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- cross-posted to:
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Finally finished everything in the game! Unless something incredible comes out of nowhere, this is my game of the year.
Short Review
Mina the Hollower is a retro top-down adventure game, it’s a mix between Zelda, Castlevania, and Bloodborne - with references to all three in particular.
The game is just fantastic all around. The combat is tight, the music and art are incredible, and the horror atmosphere of the whole world is just amazing. The game has hands-down some of the best level and world design you’ll see in games, it’s so full of secrets and shortcuts and manages to feel huge and fun to explore without being too confusing. The game also boldly does not have a map, but it does guide you in the general directions you need to go.
You will get lost, especially at the start, but you’ll slowly have a grasp of how the whole world connects as you play. The biggest issue people have is the game’s difficulty, but I can say that the game gets easier as you keep playing and explore. After the first area or two, you’ll start stacking trinkets that make life a whole lot easier, even in late-game areas. There are some really good trinkets near the start of the game that are easily missable, so be sure to look around - don’t try brute forcing the game!
I also want to add that the game has toooons of modifiers that you can enable on your save file. Some make the game easier, some make the game harder, some are weird and let you break the game (like a super high jump modifier) as well as a lot of visual stuff. The good stuff though is unlocked after beating the game, there are crazy modifiers like a built-in randomizer, or a modifier that removes RPG mechanics and equalizes difficulty, or one that mirrors the world… The game is built from the ground up to be replayed in many different ways and has built-in challenge runs. If you’re into these things, you can keep coming back to the game and play it for a loooooooong time. I’m already getting ready for New Game+ before doing any of the crazier ones.
That’s pretty much it. It’s such a great game. Go play it!
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If I had a nickel for every indie game inspired by Zelda and Dark Souls where you play as an animal I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s odd it happened twice.
I just finished too! Nowhere near 100%, as I was reaching the end I felt pretty OP so decided I would go completionist in NG+.
Probably my favourite game released in the last couple of years though, chefs kiss
I’m in the endgame area (manor) with like 90% completion. Can’t be assed to do some of challenges (like fishing).
I like the game a lot, and love the pixel art, but the game lacks some tightness in some areas. The platforming, esp. big jumps and flying enemies, is frustrating a lot of the time. Lots of me not knowing where exactly I am or hoe I’m going to move.
There’s also a bit of a muscle memory problem for me, with how I kept thinking things would be grid-based, due to the world, but I’d often think I was line up with foes, only for my weapons to squeak right past them.
My last complaint is purely a me problem, but I hate charge weapons, which the game seems to use a lot of innthe various upgrades. I ended uo using basically only daggers, as all the other weapons just feel so shitty to me.
Biggest complaint, only thing that’s more than a quibble, is I really didn’t like the inclusion of both vague region order and the souls-dropping mechanic. Dropping your money on death punishes poking into places to look around, drawing you forward into challenges repeatedly. First area I beat, I was like, ‘fuck, that was hard. Does it escalate from here?!?’ Spoilered myself, only to learn I had just done the 3rd area, and the doing 1 then 2, they were easy enough with all my upgrades to kind of kill the fun. Really soured the whole first half of the game for me, and it feels solvable bt either having some clearer guidance on intended region order, or dumping the (imo unnecessary) ‘souls’ mechanic.
Still, all of those above frustrations didn’t ruin it for me, and I’d still give it a 8.5 out of 10 maybe.
only to learn I had just done the 3rd area
That’s rough, but the game does generally guide you to the right order. NPCs in the town lead you to the crypt, and the newspaper always points you to the next area. When you beat the crypt, it tells you to go to Nox’s Bayou, then Septemburg, etc.
The order is also listed in the in-game manual, but the game never really tells you it’s there…
It’s a hard game so it’s a skip from me.
Did you miss the part about the modifiers?
The no map bit was intimidating at first, but then it started to feel like the maps were just designed so well you had to progress
The whip feels really weak to me. Being limited to attacking in 4 directions while enemies can approach from 8 is really limiting and the upgrade to deal more damage on a tip-hit was depressingly minor. I think I should have just put the 2000 bones towards another base attack upgrade.
Skill issue, I’m sure, but the hammer seems to be by far the strongest and overall best weapon.
The whip was my most used weapon in the game lol. The tip damage looks minor but it stacks up and manages to kill enemies with less hits, like an enemy that takes 3 hits would often take 2.
The whip works very much like the older Castlevania games, aside from positioning you can also jump, start attacking, then adjust your position in the air. You’ll still be attacking in the direction you started in.
Other than Castlevania itself where it’s the only main weapon, when are video game whips actually good? 🤷♂️
the threaded cane in bloodborne is an excellent whip weapon. Nothing else comes to mind tho…
That thing turns into a whip? 🤔
I never used it for a whole run.
It’s its trick mode. You can convert it without dropping your attack ‘combo’ on odd-numbered hits, so you can rush up to an enemy, quickly ‘cane hit’ twice to stun, then ‘whip hit’ until you’ve killed it with a bit of AoE coverage that stops any other enemy in front of you from sneaking in. Works great when you need to clear out a large number of mooks; the whip is a bit slow when you’re fighting single high-difficulty enemies.
In fact, might bust Bloodborne out again after I’ve finished Mina, always something more to learn about that game…
Ivy’s whip in the Soulcalibur series is pretty gnar. But that’s not really what ya mean (I assume).
Dead cells
Awesome review. Thanks for that.
I shall now add this to my wishlist :)
I think Mina was fun, right up until it isn’t. It seems clear to me that they needed 6 more months to polish, considering the sections that actually made it into the Orrery and the final dungeon.
Fun game, until it isn’t — and the final boss is a distinct meh.
Which sections specifically? I didn’t have any issues with the orrery or the final dungeon. I’m guessing the autoscroller before the final boss?
The black hole sections just aren’t fun, I think the Orrery was fine outside of the sections that force you to work around using black holes. Like the experience was night and day, every other section was a cakewalk until black holes. The cultists were fun, but then the final boss of the area you sort of just hit it til it dies.
The manor I’m having major difficulties simply remembering, the garden shortcut (the one that requires you to carry a statue head and jump on moving platforms while hitting switches) was so distinctly not fun that it almost made me quit the game. The shadow section with the lightning rods felt very cheap. The first half of the final boss being simon says and the second half having the tower minigame setting… idk it just did not hit for me.
I did genuinely enjoy the game up until the Orrery, though.
Edit: oh, and Wallower’s simply negating half of the games challenging platform sections leads me to think that they simply weren’t designed with the player’s real movement in mind.
Honestly kinda surprised that you disliked it, Orrery is one of my favorite areas and the black holes didn’t give me much trouble. The trinket you get from the race ghost made the platforming sections way easier for me.
As for the manor, it’s not my favorite area but I still enjoyed it. It gets hard, no doubt. Those moustraps hurt a lot, but I never found it annoying. In fact, I kinda liked the Hyrule castle-esque massive dungeon they had going on, it was a big culmination of all these different mechanics you went through.
I kinda get what you mean by the final boss though. He was alright but there are tons of better bosses. I’m still kinda surprised there would be people that didn’t like the Orrery though, it’s one of the most creative levels ever.
Those moustraps hurt a lot, but I never found it annoying.
This is what I mean with Wallower’s, they simply weren’t annoying for me because I practically skipped the sections where they were relevant. Much of the game past finding Wallower’s is like this. This factor is actually the biggest detractor for the game imo, it was like they added the item with absolutely 0 mitigation for how it would interact with what they’d already made.
Also I did not complete the racing ghosts challenge, but looking at the trinket; it is yet another trinket that should just be an upgrade you can’t miss (the movement is not good enough to warrant the race in the first place, let alone one of the best movement upgrades being tied behind it). Wallower’s should be an upgrade, Iron Lung should be an upgrade, like half the trinkets should either be upgrades or should be baked into other trinkets.
I think the game is a solid 7/7.5 out of 10 — certainly a platform for the devs to push off of. MtH2 might be god tier, they certainly have the potential.
Edit: I should say, I did like the Orrery until the black hole sections. I think it’s a great location up until that point.
Hard disagree, honestly. A lot of trinkets are very powerful and let you break the game which make great rewards for exploration and finishing side content. There are a lot of very powerful trinkets that by the end game you can have a vastly different builds, I don’t think they should be base abilities. Stacking trinkets is part of the fun.
Wallower’s quite literally breaks over half the game’s platforming sections. You simply do not need to interact with most of the ice platforming sections. Either it, and these other trinkets, shouldn’t be in the game or the devs didn’t know what they were doing.
Can’t believe how good this game looks. Can’t wait to finish building my new PC so I can get into this.
Ah, but that’s the joy of it. You don’t need a new PC for this; a very old one will still run it absolutely perfectly. And I agree with OP; great game, although I’m still only 2/3rds through it.
No, it’s just hilarious that I happen to be building a top of the line machine at a time like this, and the game I’m most excited to play next looks like it’d run on a Gameboy.
WaAaaaaaannntt!
Thanks for the hype. :)
