Top 10 Hardest Hollow Knight Bosses

This fight is extremely difficult, but for mostly the wrong reasons. It is heavily dependent on RNG, with massive damage and wide-spreading, fast attacks on tiny platforms, easily leaving the player in a situation where avoiding damage is nearly impossible.

It's ridiculous to have to go through the entire Pantheon of Hallownest when you inevitably die. Sure, it was pretty annoying to go through the Hollow Knight to get to Radiance, but spending 40 minutes to get to a fight just to redo it a hundred times is insane.

The tanky, unpredictable nature of the boss makes it one of the most difficult in the game. It has a massive moveset that can easily combo you to death if you aren't quick and don't know the proper way to handle the attacks.

The various ranged attacks further put pressure on the player, as nowhere is safe. You essentially can't heal until you stun it, meaning that each mistake is very costly.

Very fast, and while his attacks take time to get used to dodging, he has a nice rhythm to him that makes the fight not as bad as others. Still incredibly hard, however.

Zote's fast and frustrating gameplay can be difficult to control. His high health, speed, and damage make him one of the hardest bosses.

Extremely difficult boss, especially when he starts doing 8 masks of damage.

Zote at level 10 is pure frustration.

The fight consists of having to balance between staying far enough away to avoid the shield but close enough to hit, all while dodging flying swords that spawn at random locations.

While the first version of Markoth is manageable, the second version found in the pantheons has no floor, forcing you to use small platforms. It requires precise play and some acrobatics to beat this boss.

You literally do not have time to think unless he is using his shield. Even then, you still have to be careful!

Honestly, one of the hardest boss fights across all games I've played. It combines many aspects of the game and is way outside of my comfort zone. This fight requires a lot of dodging and dashing.

I would recommend Shade Cloak and maybe even the Sharp Shadow Charm to dodge his attacks, and the Dashmaster Charm to dash more often. You'll probably need all of the Nail Arts for this fight - I know some don't exactly go out of their way to acquire them.

Heal as many masks as you can during his stagger phase.

The difficulty of this boss comes from the lack of an easy way to handle him, along with the extreme speed of the fight. It requires very precise maneuvers in certain parts, most notably the pseudo bullet hell section. There are also few attacks you can just shadow dash through to avoid, as some have strange delays that are hard to pinpoint, or the attacks have too many elements to reliably dodge them all with a simple dash.

While this boss isn't particularly insane in terms of difficulty, the fight is quite fast-paced and challenging all around.

Obscenely fast and intense, being able to kill you in a matter of seconds. The shockwaves sent at you, on top of the constantly falling rocks, make for an extremely difficult fight that ends quickly either way.

It's definitely another fight that takes a long time to master.

Probably the first boss to show players true difficulty in their first playthrough.

This is undoubtedly the fastest fight in the game by an absolutely enormous margin. You have to fight three extremely quick mantises at the same time, often while two of them are throwing projectiles to trap you, all while the third one could be dropping on you with its lance out.

This speed is well-balanced by the fact that it doesn't last too long, and the fight becomes slower as you take them out one by one.

These three really know how to keep up the pressure, but it doesn't feel unfair, and they are somewhat fun to fight.

The fact that he punishes you for being overaggressive is such a nice touch. Combined with his lightning-fast attacks and flashy spins, it makes him quite a difficult fight.

What really makes him so difficult, however, is his second phase, which involves him jumping around the arena constantly before lunging at you and spinning. This provides about a second in which you can attack without getting hurt.

This was the fight that took me the longest to get to grips with.

This guy just zips around everywhere, and the second phase just sucks.

While they're quite simple to dodge, the growing number of them that appear in the fight can get overwhelming.

The only thing not putting them higher up is the fact that if you have even half-decent damage, you can obliterate them with very little difficulty.

Second hardest non-DLC boss. The fight gets very frantic.

The fight is essentially the same as Absolute Radiance's fight but slightly slower and more manageable. It's still incredibly intense, but now on a scale that is much more feasible, especially since if you've gotten all of the upgrades in the game, you definitely have the strength to take it on without getting absolutely destroyed in the process.

It's the final boss in the main game, so yeah, it's going to be tough to beat.

This boss is quite tanky, with some attacks that are tricky to dodge. The one that particularly trips me up is the attack where he charges while casting six rotating magic orbs around him, which I never was able to properly learn how to dodge.

The second phase is extremely fast-paced and relies on good positioning and keen awareness of surroundings in order to survive, making it a tough way to end the fight.

Can you just put a save bench next to it, please? Thank you, Jesus Christ.

Hardest fight in the game. I kept on dying. Going through this in the Pantheon of Hallownest just to face that pushover of a fight, Absolute Radiance, is really stupid.

Extremely difficult, hard-hitting, and it summons extremely tough enemies. This boss is ridiculous.