movement over trading shots from a fixed spot
• Royce puts out vicious frontal firepower and calls nearby Maelstrom guards to swarm with him; closing in carelessly gets you focused down
• Heavily cyberized goons are sensitive to electromagnetic effects — once a quickhack like Cyberware Malfunction lands, his combat efficiency drops noticeably

How to counter:

1. Fight a running battle around the shelves and machine tools so he never gets a clean firing line on you
2. Use grenades to flush him out of cover; don’t try to out-slug him head-on
3. Killing him drops the Iconic tech pistol “Chaos”; spare him and the pistol is off the table, but you cross paths again in the later main quest “Second Conflict”, and you still get a chance to take him down then

Ghost Town: Nash#

The opening hard fight of Panam’s storyline. Nash leads a Raffen Shiv crew that preys on nomads, and V and Panam ambush his convoy on a Badlands canyon road, aiming to take him alive back to the Sunset Motel for interrogation.

Phase cues:

• This is not a staged, arena-style boss fight but a rolling highway brawl: break the convoy first, mop up the escort, then focus Nash himself
• The battlefield is open ground littered with rocks and wrecked vehicles; the escort is spread out while Nash pours fire from behind a vehicle
• The story needs him breathing — beat him until he is incapacitated, no need to push for a kill

How to counter:

1. Sweep the outer escort before pressuring Nash; don’t let his crew surround you in the chaos
2. Smart weapons’ auto-tracking shines in this kind of mess — lock on and forget fine aiming
3. Watch your damage output; the goal is downing him, not killing him

Play It Safe: Sandayu Oda#

After the attack on the Arasaka parade float, Hanako’s personal bodyguard Sandayu Oda intercepts V and Takemura at the rooftop construction site above the plaza. He is one of the game’s most iconic Sandevistan users.

Phase cues:

• When Oda enters time dilation he closes distance in high-speed blinks that normal aiming can barely follow; flickering afterimages are the tell that his rush is coming
• His offense revolves around Mantis Blade melee combos, and trading blows at knifing range is a losing exchange
• The lag as he recovers from attacks, and the frozen moments after he climbs onto the crane and steel girders, are your most reliable damage windows

How to counter:

1. Fitting your own Sandevistan is the answer to a head-on duel — trade time-dilation windows with him: he blinks, you blink
2. Quickhacks like Cyberware Malfunction are the natural enemy of time-dilation fighters and can yank him out of dilation at a critical moment
3. Keep him scanned and tagged and let smart weapons auto-track him; that beats chasing afterimages with the naked eye
4. Once he is down, whether to spare his life is your call — letting him walk away has no repercussions

Voodoo Boys Questline: Sasquatch#

Once the Voodoo Boys chain takes V into Pacifica, Sasquatch, boss of the Animals, awaits in the ruins of the Grand Imperial Mall. She is the signature user of Berserk cyberware and the most stubborn early-game melee brawl.

Phase cues:

• She has a thick health pool and heavy armor, and while berserk her movement and attack speed far exceed her norm — trading hits head-on is a guaranteed loss
• When the berserk state ends she suffers a clear recovery window, which is your main damage opportunity
• The mall is a multi-floor structure and she leaps between levels; a whiffed leaping slam leaves her open as well

How to counter:

1. During her berserk phase, only run and don’t fight — kite her around pillars and shelves, then turn back to deal damage once she recovers
2. Charged shots from tech weapons chew through cover and grind down her thick armor, while smart weapons handle lock-on to save you the effort
3. Scan and mark her weak points, and never let yourself get funneled into a mall dead end — open floors are your home turf

The Assault Ending: Adam Smasher#

The final boss you actually throw down with across all the endings. After the rooftop choice in Nocturne OP55N1, any ending route that storms Arasaka Tower — riding in with Rogue, or hitting the tower alongside Panam and the Aldecaldos — leads to a direct encounter with him on the tower’s lower decks; walking the Arasaka “Devil” path skips the fight entirely.

Phase cues:

• Smasher is a full-conversion killing machine, and the fight splits into two clearly distinct behavior patterns
• Ranged phase: his arm-mounted machine gun and missiles trade fire across cover, testing your positioning and reload rhythm
• Point-blank phase: he abandons the standoff and starts leaping in to slam the ground, his mobility spiking sharply — that is the phase-change signal

How to counter:

1. Cover rotation is the core of staying alive: he gives campers no peace, and the moment your cover shatters, relocate
2. The Sandevistan’s time-dilation window is the perfect answer to his mobility — dump ammo into the gaps between his dashes and slams
3. Smart weapons track him automatically the whole fight, tailor-made for a fast and heavily armored target like him; bank the saved attention into footwork
4. The Devil ending route never fights this battle, but assault-route players cannot dodge it — get your cyberware and weapons in order before you go in

Phantom Liberty: Kurt Hansen#

The signature opponent of Dogtown in Phantom Liberty: Colonel Kurt Hansen, the de facto master of Barghest. Whether this fight happens at all depends on where you throw in during the pivotal main quest Firestarter.

Trigger and avoidance:

1. Side with Songbird and you will fight him face to face inside the Black Sapphire
2. Take the other quest branch and you never cross blades with him — both paths carry their own price, and whether you fight is a story trade-off

Phase cues:

• Hansen is heavily cyberized and dangerous at both melee and range — the most solid frontal boss fight in the Phantom Liberty campaign
• The tower’s interior is spacious and its pillars and furniture work as cover, but don’t expect one spot to carry you through the whole fight
• Barghest guards inside the building coordinate with him; leave them alone and you get pinched from both sides

How to counter:

1. Before engaging, scan and tag every guard, clear the support first, then focus on Hansen himself
2. Fight at mid range — his close-range rush is the biggest threat, so don’t trade blows at hugging distance
3. Smart weapons and tech weapons are both reliably effective in this fight

Weaknesses and Counters Cheat Sheet#

Inclusion Policy: Quality Over Quantity#

1. Only verifiable encounters on the quest chain make the list. Some boss rosters circulating online (Rhindt, Reinhardt, Yuri, and the like) cannot be verified within the official quest chain, so they are left out here
2. No health, damage, XP, or level numbers. Those values shift with patches and difficulty settings; this page keeps only phase cues — the boss information that stays reliable across versions
3. Drops and rewards list confirmed items only. Royce’s “Chaos” is a kill-exclusive drop; every other drop table circulating online stays off the page until it can be verified
4. Full loadout and quickhack planning live in the Builds guide and the Quickhack guide; this page does not repeat them