Top 10 Hardest Hollow Knight Bosses

Hollow Knight is a really hard game at points, with certain obstacles requiring the utmost precision and reaction. This is none the truer when talking about the boss fights in the game, which are by far some of the most grueling aspects of the game.
The Top Ten
1 Nightmare King Grimm

At the top of a pantheon, all other victories feel hollow. Projectile spam and random windows are incredibly difficult.Hard to find heals, and some of his attacks barely have any telegraph, not to mention the amount of mix up options he has.

After learning him, he is my favourite boss to fight. Learn him and he gets a really cool boss to fight. Still it is very hard to get past him in the Pantheum.

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 Sharp Shadow Charm to dodge his attacks and 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 aquire them. Heal as many masks as you can during his stagger phase.

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

2 Absolute Radiance

This boss is very difficult but manageable at the least. Harder than Nightmare King Grimm (I can do him no damage), it is not RNG-based. I can consistently beat Absolute Radiance on normal difficulty, and I have beaten her on ascended. To beat this boss, use Quick Focus, Deep Focus, Unbreakable/Fragile Strength, and Grubsong. It took me two Pantheon runs to beat this boss; the first one was to unlock the practice one, and the second one was to beat it. (However, I died to Grey Prince Zote many times before fighting her again, lol.)

This fight is extremely difficult, but for mostly the wrong reasons. The fight is extremely dependent on RNG, doing massive damage and having wide spreading, fast attacks on tiny platforms, easily leaving the player in a situation where avoiding damage is nigh on impossible.

Stupid 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.

Have not even had the chance to fight this boss. It is just insane to even reach it.

3 Pure Vessel

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

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

Hardest boss I have thought. Fast, lots of health and double damage makes him as hard as NKG, but he has even less warning and unique attacks.

4 Lost Kin
5 Watcher Knights

I don't agree. Watcher Knights are easily beaten once you get Descending Dark and Shaman Stone. Just use the invincibility frames to get a downslash in and keep spamming the shockwave. Get it right and you'll finish them in minutes. Find the (redacted) and you'll reduce the fight down to a (more) manageable 5. Otherwise - yeah, they're ridiculous. Good luck.

While they're quite simple to dodge, the growing number of them that appears 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. Gets very frantic.

6 Grey Prince Zote

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

Zote in level 10, pure frustration.

7 Traitor Lord
8 Great Nailsage Sly

The fact that he punishes you for being overaggressive is such a nice touch, which when combined with his lightning fast attacks and flashy spins, 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, providing about a second in which you can attack without getting hurt back. This was the fight that took me the longest to get to grips with.

Not really that hard

9 Radiance

The fight is essentially the same as Absolute Radiance's fight, but slightly slower and more manageable, making it 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.

10 Sisters of Battle

This is undoubtedly the fastest fight in the game, and by an absolutely enormous margin, having to fight 3 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 t doesn't last too long, and the fight becomes slower as you take them out one by one.

The Contenders
11 Failed Champion

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 provides for an extremely difficult fight that ends quickly in either way. It's definitely another fight that takes a long time to master.

12 Primal Aspid

Unbeatable, I don't know why some people claim it's either been beaten, or isn't a boss. Reason why I uninstalled the game, it deleted my savefile.

Definitely the hardest boss in the game, right next to Gruz Mother. Impossible to dodge and even more impossible to hit. Way too small and constantly moves away whenever you try to hit it. Took me several hours to beat.

It's almost impossible to beat! I'm not sure how people are able to beat the Primal Aspid without getting hurt at all. I die every time!

Should come in poh

13 Soul Tyrant

This boss is quite tanky, with some attacks that are quite tricky to dodge. The one that particularly trips me up is the attack where he charges while casting 6 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 an 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

14 Gruz Mother

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

Extremely difficult, hard hitting and it summons extremely hard enemies. This boss is BS.

15 Markoth

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.

16 White Defender

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

17 Hornet
18 Grimm
19 Elderbug

Hardest boss in the game in my opinion. The fact that you encounter him at the start really adds to the difficulty.

Impossible to kill this boss. You don't have any charms or spells at the time of encountering it.

20 Vengefly King
21 Radiant Gruz Mother
22 Uumuu (Godhome)

The double damage jellyfish you have to hit into it are cancer. I have found my run ending to it more times than I can count

23 Zote (Colosseum)
24 Enraged Guardian
25 Fasle Knight
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