Mina the Hollower

Looks pretty. Has the poor controls of a Game Boy Zelda game with enemies 10x as difficult. If you miss how those games feel, you'll love this one.

Beat the game and have some thoughts: - It is a throwback to the old design structures of tough retro topdown games. I played quite a few of them when I was a kid. The game is genuinely hard in really frustrating and sometimes grindy ways. I'm a kickstarter backer. - The narrative struggles (to put it kindly). The characters feel either really one dimensional, or absurdly stupid. There's a lot of charm to one-off characters that populate the world, but the plot characters fall very short. I think they crafted a pretty cool world but failed to really deliver on it. [spoiler]Mina is real dumb. Like she doesn't derive context clues or stop what she's doing partway through.[/spoiler] - I have big complaints about the ending. [spoiler]I get what they were going for, but it feels so contrived/feelsbad. The normal ending being 'everything sucks and everyone suffers the consequences' is just... a downer. It just destroys a cool world. I think a cooler alternate ending would've been realizing Lionel was bad and being disobedient and trying to stop him.[/spoiler]. - The fast travel could be a lot better, exploring the world feels tedious when you're crossing back across large portions of it. The modifiers system is the saving grace of the game. I'm glad to be able experience the fullness of this game in ~20 hours and glad I'm not spending more time here. I don't have a chip on my shoulder where I need to grind my face and spare time into difficult encounters to assert my gamer-ness. I think this has a lot of Yacht Club charm, but don't care for the writing at all. Some folks will want the difficulty but not me. I think there's other games that better respect your time, so a big skip from me. I don't regret backing, just sad how it turned out.

Just lots of frustrating platforming masquerading as something more interesting. Having jump/dodge on the same button and movement be this sluggish or delayed really just feels like crap.

bit too hard

Can be challenging, but lots of ways to mitigate or change up strats. Overall enjoyed it.

I enjoyed playing this game alot and loved it while it lasted, but it pains me to say I wouldn't recommend it. The especially initial difficulty would be enough to drive away most people, and a great many things don't feel nearly as rewarding as they should be. For some reason, I can't put my finger on why it doesn't keep me coming back the way Shovel Knight does. It might honestly just be me; I used to be able to run Megaman Zero countless times, yet not so much nowadays so don't take my word for it. This isn't to say the game wasn't worth playing at all, I'd say it absolutely was~ The sprite work, level design, music, banter I enjoyed very much. And yet, if it truly was so enjoyable why do I feel so one and done with it...?

I'm going to try to finish it, bc there is a good bit to enjoy here. I'm kind of making it a point to start leaving negative reviews for games like this though. I understand the concept of rising to the challenge, but I'm really tired of devs deliberately making movement inadequate for keeping up with combat and platforming that is asked of you. It's intentionally clunky in the worst way, combat is so close to satisfying and yet, somehow, you never do seem to hit your target even when you're dead on, not to mention getting the character to turn before attacking enemies that love to jump or fly all around you. Plus some just odd decisions. Right off the bat you find that spikes and fire hurt you underground, the former I could see some justification for but really, fire? Or how about I just got to the swamp area, which arriving here was rage inducing enough, but now here I am. I fall into the water in between the little islands and take damage, which makes sense. But how do i get across? Then I accidentally burrow underneath the water......Okay look if the water is deep enough you can fall in and take damage, then why can I burrow under it? And if I can burrow far enough to get under it, please explain how fire hurts you underground. Please. Is is a poison swamp? Seems like it would do tick damage instead of the same falling animation you've been getting whenever you fall in a pit throughout the entire game. If this was done by less competent devs I'd just shrug and chalk it up to inexperience. But these guys know what they're doing, its just more of this git gud ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is ruining games. I love souls and other challenging games, its just the attitude and fake difficulty that is so exhausting, especially these days. I understand there are items that make the game "easier" but thats all beside the point, it doesn't fix the movement tech nor these absurd decisions. It's all deliberately designed to make you rage. It isn't fun. And at a time when we really can't count on AAA industry anymore, indie devs like this should be a breath of fresh air. And yet half the time I'm just left wondering why I still play video games anymore. So disappointing. Go check out minishoot adventures for a similar, if smaller, game from newer devs who aren't padding their game with fake and unnecessary difficulty for the sake of appealing to the git gud crowd.

Totally love playing a game that's designed to be as frustrating as possible. Controls are clunky, gameplay is confusing, every enemy does a million damage to you, and it feels like the game is NOT on my side. Waste of my money and time.