GIANT SPOILER WARNING Mina the Hollower is Yacht Club Games's final chance to make a successful game and save the company. Does it live up to it's hype or does it suck mouse cheeks? Let's find out. So, if you don't know, Mina the Hollower is essentially a combination of Zelda and Bloodborne with small platforming elements. It is very heavily combat-focused, with different weapons to choose from, little trinkets you can equip, and a leveling up system. There is so many ways to customize the way you battle enemies and there are some really fun builds you can make to obliterate anything in your path. There is a good amount of enemy variety and the bosses can be really fun. But I didn't mention Bloodborne for no reason. And that's because this game is basically a soulslike experience. It is REALLY, REALLY HARD. And that's why I was hesitant on buying this game. I typically dislike games like this. For example, I sort of hate Hollow Knight: Silksong. I'm sorry. I can play hard games like Cuphead or Celeste whilst really enjoying them, but there is a thin line between "challenging, but fun" and "tedious and frustratingly difficult and annoying". A lot of people think Mina is too hard and sort of falls into that second category, but I disagree with that claim. The runbacks aren't that long, anything can be done with practice, and there are plenty of opportunities to heal and stuff. Plus, this game has an absolute surplus of difficulty settings to adjust basically any aspect of the game to your liking, whether that be harder or easier. I beat it with no modifiers, but I really like how they tried to make this game accessible for people who don't want to get super frustrated. I did get sort of frustrated on some moments of this game, but for a soulslike it really isn't too bad. The game starts out STUPIDLY hard, and once your past that, it's pretty easy until the final parts of the game. The leveling up system is a great progression mechanic, too. However, my one main complaint is that some of these rooms are sort of stupidly designed. Mostly some of the platforming ones. The thing is, this game has pretty decent platforming. Basic, but enjoyable. But when they add the flying enemies to the platforming rooms, it sorta sucks pretty dang bad. Whenever they hit you, they knock you off the platform because you couldn't do anything to them from the distance they were at so you end up falling and restarting the whole room, hoping the enemy doesn't notice you next time. It becomes more lucky than skill-based in some of those parts. But that's really my only issue. In my opinion, the music in this game is good. Does it match up to Shovel Knight's OST? Not even close. But it's decent enough and fits the game. I just typically won't be listening to it on my own time, but I really like "A Sinking Feeling (Loner's Landing)" and "Boss - Baron Lionel". Other than those, I thought the rest of the OST was just good and nothing much more. I also quite like the game's story of the player trying to revive a dying land, but Mina ends up getting betrayed by everybody and she ends up leaving the place worse than when she got there. It's a bad ending, but a realistic one. And the cutscene where the game's NPCs come up one by one to blame the player for their sins throughout the game was really creative and fun. There's even a secret ending if you get through the game without doing any bad stuff where you can skip the entire final dungeon and boss. The game's pixel art is really, really good. They had to work with small amounts of pixels and a limited colors palette, and they did great even with a ton of limitations. The animation is clean and the colors are nice. But I would recommend getting this game on a handheld device like the Switch, because if you look at the game for too long on a big screen it can sorta hurt your eyes. In conclusion, Mina the Hollower is my favorite soulslike and my game of the year. Any problems with it are just small nitpicks and deep down I really want to give this a perfect score because this is such a great title. It's not for everyone, but if you like it, you'll REALLY like it. FINAL SCORE: 9.8/10
