Mina the Hollower

I played for about two hours. Whether or not I reached the point for the refund remains to be seen. This was really promising, y'know. And I'm glad it found its audience and Yacht Club Games reached their goals and all that. But I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hated this. Everything after you get free reign to do whatever you want fell apart for me. I just kept dying over and over to enemies that always knew to walk diagonally out of reach of my weapon or interrupt me while I'm platforming so I would get hit, fall into a pit, and take twice the damage (stupid design by the way). This game gets compared to Dark Souls a lot and you only really see it when you play it because a team of people who famously have amazing attention to detail decided to make everything feel designed to work against you. I hate dying to things outside of my control and losing a sidearm, with no way to get it back save for backtracking. I hate the arbitrary way in which the sparks either stay in place or go into some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ enemy. I hate having two ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ checkpoints in a dungeon which makes me replay the same areas over and over for literally no reason other than to waste my time. Skill issue? Sure, I'm fine with that. But I really don't like to play games that just get me so upset. Then I learned about modifiers. Apparently the real reason why this is Dark Souls is because modifiers were meant to treat people (i.e. me) like toddlers. Now instead of finding another path to progress and enjoy the game, we get to switch a button and get infinite health. I genuinely feel insulted by the inclusion of something that serves to taunt me. Why do we have to balance your game for our experience? Give us standard difficulty options like everyone else, or keep a set difficulty that is consistent (like, say, your previous work). Because using these modifiers don't feel like accessibility, they just feel like I'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cheating. I've never felt more disrespected by a game like this. The part about the checkpoints is the only reason why I have this much time. If steam won't let me refund it, I'll bite and use all the modifiers like the ♥♥♥♥♥ Yacht Club wants me to be.

There's a good game here, unfortunately it's clouded by a constant need to be annoying to the player as much as possible to create friction and any sort of difficulty. Most of the bosses and dungeons are well designed and there is a lot of fun and engaging moments throughout the entire game. Getting to those sections though is full of questionable design choices of frustration experiences. The main thing that I could just not get over the design of is healing. Probably the worst designed healing system in a game. Hit the enemy to fill a meter to allow your potions to heal up to that meter, get hit by the enemy and lose your meter. I get they are trying to mash in the bloodborne system here but its just a pain in the ass. The weird thing is there are trinkets in the game that allow you to bypass the entirety of what makes some of these systems annoying, but I can't fathom wanting to spend time in a game to find a bunch of trinkets/items to be like "yeh this game is fun now" when it could just be enjoyable from the start.

To me, it feels like the the game is not respecting my time. The majority of the time playing the game is sludging through the same level or boss over and over and over again, repeating the same content again and again, with long drawn out stretches of times just walking to wherever you you died last. It's like a walking simulator 2/3 of the time, with gameplay happening in short intervals in between the walking. I can't recommend this game sadly

ОТ СОЗДАТЕЛЕЙ АССЕТФЛИПНОГО РЫЦАРЯ КОМБИНАЦИЯ ХУДШИХ МОМЕНТОВ КАСТЕЛЬВАНИИ С ЗЕЛЬДОЙ И ПО ПРИКОЛУ ДОБАВЛЕННАЯ ПОТЕРЯ РЕСУРСОВ ИЗ СОЛСОВ ПОТОМУ ЧТО ИДИ ТЫ НАXУЙ ПРОСТО АХАХАХАХАХ нокбеки по поводу и без ☑ дырки в которые можно упасть ☑ неповоротливая мышь водолаз ☑ огромный дилей перед нырком ☑ полное отсутствие информативной карты в мире где очень легко о чем-то забыть ☑ моя порванная срaка ☑ я продолжу потихоньку хавать кактус но префом игра заслуживает всего плохого

What an absolute disappointment. If you want brutally unfair game design that feels actively malicious at times then this'll be enjoyable for you, after all it has the same design principals as kaizo romhacks of Mario World. I tried so damn hard to enjoy this game, but for every cute bit of animation and characterization, every silly pun and charming bit of dialog, there's 10 enemies designed to be as annoying as possible to deal with, and 5 area's crammed full of them. I played with the mace, as I found it was quick while giving me the range I wanted while also being zippy and quick enough. After fixing two spark generators and getting to the end of Septemburg I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gave up. Let me tell you why. After a gruelling segment dealing with poorly explained lightning mechanics and a wind hazard (everyone's favourite, she said sarcastically), and having to do it multiple times due to poor checkpoint placement, I got ambushed by the area's boss enemy, a chaser style enemy that hit's hard, is constantly on your ass, and can grab you out of the ground. If you're cornered by him, I'd say it's a 50/50 chance he just grabs you and throws you into a wall for massive damage, punishing you for trying to not take damage. Finally I pass through the unfair windy maze filled with enemies knocking me around that I can't focus on, because on top of the wind every few seconds I'm at risk of being zapped by lightening, doubly on top of being chased by a big bad, and I'm ushered into an arena. With barely of my health left over, no plasma to heal myself with, and a generally exhausted attitude from the entireity of the past area, I'm faced with a boss I have to learn and then defeat. it checkpointed me before the chase segment leading into the boss, meaning no matter what unless I did it perfectly, I'd be at a disadvantage. I gave up at that point. So much of the design in this game feels poorly considered at best and actively malicious and mocking at worst. Why take damage for not only getting hit, but for falling into the pit you were knocked into? Why have surprise bosses you aren't able to prepare for that end up gobbling up your pretty valuable currency? Why have screaming turnip enemies that you can't damage until they're up and knocking you off the narrow ledge they were placed on? Why is it that when you find a new weapon, you're forced to use it until you can find a checkpoint to swap it at? Why any of this? I expected far better from the studio that brought us Shovel Knight, as that game comparatively is as tightly designed as a Swiss watch. Where Shovel Knight was a challenge that encouraged you to learn it's innerworkings and adapt to meet the challenge, cheering you on as you got better and better, Mina the Hollower feels as if it's actively laughing at you and expecting you to just suck it up and get better. It's unfair, unbalanced, dickish design, and it should be advertised as such so you don't end up expecting something more in line with Yacht Club Games' previous works. Lastly I'll list some things I do enjoy about the game, just to add some sugar to this bitter bitter bitter review. The sprite art is gorgeous as expected, animations lovely while also being good at telegraphing attacks, though it could do that more effectively in certain enemies. The movement is fun and clearly has a high skill ceiling, however it really is a shame you can't burrow again immediately after surfacing, I understand if it's a matter of balancing however dolphin diving would've been really nice. The combat, when it isn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you over and forcing you to deal with stiff and precise platforming along with it, can be really fun. With the weapon I had it can lead to some bouncy dances as you bob and weave under and around projectiles and the boss itself, wailing on it when you spot and opening, and worming away to heal just in time, it's just a shame that some bosses seem to punish my particular playstyle. The secondary weapons are really interesting, harkening back to the NES Castlevania game's in their nature, however Shovel Knight's looming shadow makes me wish they were less disposable. And lastly, as stated before, the dialog is really great, even better than anything in Shovel Knight. I'm usually the kind of lady to read a little but mostly ignore flavour text so I can get to the gameplay quicker, but I found myself actively going out of my way to read whatever these little animals had to say. All in all, this was a massive disappointment. Most of my issues could likely be fixed in a balancing patch but that doesn't change the fact that the game released like this, with no warning of it's Rayman 1 esque dickish design. I wish so badly I could like Mina the Hollower, but as it stands it's just an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I really can't bring myself to touch. To reiterate the start of my review; if you like kaizo romhacks, or putting up with flawed game design, or enjoy games like the aformentioned Rayman or other games like darksouls, where the point is to punish you relentlessly for anything, then Mina the Hollower should be good for you. Otherwise save yourself the $20.

This genre of games which rely on being as annoying as possible instead of actually being well designed can't go away sooner. And I'm not talking about any souls (or metroidvania) games, i love those, because you actually had to learn patterns and the reward and feeling you got after you defeated a boss was unmatched. Here, atleast till the bosses (5 i think) I fought, there is no pattern, no strategy. Just spam X and eventually they will die (they didn't seem to have that much health). I beat whatever bosses I fought in few tries, and it didn't really feel i did something, as none of them were the least bit challenging / rewarding. And this is not even about bosses, every aspect of the game is just made to annoy the player and waste their time. At no point in playing any other game in similar vein did i feel this annoyed. Also, the 'old-schoolism' of this game is a little too heavy handed. The colors overall are ugly and awful, the perspective is difficult to figure out at times. Same thing with combat. 8 directional instead of 4 direction combat would have solved probably most of my annoyances with it, especially because the enemies move in such a randomized way, it is difficult to gauge where they would be, so you can correctly position yourself. Overall, i think the game at its best is just ok, but it would've been so much better if they didn't stack up as many annoying mechanics as possible as the game went on. My score is the the same as the variation of the word 'annoy' (not counting this one), i used in this review-> 5/10.

I can't stand this game. It's incredibly annoying to play, it feels like a constant ice level which is ironic because there's a literal ice level which honestly wasn't that bad. Enemy hitboxes feel like they make no sense whatsoever, it's incredibly easy to get lost and good luck remembering the exact 20+ screens you went through to find the 1 single person who can tell you what to do next. Maybe an hour or so before I just gave up tonight I turned on some of the "make the game less ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" modifiers so I've done like 3 bosses or so that I don't have achievements for. I can never recommend this game when stuff like Minish Cap exists, I can literally just play through a randomizer of that game within a day fairly easily and actually enjoy my time. Mina just feels like "we made the game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but it's fine because we can just call it a Soulslike and now people will ride our ♥♥♥♥ so hard til the end of time". I have had basically zero enjoyment the entire time I've played this game and the majority of the time I played today was worse than the first time I tried it. I wanted to like this because a friend of mine gave it to me but I can't stand it. The best part is that apparently there *IS* a map but it's in some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arbitrary location and you don't just carry it around like every other ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game in existence. Actually ♥♥♥♥ this game man