Now that I’ve seen the entirety of Hollow Knight: Silksong, I feel ready to do two things: nominate the game as one of the best experiences of my life, and talk as much as humanly possible about it.
However, the latter is relevant here, as I’ve had the opportunity to delve into Pharloom’s full potential, which inevitably includes facing each and every one of its bosses.
While Hollow Knight maintained a considerably high level of quality in this department, its sequel has managed to surpass it in complexity and difficulty, making the original title feel much easier in comparison.
From frustratingly designed bosses to wonderfully fair but extremely dense duels, these are the ten hardest boss fights in Hollow Knight: Silksong, ranked.
10 Shrine Guardian Seth
A Demanding Tribute
|
Location |
Shellwood |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
n/a |
Aside from being a wonderful tribute to Seth Goldman, a Hollow Knight fan who unfortunately lost the fight against Ewing Sarcoma, Shrine Guardian Seth is the kind of enemy that makes you sweat.
While you’ve probably gotten used to how humanoid bosses work by this point in the story, Seth’s speed and ability to attack both on the ground and in the air make him extremely lethal.
Combined with his ability to throw his shield like Captain America while also being able to teleport to it, he’s a threat that will have you staring from all directions.
Fortunately, he doesn’t have any additional phases or environmental hazards that could make him more problematic, which is why he remains in the number 10 spot as a challenging but never unfair fight.
9 Moorwing
The First Great Wall
|
Location |
Greymoor |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
Beast Shard |
During my first few hours of play, even though I noticed the increased difficulty compared to Hallownest, I managed to defeat all the bosses and ambushes on my first try. But everything changed when I encountered Moorwing.
This is the first major wall Silksong players will experience, as it exploits a feature repeated frequently throughout the adventure: practically everything does two masks of damage.
In addition, it has a large model, so you’ll take a lot of damage if you don’t master the pogo perfectly, and you’ll also have a bad experience if you don’t learn to evade the predictable but complex trajectory of its multiple projectiles.
In many ways, Moorwing will be the turning point in what you thought you knew about the franchise, because it’s Team Cherry’s way of telling you that, no matter how experienced you are, you have to relearn.
8 Widow
This Is Definitely Not Hollow Knight
|
Location |
Bellhart |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
Needolin |
Despite what I said earlier, Widow arrives to triple-reinforce the notion that Silksong represents a very noticeable increase in mechanical complexity, because the jump is genuinely abysmal.
Normally, bosses tend to compensate for their strengths with specific weaknesses that players exploit, but this isn’t the case. Whether you’re talking speed, damage, or endurance, Bellhart’s threat is an unstoppable force of nature.
With her diagonal attacks, horizontal dashes covering the entire screen, lightning-fast bouncing bell throws, and spikes appearing from the ground, she demands tremendous concentration to be vanquished.
When her second phase enters and everything I mentioned starts happening simultaneously and at obscene speeds, you realize you’re going to be fighting Widow for much longer than you’d like.
7 Groal the Great
Misfortune Made Boss
|
Location |
Bilewater |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
n/a |
If we consider Silksong to be a Metroidvania, and therefore, the runback to a boss should somehow have a lot to do with its difficulty, Groal the Great would arguably be the most fearsome threat in all of Pharloom because of Bilewater.
However, staying strictly within the confines of his own combat, he’s still a problem of considerable magnitude, though not for the positive reasons you’ll read about from me in the rest of this article.
Remember those pesky traps, water with maggots, and enemies with unpredictable patterns that throw equally hard-to-read projectiles? Well, Groal includes all of it, making it more a test of patience than a trial of skill.
Plus, he has one of the largest models in the entire game, moves much faster than he should, and throws bombs that bounce and explode, turning his encounter into a frustrating and complicated mess.
6 Cogwork Dancers
As Telegraphed As Difficult
|
Location |
Cogwork Core |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
n/a |
Having a boss explicitly show you where they’re going to attack and still manage to make it onto a list of the toughest speaks for itself, and this is certainly the case with the Cogwork Dancers.
Being among the game’s best fights, this mechanized duo is far more demanding than it looks, with various phases that can exhaust your ability to react appropriately to their telegraphed movements.
The Cogwork Dancers fully exploit one of the title’s most important mechanics—positioning—and forces you to master the concept to the fullest, without being able to rely on pogo sticks or pattern recognition to navigate it.
Instead, you have to know where to stand, which is much harder than it looks. Plus, I’m sure there’s a subconscious psychological element of reassurance that comes from believing you’re a safe distance from their attacks, which will hurt you far more than you think.
5 Savage Beastfly
Maximum Frustration
|
Location |
Hunter’s March, Far Fields |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
Beast Crest, n/a |
Throughout my experience with the three acts, I was only genuinely frustrated in two situations: when I had to venture into Bilewater, and when I had to face the demonically annoying Savage Beastfly.
While it’s the boss that feels most like something out of Hollow Knight, with its hyper-basic attack pattern and linear design, it has the main tiresome characteristics that make a boss fight irritating.
All of its attacks, as well as colliding with it, do double damage; it summons extremely annoying minions, especially given the small area; and it has an large amount of health by the time you encounter it, so tanking damage isn’t an option.
This applies to both encounters, but the fact that it can break the floor in its second fight undeniably adds more hassle, especially since you don’t have access to the movement arsenal needed to deal with its stupidity.
4 Second Sentinel
Prepare to Die
|
Location |
High Halls |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
Reserve Bind |
Sometimes, all you need is a classic duel where recognizing the patterns is the main key to success, and that’s what the Second Sentinel offers in its best possible version.
After the lengthy sequence you have to follow to even activate its combat, this automaton rewards you with one of the game’s finest fights, but also one of the most demanding.
With Seth’s speed and versatility in a much smaller arena, including the Widow’s multidirectionality and the Cogwork Dancers’ telegraphing, it’s a remarkably complete fight that requires reflexes, aggression, and great control of the mechanics.
It has no particular gimmick, weaknesses, or any additional annoyances: Second Sentinel is an extraordinary fight for traditional reasons, and it was something I was delighted to finally see in Silksong.
3 Last Judge
Judging the True Pilgrims
|
Location |
Blasted Steps |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
n/a |
It doesn’t surprise me that Last Judge is considered the toughest boss of the campaign’s first half, because she genuinely poses a challenge of even unusual proportions for the final act.
Although she’s not as fast as some of the others on this list, she makes up for it with her ability to deal tons of damage in just a few seconds, whether with the pillars of fire she leaves behind with her charges or the explosive rings she summons by spinning her weapon.
In her second phase, she starts jumping wildly, throwing fire with every attack she executes, and making you feel completely scared, because you don’t know whether to move away and risk her flailing you across the arena, or to get closer and risk her dispatching fire circles in your face.
It makes sense that the Citadel has been empty for so long, as getting past the Last Judge is a daunting task. If you have trouble positioning yourself, making microsecond decisions, and pogoing, you won’t make it to Act 2 even if you pray.
2 Lost Lace
Third Time’s The Charm
|
Location |
The Abyss |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
n/a |
While I’m not sure if I’m keen on facing Lace for a third time and having her as Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s final encounter, it’s undeniable that her void form is quite difficult.
Her moveset has always been complex and fast-paced, but adding the dark tendrils she can now throw and summon from both the ground and the air, even at the end of her combos, is truly devastating.
With each new phase, Lost Lace feels faster and more aggressive, capable of teleporting, summoning screen-sized waves of darkness, throwing lightning-fast projectiles, and spawning attacking orbs, all on top of the already challenging foundation of her previous two encounters.
I’m still a bit disappointed by the circumstances, yet Lost Lace fully lives up to what you’d expect from a final boss. It’s spectacular, deadly, and will have you swimming through The Abyss‘ waters for hours until you defeat it.
1 Skarrsinger Karmelita
An Unstoppable Queen
|
Location |
Far Fields |
|---|---|
|
Drop(s) |
Hunter’s Heart |
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Skarrsinger Karmelita is not only Silksong‘s most notable boss appearance, but also the most demanding.
The ant queen boasts one of the most graceful and beautifully animated movesets in indie gaming history, subjecting you to a tremendous challenge where you have to be incredibly good at playing the game, or you won’t beat her.
Talking about Karmelita involves referring to the difficulty levels of Nightmare King Grimm or Pure Vessel, since in terms of speed, damage, durability, and complexity, she forces you to know all the game’s mechanics to have a chance of defeating her.
Even without counting the wave of minions you must defeat at the beginning of each attempt—because they honestly help more than they bother by giving you free silk—this is an encounter where only repetition and perfection will lead to victory.
Following in the footsteps of the genre’s best installments, Skarrsinger Karmelita reaches the highest point of difficulty and quality simultaneously, making it the most memorable and difficult encounter in Hollow Knight: Silksong.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
