Mina the Hollower

The only word I can use to describe this game is frustrating, there's a good game buried beneath intentionally clunky mechanics and terrible slippery handling. The healing system in particular being sore spot for even some of the most die-hard fans of the game, but if I had to pick one mechanic I disliked the most it'd have to be the burrowing system. In a vacuum it takes the place of the games dodge-roll mechanic, and the sprint mechanic, and the long jump, and and and and and. Pretty much everything in this game is in some way tied to using the burrowing mechanic, and it feels horrible. It has a long start-up delay thats hard to get used to, it has excessively reduced friction and strange acceleration, and it takes like 3 entire seconds for mina to jump and start burrowing every single time you want to use it. Despite it being the single most defining feature of the entire game, the game struggles to find any good use for it, at times forgetting it exists for entire areas. In most cases, perhaps for 90% of the entire game, it's functionality could have been entirely replaced by a slightly longer jump, and openable doors. Which begs the question of why exactly this was the hill the game died on, and the game simply doesnt answer that question- its just not that important really. I mentioned earlier the game is very clunky, in the first area of the game you can farm up some smeckles and buy out the shop of accessory slots and accessories that will completely undo these issues. Pretty much everyone who plays will gravitate to the same 4 quality of life accessories that kinda just fix the game. Many players realize this immediately and do this first, which in practice means the game has a 2 hour long grind at the very start to be enjoyable. Compelling stuff. Once you've figured out the systems, the game's only goal is to be as monumentally annoying as possible, enemies are quick and annoying, they do too much damage and the areas are spammed with a kaizo mario level of attack spamming enemies with annoying hitboxes. Since the game expects you to back track a lot, and the boss-runs are some of the longest ive ever seen even when compared to actual retro games, you'll most likely be trying to rush through them many times, but you'll quickly find that your best bet is to slowly crawl through each screen clearing them in an agonizingly tedious process while the map itself tries to bite you or something, whatever area you're in's current stupid mechanic. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing in mina the hollower, there was one constant. I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted the grind to be over, I just wanted to find the next area and stop smashing my head into dead ends, I just wanted this section to be over, I just wanted this entire area to end, I just wanted the boss to die already, I just wanted the tower climb to let me skip it, I just wanted the run back and back tracking to be over. And before long all I wanted was for this game to just finally be over. Can't recommend.

Por ser dos produtores de Shovel knight, acreditei que seria um jogo incrível, e vendo o trailer ainda não mudei de opinião, mas com o tempo acaba ficando cansativo, já lembro que, não ter um mapa nesse jogo atrapalha muito, eu sei que é um saco quando algum jogo te obriga a ficar olhando o mapa toda hora, mas nesse caso faz falta, porque quando se morre, volta um bom pedaço do que você andou e ainda tem que resgatar o seu espólio, e não é difícil de morrer não. Enfim, teria outros defeitos pra falar mas no final das contas é um jogo que não te dá vontade de abrir de novo pra continuar, então estou simplesmente apagando.

Really enjoyed Shovel Knight and was hoping for another great (and challenging) experience. Sadly, I can't say this game hooked me in the initial two hours I played. The game looks great and probably has a great story, but unfortunately the controls and combat left a lot to be desired. I'm not a huge fan of the eight direction movement but locking the attacks to four just four. The early game difficulty felt more mean spirited than earned, with enemies being huge health sponges that also dealt substantial damage consistently. This wouldn't be a huge issue if the movement and dodging felt good but i simply didn't enjoy how slow Mina was. I really wanted to enjoy this game, but I can't see myself playing more of it. If you are one for a quite unfair (or unfun in my eyes) gameplay experience with very minimal build up to the challenge and a lack of responsive controls, this might be a great game for you.

bad design for the sake of retro feel is always something

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 don't wanna lose my money on this, so I'm stopping now, before I lose out on the refund window. If that makes my opinion invalid, go 112% Hollow Knight on Steel Soul mode. Let's talk health. Do you like health? I like health. It's especially good in a soulslike game. So how do we make our health system, specifically how we recover health? Well obviously, it's flask-based, because it's Soulslike. But also, make it a hit-to-heal system, like Bloodborne, except that when you hit enemies, it fills your flask. Alright, not awful, game is fast-paced. Now let's make it so you can't store health- your flask only fills up as much as you have missing health. Uh.. why? Now let's make your flask lose charge when you get hit. Why??? Now let's make your flask count extremely extremely limited, so you can't just burn small healing amounts of healing to preserve your work or you lose one of your very limited heal uses. WHY!?!? You don't get to heal in this game. Every single mistake is permanent, and in a game this precise and this punishing, at this point just have NO healing if your health system is like this!! This has a cascading effect on the rest of the game, because since you can heal, you can obviously afford to take more hits, right? So make the enemies do more damage, have the rooms house more enemies, require precise movement around some attack patterns- all fine things, but it requires some kind of tradeoff, like BEING ABLE TO HEAL YOURSELF!! This is a core system to the game, and it is flawed beyond comprehension- this is the kind of idea an AI would create if I asked it to make a healing system for a fast-paced Soulslike. It's mashing Bloodborne and Souls games together to create this frankenstein abomination of a system Literally one restriction needs to go, and the issue is fixed. If the flask doesn't empty when you get hit, your healing is at least guaranteed even if you make a small mistake while trying to fill the flask. If the flask count isn't restricted, you can use a flask pre-emptively, when you normally wouldn't, to ensure safety and preserve the work you did filling it this much If the flask filling restriction, you can store up good work to come back from a mistake you make later Fix any one of these, and the game solves itself. As it is, this game is a mess, and many small irritations that could easily be overlooked are magnified by how the health system is completely and utterly botched.

I'm not a huge fan of souls games in general as I find that they tend to not respect players time quite frequently, so I'll freely admit that I don't have the muscle memory that folks who have played 300 hours of dark souls have, but MAN is the early game not fun here. I find the timing on the burrow to be kind of punishing and I'm just getting wrecked by regular enemies. I think I made a huge mistake picking the dagger/swords in the beginning as they don't offer nearly the amount of space required to deal with even standard enemies but being punished for picking the "wrong" weapon of the three is just not fun pure and simple. I'm sure most folks will just spout a "git gud" at this but if I die repeatedly in the opening sequence to the point that I just don't want to play anymore, I'd argue that's not great game design. Anyway, hated this experience and wish I could refund this.

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.