Hollow Knight is a fun and challenging Metroidvania game that emphasizes boss fights that will put your combat skills to the test.
It also features a beautiful, distinctive art style and incredible music that helps to build the right atmosphere and greatly improves immersion.
For all of that, the game was well-received by both critics and players alike, with the sole criticism being aimed at the game’s high difficulty level, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
This criticism didn’t bother developers, though, as that’s exactly what they wanted to make. This became even more obvious when they decided to release some extra content in the form of free DLCs, adding even more challenge to an already difficult title.
Today, we’ll take a closer look at all of the available DLCs to see how they compare to each other – what they add, what they change, how they affect gameplay, and how difficult they are – and decide which are the best Hollow Knight expansions to date.
Here’s our subjective Hollow Knight DLC list with all expansions ranked from worst to best.
4. Lifeblood (April 2018)
Lifeblood is the third expansion for Hollow Knight. Compared to the others, it’s rather underwhelming, so its low rank shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Lifeblood focused more on balance changes to the existing content and improving the game’s performance and stability in general, rather than introducing new stuff. While the changes were reasonable and essential to create a fairer and flashier gameplay experience, they’re not as exciting as seeing entirely new things being added to the game.
In terms of new content, Lifeblood added one new boss and a Map Marker feature, allowing players to mark points of interest on their maps to make them easier to find and get back to when necessary. It’s a nice addition, but it’s far from being enough to make Lifeblood better than any other Hollow Knight DLC.
3. Hidden Dreams (August 2017)
Hidden Dreams is the first Hollow Knight expansion. The difficulty of this one is comparable to the vanilla version of the game, making it a good introductory DLC to prepare players for what’s to come in the later ones. Hidden Dreams added two new bosses for players to play around with, as well as a few types of lesser enemies for more gameplay variety. It also introduced some balance changes, such as increasing damage for Flukenest and Glowing Womb charms.
But that’s not all – the expansion also added an important quality of life feature in the form of the Dreamgate ability that lets players create a warp point, to which they can teleport at will. It’s an extremely valuable tool that will make certain parts of the game much more convenient, especially when you’re stuck on a difficult boss that takes a while to get back to on foot; with Dreamgate, you can teleport right back to the boss and start over. This alone makes the expansion a great addition to the base game, but it’s not enough to push it further than third place.
2. The Grimm Troupe (October 2017)
This is where things get fun. The Grimm Troupe is the second Hollow Knight expansion and ranks second on our list. It adds not only new bosses and enemies but also an entire circus-themed storyline that revolves around a mysterious group of ghostly bugs and features alternate endings.
Speaking of the new bosses, it’s also worth mentioning that one of them is arguably one of the coolest, memorable – and most difficult – bosses you’ll have a chance to fight against in the entirety of Hollow Knight, all expansions included.
The Grimm Troupe also features several new Charms to utilize during your adventures, new NPCs to interact with, and an extra Charm Notch to make your protagonist more powerful.
Even though there’s not much in terms of QoL additions or balance changes, a solid dose of fresh and challenging content more than makes up for it and gives The Grimm Troupe a deserved second place.
1. Godmaster (August 2018)
Godmaster is the fourth and final DLC for Hollow Knight and ranks first on our list. However, keep in mind that as far as the Godmaster vs Grimm Troupe competition goes, it’s all a matter of preference, as you’ll easily find people who’d say the latter one is superior – and it’s totally understandable.
Godmaster gives players an in-depth look at some of the most important Hollow Knight lore, touching on the pantheon of gods. The expansion also introduces an impressive number of seven new bosses to test players’ skills and abilities, and adds the ultimate challenge in the form of Pantheons – a new boss rush mode with adjustable difficulty. Pantheons are quite tough as they are, but you can push the challenge even further for extra bragging rights if you wish.
If you’re a completionist, Godmaster is where you’ll spend most of your playing time, although most of that time will be spent on repeating failed stages; beating the final Pantheon is no joke, you will need to truly master each boss and memorize all the attack patterns.
You can consider this expansion the game’s endgame and the final destination.
Conclusion
Hollow Knight features four exciting DLCs that improve the base game experience in various ways. Some focus on balance changes, some add new content, and some are designed to provide players with a way to push their skills to the absolute limit. However, what’s best about them is that even though some can be considered better than others, they’re all available for free, so there’s no reason to choose. They all have a role to play in making Hollow Knight a more exciting game.