having a really good time with mina the hollower. i like how exploration feels. game looks gorgeous. the hammer has a high skill floor but starts to feel really satisfying after an hour or two. will probably have more to say when i get further in but i already recommend it. it’s definitely challenging/full of friction in a way that shovel knight was not. much better showing imo.
Something real wayforwardian about mina so far. Tying two of the core mechanics to the same button Sure Is A Choice and I’d love to play a modern ‘retro inspired’ game without any of these studios attempts at dialogue but it’s satiated the bitterness of my link’s awakening save file locking itself by about 30% so I’ll give it that (would like some more environment variety. Like, a LOT more environment variety).
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one thing mina and silksong have in common is making me say swamp levels are the retromodern version of sewer levels and i am not fond of them
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I’ve played a bit of Mina the Hollower too. I went for the crypt level first. There’s a side quest in there that seems to operate on Dark Souls principles – as you progress through the dungeon, you run into a weirdo NPC now and then. Every time you see him, he burrows one level further down into the dungeon. Some of the places you find him are out of the way side paths. If you find him in each location, then toward the end of the dungeon you fight him as a miniboss to get a trinket. None of this is highlighted in the UI or anything, you just have to intuit what’s happening.
I hope the rest of the game’s side quests work this way. Though this quest didn’t announce itself in any way, it wasn’t too obscure either. I bet most players will follow it to the end. I didn’t have to just show up at totally arbitrary locations far across the world at specific times, as you must in some souls game quests. It made the world feel a bit more mysterious and active, but it also didn’t stress me out or compel me to look up a guide. It’ll be nice if this game can walk that fine line with the rest of its side quests.
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When I got a little way into the swamp I thought I’d encountered a glitch because I couldn’t seem to go anywhere. But I just hadn’t yet learned a mechanic that as far as I know the game doesn’t explicitly teach you (that you can jump onto deep water and burrow a little).
Any mention of video game swamps now makes me think of this:
One aspect of Mina that I like is the way things are hidden all over the place.
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This is the best part of the game for me so far. There are secrets everywhere and they’re telegraphed in all sorts of different ways. There’s a real variety to them that keeps things fresh.
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I smell a sucks or does it thread forming…
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it’s entirely Adequate, a naked expression of its influences executed with competence but it’s pure chicken soup
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That’s where I’m at with it too so far. Waiting to see whether it’ll surprise me. There are a few neat little flourishes I’ve run into so far that make me hope so, like what happens when you look into a mirror.
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i picked up Mina the Hollower as a kind of foil to Dragon Quest Monsters (somehow this is how they sit in my mind) and my feelings so far are pretty mixed
i think the way the game started out was really strong. it’s like, oh, neat, it’s a Link’s Awakening Castlevania action RPG, what a fun mix of ideas.
but then all of a sudden i find myself playing a Souls game. i feel genuinely lost at the moment, and i’m kind of just…working my way around the areas i can reach outside of the town, but it feels totally unclear to me what i’m supposed to be doing. i also find the enemies don’t seem indicative to me of where i should be. on one path, i meet three nights who take 3 to 6 hits each, but then right after them, i meet some enemies that die in 1 to 3 hits.
i really dislike having to worry about souls i mean bones. that they are both the experience system and the money system, and i need to use money to buy keys (and they get more expensive with each purchase) it just…it feels like a weird system to place on top of everything else. somehow in Souls games it works well, but here i just feel annoyed by it; it doesn’t make the game more fun for me.
i also feel like the burrowing system is a little confusing. like why can i burrow under some things but not others? those rotating buzzsaw/spiky things are clearly ON THE SURFACE, so why shouldn’t i be able to go underneath them?
i also assume the game expects me to use the burrowing in enemy encounters, but the fact that i have to jump up first means i kind of need to think multiple seconds ahead, as opposed to reacting to enemy movement as it happens.
i’m only focused on stuff i don’t like so far, in this post. the game is, of course, very charming and visually nice to look at. the music is…fine?
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I felt similarly but eventually it all started clicking and now I really appreciate what they’ve done. Burrowing became second nature at some point and now feels just right. Don’t ask me how or when that happened, it was driving me nuts at first, but good job yacht kids, good job. I chose the hammer and it’s awesome how much it feels like MonHun in 2D, complete with learning curve. I gave the whip a shot and that feels like baby shit, so glad I started on hammer mode, hammers 4 life until I die.
At first the way it’s just a Little Bit of Every Game grated but now it’s whatever, they did a great job of it and it’s not a slavish recreation of any one thing, it is much more of an action game than I would have expected and thank goodness for that, we have had enough lock & key Zelda knockoffs, thank goodness, thank goodness. Like this way fresher than Hollow Knight y’know this is so much better and the combat way more rewarding for me (probably cuz the boss fights have all been so quick so far). I do find playing it fatiguing but that may be cuz of my condition and less to do with the game itself. Glad I can just alt + f4 and pick up exactly where I left off.
I have no clue what the music sounds like cuz I am playing in Crossover and there’s a slight issue with the sound that’s driving me insane so I have the audio turned almost all the way down. It sucks, I think Yacht Club should send me a free key so I can play natively in Mac and fully enjoy the tunes which are surely totally ‘kickin’. I’ll send them one for my game once it’s done in 2042.
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no, no, it’s not you. the game is kind of fatiguing
anyway, good to hear it has clicked for you. i assume it will for me at some point, but my post is mainly in relation to that - the fatigue of playing it.
i chose the whip because i’m a castlevania-head. a vaniahead. a belmontboy
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I find it interesting that this is a big deal when you start out but becomes kind of a non-issue before long. One of several ways the game is somewhat unfriendly to new players. (I found that character in town who robs you pretty annoying initially.)
I think I’m close to the end of the game now. I thought I’d never give up the whip but I later found another weapon that I like better.
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I chose the whip too but I’m thinking I should start new files to check out the other weapons. I read the manual before I started playing and it said the weapons upgrade when you find copies but it didn’t say what the upgrades were so I don’t know if it just makes them more deadly or changes the function somehow.
Starting to think I should have played this on switch instead of PS5 because the low res graphics would look a lot better on a smaller screen.
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The hammer upgrade adds a spinning thrust attack after a charged swing. It’s cool.
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You’ll have a chance to try the other starting weapons as you go along, though it’s a gradual thing.
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gate you are OP feel free to change the title
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I liked Virt’s work on the Crypt of the Necrodancer soundtrack, but his style sucks in a context of a game with downtime and different moods like Shovel Knight or Mina IMO. Playing Mina, I long for a Zelda LA-like soundtrack
I like the rest of the game well enough so far, though I’m going at a glacial pace (only playing along with my kid)
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I like this games name but I’m probably not going to play it. Thank you for reading.
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I beat the crypt level. I liked the upsetting NPC interaction at the end of that.
I like this game but after playing it two days in a row, I’ve found that even using the PS5 accessibility controller isn’t enough to protect my left wrist from danger. I’m going to have to put this one down for a while. The boss fights are too intense! I’ll come back hopefully someday when I’ve healed.
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