Hollow Knight: The Grimm Troupe

The Grimm Troupe is one of the two bigger content updates for Hollow Knight, the other one being Godmaster. It comes with new enemies and bosses, several new Charms, a complete side story, and the infamous "Path of Pain" challenge.

The Grimm Troupe

Overall this DLC feels very unique in tone compared to the rest of the game. Lighting a red flame in a certain place will summon the Grimm Troupe, a nightmarish circus ensemble, to the town of Dirtmouth. Accompanied with accordion music, you will learn about their ritual, which requires you to collect flames from all over the world of Hallownest. These flames are protected by the Grimmkin, ghosts who resemble the Poes from the Zelda series, where you have to defeat them all to earn the flames.

You will have to equip the Grimmchild Charm during all of this, which spawns a small companion to your side and marks the location of the flames on your map. For each step you need three flames and once you've completed a step, the Grimmchild will grow stronger and even start attacking enemies with fireballs.

The overall concept of integrating DLC feels a bit similar to The Champions' Ballad, so it's essentially just a scavenger hunt with markers on your map, where something that wasn't there before has been added to the environment. There are some interesting picks among these locations, where the flames might even lead you to places that are still unexplored, but it doesn't really add any new areas. It's just fighting new enemies that have shown up in old places, which should sound familiar to fans of Breath of the Wild.

After two rounds of this you will face the leader of the Grimm Troupe, Grimm, in a battle, which he describes as a dance and shares many similarities to the Dracula fights from the Castlevania series. After your "performance" there is one last cycle for this whole ritual, but you may notice that something is off. And depending on whether you investigate things in the right way or not, you will be faced with a choice of completing the ritual or banning the Grimm Troupe from Hallownest...

 

Charms

If you complete Grimm's ritual, it will lead to one of the most difficult boss fights in the game and you will obtain the completed Grimmchild as a Charm, which isn't really that good (and seemingly dismissed as one of the most useless Charms by the community). If you banish the Grimm Troupe instead, you will have an easier time and get the much better Carefree Melody Charm, which regularly protects you from damage.... So, this seems like an easy choice (if you knew that there even was one to begin with).

But the Grimm Troupe also comes with a very helpful NPC, called Divine, who can turn your fragile Charms into unbreakable versions for lots of Geo. Since Geo has rarely any use in the later game this is a very welcome deal. You just need to make sure that you have gotten everything from her before you swing the ban hammer or else this will be missed entirely.

Otherwise the DLC also added three new Charms to existing locations in the game: Sprintmaster, Dreamshield, and Weaversong. Sprintmaster makes you walk slightly faster and creates a good combo with Dashmaster, while Weaversong spawns three small Weaverlings (spiders) that will attack enemies. It can also be combined with Sprintmaster, where the spiders will run faster and further. And together with Grubsong they become a good source for SOUL, where I even used this combination for the Colosseum.

Dreamshield isn't that interesting, though. It makes a leaf circle around you, which may block an attack and then will regrow after a short while. You will probably get better results from Carefree Melody, given that you have it.

The Path of Pain

In the endgame of Hollow Knight, there is one area that focuses on a series of platforming challenges, the White Palace, where you have to bounce of flying bugs, moving buzz saws, and retracting spikes to get to the end. The DLC made this area accessible again, even if you've already beaten it, and added a hidden section to it, which is far more difficult than anything else found in the White Palace for an optional challenge – the "Path of Pain".

The name says it all. This challenge has such a reputation that it's actually one of the main reasons why I had shied away from the game for years. I know myself. Whenever I enjoy a game – and Hollow Knight is very much enjoyable – I will try to complete it and put myself through even the biggest tortures (unless it somehow involves Cuccos). The Champion's Road in Super Mario 3D World is a great example of this or any similar endgame level in a Jump'n'Run. It's this one over-the-top challenge at the end that you want to achieve just to truly be done with the game.

Now, this was before I knew anything about Godhome, which can be far more ridiculous. And the Path of Pain really is completely optional. It doesn't add to your completion percentage, it doesn't give you any item, there also is no achievement / trophy attached to it. All you get is a small "cutscene" and an optional entry to your Journal, where it's doing a Knuckle, so the Journal will be considered as complete with or without it. It's the same type of reward that you get for collecting all 900 Korok Seeds, except that this is not just literal poop. So, Team Cherry really stressed the fact how this isn't something that should be done by anyone for a reward, without giving you nothing at all for your troubles.

Still, if you're a true completionist you want to go for these kind of things, simply because it's there. But to be honest, by the time I got to the challenge, I was completely up for it. The platforming mechanics of Hollow Knight are a lot of fun and after you've beaten the White Palace you may be looking for more. And more you will get...

It took me three attempts and multiple hours to get through this monster, but beating it felt fantastic. The last room is evil and I actually died there once, which puts you back right at the start... And that I still had the motivation to try it again, instead of uninstalling the game out of frustration, speaks for itself. You will have mastered most of the sections by then and there is even a shortcut, which lets you skip some of the more troublesome sections, so I got back to the end rather quickly. It's little things like this how Team Cherry manages to keep you motivated, no matter how hard the challenge is.

And the high stakes at the end made the whole thing so much more thrilling to beat, because otherwise you're just learning each section step by step. So, the Path of Pain even feels mostly fair. The sections can be quite long, but there are multiple checkpoints and most of the checkpoints have a special Hollow Knight totem, which gives endless soul, so you can keep fully healing yourself. This makes things rather manageable, even though it will take hours to beat this on your first try.