the adds during the beastfly boss

Agreed. Literally and figuratively, Last Judge is the perfect gatekeeper to Act 2.

The climb back from the bench isn't so short that you're incentivized to try fluking the boss over dozens of attempts, but it's also interesting and short enough that you can have fun learning to speedrun through it.

The boss tests healing opportunities, dashing, floating, and reading telegraphs, but what it probably prepares you for the most is controlling your nerves.

It does take a lot of hits, but there's a high skill ceiling where you can wail on it if you're bold and skilled enough. But it can also teach you patience and how to pick your hits carefully if you don't have great reflexes.

Widow is a solid second place for me. Part of that is because the approach to her fight from the bench is pretty trivial.

I love that magma bell makes the last judge fight easier. And I thought I would never need that thing again after deep docks.

I personally found Widow fairly hard until I managed to calm down and read her better.

Widow's music and the sheer spectacle of her bell attacks really made her more of a challenge than she actually was.

Judge, it was almost more of an endurance fight where you had to keep up or get steamrolled. Harder, but didn't quite make the same impression that Widow did.

The last judge is hard, but in a really useful way - if you're not keeping your eyes on the enemy and proactively reading their tells, you're not going to be able to enjoy the back half of the game as much.

I had to kind of retrain my eyes to be able to beat this one... All throughout the game up to that point, I was so enthralled with the spectacle of combat that I'd be watching myself more than the enemy. But that leads to passivity.