10 Hollow Knight Boss Fights That Are Difficult Even After Finishing the Game

Hollow Knight is part of that select group of games I have no problem replaying every year, as the experience seems to get better each time.

As one of the games that defined the last decade, Team Cherry's debut title changed both the Metroidvania genre and me personally, leaving virtually no one indifferent.

However, another reason I replay it so many times is the sheer enjoyment of experiencing all its content again, always striving for 112% completion despite the challenges it entails.

This is a relentless adventure that contests even the most dedicated players, which is precisely why I'm compiling this list of the ten Hollow Knight boss fights that still feel brutal even after beating the game.

10 Uumuu

Too Many Explosions

This might be an unpopular opinion, but Uumuu is among the biggest reasons why conquering the Pantheon of the Sage was so incredibly difficult for me.

While its regular version is more accessible thanks to Quirrel's help, the variant we fight in Godhome depends entirely on our ability to explode jellyfish in the right direction, and that's a skill I've never been good at.

Completing the objective of breaking Uumuu's shield without taking two masks of damage from the explosions is difficult both the first and the tenth time, especially since you have to simultaneously dodge both the boss's body and its room-filling electric attacks.

It's a fight about positioning more than attack patterns or reflexes, and that's precisely why I struggle with it so much. It's not as maddening as some other bosses on the list, but it's definitely up there.

9 Failed Champion

No Soul, No Party

Similar to Uumuu, False Knight is a fairly standard boss whose limited difficulty stems from being the first one you encounter, but the same cannot be said for Failed Champion.

The dream version of the tutorial encounter is one I constantly struggle with due to its gimmick of not granting you Soul when you damage it, except when it's stunned, significantly limiting your healing options.

Since everything in the fight deals two masks of damage and the enemy's hitbox occupies half the screen, it's practically impossible to emerge unscathed, which is problematic because you have no way to replenish your life points.

Considering you also can't speed up the fight by using powers to kill it quickly, you have no choice but to accept that Failed Champion, while not the most difficult, is a troublesome boss in any playthrough.

8 White Defender

No Time for Breaks

Most bosses in Hollow Knight, whether during phase transitions or specific attacks, give the player a moment's respite, but the majority don't include White Defender.

Once again, the dream variants demonstrate their superiority over their regular counterparts, and in this particular case, it comes in the form of a ball-like warrior that relentlessly charges at you until it's dead.

Given its speed and its tendency to summon projectiles that ricochet off all walls (including itself), this is the kind of fight you have to approach using your peripheral vision to take in everything happening on screen, because you'll die if you focus on a single element.

If it weren't for the Shade Cloak, this would certainly be the kind of encounter I wouldn't bother attempting, as the ease with which it removes two masks at a time is truly overwhelming.

7 Grey Prince Zote

Living Up to His Legend

As you spend the entire game viewing it as a farce or a nuisance, the shock of encountering Grey Prince Zote for the first time becomes extremely huge.

Of course, he's a product of Bretta's imagination, but what isn't fictional is the encounter's difficulty, whose unpredictable nature makes it impossible to stick to a single pattern of possibilities.

From his movements on screen, both vertically and horizontally, to his annoying and explosive summons, Grey Prince Zote's complexity lies in the very, very small variations of all his attacks.

They're subtle, often a matter of a couple of pixels further to the left or 0.2 seconds later, but they're enough to drive you crazy, especially after several encounters in a single save, which significantly increases the difficulty.

6 Absolute Radiance

God Can Bleed

I'm sure it will surprise many to see Absolute Radiance barely halfway down the list instead of at the top, but I think veterans will understand.

Unlike other adversaries, this boss is the kind that forces you to try it so many, many times that it ends up becoming an extension of yourself, easy to read like the back of your hand after hundreds of failed attempts.

Many of the others are fights you only do once per playthrough, though you practice Absolute Radiance in the Hall of Gods until you're sick of it precisely to avoid being destroyed by it when you reach the Pantheon of Hallownest's end.

It's still an absurdly difficult opponent, obviously, but that difficulty decreases with each subsequent playthrough because you get so used to it that it stops seeming like the hell it is the first time.

5 Pure Vessel

Sibling Fights are Formidable

Pure Vessel follows the same logic as Absolute Radiance, though instead of hundreds of initial attempts, it requires only dozens, making subsequent playthroughs less polished.

You try enough to improve your performance, but you never reach the absurd levels of effort demanded by Absolute Radiance, so achieving true mastery is rather unusual.

As a result, at least in my experience, it's an encounter where you're more prone to making mistakes and getting overconfident, allowing yourself to be gradually damaged because you haven't truly conquered the timing of your attacks and healing.

Furthermore, Pure Vessel is a rhythm-based fight that's unforgiving: the moment you let yourself get hit even once, your timing will most likely go out the window. Therefore, you'll take damage multiple times in a row due to its speed and range, which is a massive problem considering it's a fight that requires near-perfect timing to win consistently.

4 Lost Kin

A Tough Cousin

Lost Kin is nowhere near as difficult as Absolute Radiance or Pure Vessel, but he's much closer to being the boss I've avoided most often in my Hollow Knight playthroughs because of how annoying he is.

I've lost count of the number of times he humbled me and forced me to backtrack to upgrade my nail and have a better chance of beating him, since I almost always make the mistake of going in underpowered, which is painfully obvious when it happens.

The inconsistency of his jumps, his speed, and the awkwardness of his summons create an exasperating combination where your desire to finish the fight quickly clashes with your inability to do so, leading to frustration that worsens your performance.

I can beat numerous bosses in Radiant back-to-back, though beating Lost Kin on my first try is something I've never managed in any playthrough. Maybe it's just me, but every time I see him, I automatically get nervous because I know that somehow, unexpectedly, he's going to ruin my day.

3 Great Nailsage Sly

Elusive and Powerful

If Uumuu was a key factor in understanding my struggles with the Pantheon of the Sage, Great Nailsage Sly is the undisputed protagonist, because it's incredibly difficult to defeat him the first time.

However, this feeling isn't exclusive to the first encounter, as you're always left with the lingering sense that you barely managed to beat him, rather than having truly mastered his attack patterns, and this becomes clear in every subsequent fight.

No matter how many times you defeat him, you'll always struggle to anticipate the direction of his thrusts, the range of his sword strikes, the proximity of his spins, and how much health he has left, as he's a highly unpredictable being.

I can imagine Team Cherry laughing when they created this boss, giving him a minimal hitbox and the fastest evasion capabilities in the game, because only then can I understand how such a comical fight as Sly's even exists.

2 Nightmare King Grimm

Definitely a Nightmare

If there's one boss that knows how to get your heart racing, it's Nightmare King Grimm. He's probably the most difficult on average, considering his damage output, speed, unpredictability, and survivability.

Between his numerous projectiles, trails of fire that leave impassable areas, rains of orbs that land in unpredictable directions, and horizontal summons that travel at the speed of light, all dealing two damage per mask, he has a vast arsenal capable of destroying you in seconds.

Even with practice and mastery, you need such incredible precision to dodge everything from so many different points on the map that it's purely a matter of statistics: if he throws 50 attacks at you per minute, at least one is bound to hit.

Besides, he teleports constantly, making it virtually impossible to land more than two hits in a single sequence, and you realize it's a fight of patience as you slowly deplete his health bar, but every second that passes feels like an eternity.

1 Radiant Markoth

Evil Incarnate

Perhaps it's unfair to include a Radiant variant on a list like this, but I personally would use any opportunity to hate the intolerable Markoth with all my heart.

I'd like to tell you the most difficult boss is so because of its complex attack pattern, unparalleled speed, or intricate design, but the truth is that the title belongs to a Dream Warrior game that's duller than a common enemy in Forgotten Crossroads.

With its uncontrollable RNG, unpredictable needles, and extremely annoying shields, dying in a single hit to this abomination is both humiliating and frustrating, because it's always the result of something humanly impossible to anticipate.

It doesn't matter if you fight him a thousand times and manage to defeat him in a hundred of them, as each attempt is irrelevant to the previous one, given the importance of luck in the fight, making it difficult to become good at it or master it enough to consistently emerge victorious.

I insist: maybe it's inappropriate to place a Radiant boss compared to the others on the list, yet Markoth is the hardest of all in this ranking, even above Radiance or Grimm, so I think it is appropriate to make him representative of the greatest difficulty in all of Hollow Knight.