Boss Guide#

Boss fights in NieR:Automata are never just damage checks — every major battle anchors a story node: your first clash with a twin deep in the desert, rescuing the abducted 9S from the Copied City, turning blades on a companion in the Tower arc. This page organizes the main boss fights of the story by region, explaining each battle’s mechanical keys and story position, plus their links to the ending and trophy systems.

Damage, health and drop-rate numbers were never officially published, so this page uses mechanics descriptions throughout; all story positioning follows the actual game flow, consistent with the Endings Guide.

The Abandoned Factory: Machines Fused With the Factory Itself#

The Abandoned Factory is where the whole story begins and the first zone where you trade blows with large machine lifeforms head-on. The giants here are not targets standing in an arena but behemoths fused with the factory’s own structures — their attack ranges cover whole platforms, forcing you to weave between pillars, shelves and elevation.

Engels (Prologue Boss)#

The prologue’s tutorial boss fight. The battle has two segments: first you harry it while it’s restrained inside the factory, then the scene moves outside for the real fight. As a tutorial, it teaches the universal loop of large machine combat:

1. Attack breakable parts like the legs to topple the giant machine
2. While it’s downed, climb the body and focus fire on the exposed core
3. Once the core takes enough hits it rises again — repeat the loop until the fight ends

The fight itself isn’t hard; the point is getting the feel of light/heavy combos, dodges and Pod fire working together. The prologue ends after this battle, and 2B and 9S reach the surface.

Marx (On Returning to the Factory)#

When the main story returns to the Abandoned Factory, you meet Marx — the game’s first large machine lifeform, likewise fused with the factory. The biggest difference from Engels: it can speak.

Battle notes:

• While it speaks, its movements pause noticeably — the most consistent and safest damage window
• Its fusion with the factory means attacks move the facility itself; watch both floor and overhead reach
• As a large machine its attacks cover enormous area but turn slowly; hugging its back beats kiting at range

Unlike Engels the pure weapon, Marx is the first large machine lifeform to show a will of its own — the collective awakening of the machine lifeforms is foreshadowed from this fight on.

The Desert Zone and the Alien Ship: Adam and Eve#

Chasing an anomalous signal into the Desert Zone brings your first humanoid elite fight against Adam. Unlike the large machines, Adam stands on two legs and his mobility and combo rhythm approach the player characters:

1. Perfect dodge is the core answer to his fast melee; trading blows up close is dangerous
2. Pod fire can control the distance and break his rhythm
3. His aggression is extreme — never get greedy; counter in the recovery windows of his combos

After this fight, the story pushes into the alien ship ruins deep in the desert, where the twin brothers Adam and Eve formally appear. The alien ship is the core story node for understanding machine lifeform humanity: the theme of “learning fear” runs from their debut through the rest of the game. The encounter ends with 9S abducted, directly setting up the Copied City rescue.

The Amusement Park Ruins: Beauvoir#

The boss fight at the Amusement Park Ruins is the most oppressive mid-Route-A encounter, in two phases:

Two-body form: the two units have not yet merged and act independently. One side leans on barrage fire, the other on ground shocks and summoning small machines. The key in this phase is constant movement — lateral strafing avoids most of the barrage, and jumps answer the ground shocks.

Merged form: once fused into a giant, the barrage density surges and small enemies keep coming. Battle keys:

1. The exposed core windows after merging are your main damage opportunity — hit the core with everything
2. Its laser attacks have a clear wind-up; dodge sideways the moment you see the warning
3. In full-screen barrages, survival first — never force damage through the barrage
4. Clear summoned small machines with area attacks before you get surrounded

The battle’s background music, “A Beautiful Song”, is bound tightly to the staging — one of the soundtrack’s most memorable passages.

The Forest Kingdom: The Forest King#

The Forest Kingdom storyline closes with the Forest King fight. This battle is a duel of guarding and flanking:

1. Its front is shield-protected; frontal attacks barely register
2. Attacking from the side or behind is the main damage route
3. Its spear thrusts have a clear wind-up — dodge sideways
4. Its ground slams send out quake waves that must be jumped
5. Once staggered, flanking attacks produce the longest damage window

After this fight, the Forest Kingdom story reveals how this medieval settlement really runs, and it foreshadows Route B’s hacking investigation.

The Copied City: The Final Experiment#

The Copied City is where Route A’s story peaks. 2B pushes into the Copied City to rescue the abducted 9S and fights Adam a second time — the battle ends with Adam’s death, completing the key story beat of “2B kills Adam to save 9S”. Everything learned in the desert applies, but Adam presses harder than on first sight, and perfect-dodge timing must be sharper.

Adam’s death directly breaks his twin — Eve. Losing his partner, Eve loses control, absorbing nearby machine lifeforms to grow gigantic, becoming the Copied City’s final boss. The “final experiment” named in the fact card is precisely this fight’s opponent.

Phase one: humanoid form

• Melee trading dominates, with fast combo rhythm — counter after perfect dodges
• Pod fire can control the range, but don’t kite too far — she teleports in

Phase two: giant form

• Giant attacks turn into slams and sweeps; watch the ground telegraphs
• Build stagger on the limbs to reach the core
• Thrown projectiles and lasers need sideways dodges

Phase three: core form

• Omni-directional barrages blanket the arena; constant movement matters more than damage
• The core is fully exposed — pour damage into every barrage gap
• This is Route A’s final ordeal; don’t hoard healing and revival items

Route B: The Retelling Through 9S#

Route B retells Route A from 9S’s perspective; the fights and opponents are the same, but the way you fight transforms: controlling 9S lets you hack enemies — complete the hacking mini-game to deal direct damage or trigger self-destruct, giving every boss fight an extra handling tool.

Route B also adds a standalone elite — the Memory Guardian, found in the forest castle’s core. Its mechanics revolve around “phantoms”:

1. It summons phantoms of enemies you’ve already beaten, which replay their original attack patterns
2. While phantoms manifest you can punish the real body; choose which to prioritize
3. Area attacks can cover body and phantoms together, at the cost of a longer fight

For a player who has already learned every Route A boss pattern, this fight tests mastery of existing knowledge rather than new mechanics.

The Tower and the Endgame: The Inquisitor and the Infected 9S#

The Inquisitor (The Tower’s Religious Domain)#

In the Tower arc, the master of the tower’s religious domain is the Inquisitor. Its offense leans on ranged beams while summoning swarms of machine lifeforms:

1. Early on, fight at range and use the tower’s pillars to block beams
2. When summoned machine lifeforms pile up, clear them with area attacks first
3. In the latter half its patterns change — melee pressure rises sharply, so keep your distance
4. Ranged-focused play remains effective throughout this fight

The Infected 9S (The Final Battle)#

The final boss fight of the game unfolds between A2 and 9S. By this point 9S is infected by the logic virus, making this duel his last fight.

The battle’s mutually exclusive mechanic is the game’s most important branch: whom you control depends on your route — the A2 route has you play A2 against 9S, the 9S route has you play 9S against A2. The two routes are mutually exclusive, corresponding to Ending C and Ending D in the Endings Guide.

The battle’s own mechanical keys:

1. Your opponent uses the same gear and skills as the character you control — melee combos, hacks and teleport approaches all on the table
2. The aura of hack attacks must be dodged first; hits leave you stunned
3. Damage windows cluster after combo finishers — use fast weapons to seize them
4. Counter-punishing after a perfect dodge of their combo is the safest damage route in this fight

Boss Fights and Story Trophies#

Three trophies hook directly to main-story boss nodes, all unlocking automatically along the story with no extra steps:

The triggers map one-to-one onto this page’s story nodes: the Pascal line forks at the end of the village arc, Devola and Popola’s last moments come on the road to the endgame, and 2B’s death is where the Tower arc’s tragedies begin. For full ending branches and conditions, see the Endings Guide.

DLC Hidden Bosses: The Two Presidents#

Deep in the arenas of the major DLC 3C3C1D119440927 wait two hidden bosses modeled on real people: Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda and PlatinumGames president Kenichi Sato. Matsuda’s model is based on his Final Fantasy XV pre-launch event appearance. These two hidden boss fights are among the game’s most famous easter eggs and a true test of player skill.

Arena entry conditions, difficulty stages and rewards are detailed in the DLC Guide.

Universal Boss-Fight Tips#

Closing Thoughts#

Boss fights are the narrative skeleton of NieR:Automata: Engels and Marx make you realize machine lifeforms are not just weapons, Adam and Eve put the question “can machines learn humanity” on the table, and the final duel with the infected 9S gathers every tragedy into a choice made by your own hands.

Once you understand each boss fight’s story position, the multi-route progression stops being repetition and becomes the process of peeling back the truth. For the full story arc, see the Story Analysis; for each character’s background and stance, see Character Introductions.