Mina the Hollower

Recommending it but be warned the game can be incredibly frustrating. I'm going to start with some complaints but I promise I do actually enjoy the game and don't need to "git gud."
People will defend the game's difficulty but there are a lot of design choices around the combat that just outright confuse me. You can jump over some attacks, you can burrow some attacks, you can deflect some attacks back, but there's no indication on any attacks which way you're supposed to avoid the damage. It seems like trial and error. Some enemies fly, and you have to jump and attack them, but because they're positioned over a dozen pitfalls you have to wait and hope they fly near your direction so you can kill them, otherwise you'll just get hit and fall in to a pit. You can only attack on a grid, but some enemies fly around you off the grid and shoot projectiles at you. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to deal with those enemies except attack in a direction and pray. The bosses are great, but it's a bit silly how every boss I've fought so far was easier than some of the standard enemies. I don't know if it was my weapon choice (the daggers) or what, because it's not like I can experiment with the other weapons without spending thousands of bones. It's hard to justify spending thousands of bones on weapons when I don't know if I'll enjoy them and there's other things that ALSO cost thousands of bones. I'm sure I'll be rolling in calcium eventually, but it is a pain point at the moment.
Sidearms are super good, but I feel like they don't hand them out nearly often enough and the fact that you completely lose them on death sucks. I now have two sidearm slots and they are usually empty. I attack the environment every screen so I'm not sure what my problem is there, I'm open to advice.
Losing your spark on death and then losing all of your bones is annoying. I get it, I know other games do this, but with how tight a lot of the level design is, how brutal the enemy designs and placements are, and how long some of the runbacks can be, it can feel really REALLY bad to die sometimes. Not to mention that bones feel more valuable than when games usually do this because buying things seems very important.
I know that difficult game design can appear spiteful or unfair because the skill ceiling is so far above where you are currently, and over time playing the game you catch up to it, and everything becomes easier and the whole process feels rewarding. This game could end up being like that, but right now I'm just going through a gauntlet of (what feels like) intentionally frustrating level and enemy design to then 1st try a boss in 20 seconds and then leave. Sometimes I get trinkets; those are pretty fun even if some of them seem useless.
I don't think it's comparable to any souls-like and I don't think it does the game justice to describe it like that. It feels like A Link to the Past. Sometimes it feels like an early Castlevania game. Sometimes it feels like Shovel Knight. It has done a good job at being its own thing with plenty of clear inspirations.
The art is great and charming, the music is really good and fits the style, I love exploring, I enjoy the platforming, and the difficulty isn't a problem for me, but sometimes I have to roll my eyes at what diabolical screens they put together. Don't get me wrong, I ENJOY difficult video games, and I'm enjoying this one, I just think there's room for nuance. If the reviews about difficulty are putting you off, I genuinely don't think there's been anything yet that couldn't be conquered by a moderately determined casual player (probably with a hefty dose of annoyance.)
EDIT at 12.8 hours: The skill ceiling is very high and it DOES feel rewarding when you catch up to it. The game feels significantly better with bone ups, shop purchases, trinkets, and more experience in general. You start to alleviate a lot of the problems and frustrations with bones, but they remain in high demand and you need to spend them wisely. Flying enemies are still annoying, but I'm enjoying the game even more than when I wrote the review. Let it grow on you!

As with many critically acclaimed difficult games, the reviews are polarized between "This game is amazing" and "This is completely unfair and bad design". If you enjoy the challenge style of this game, it is outstanding. If you don't, you're probably going to be frustrated.
The devs really go out of their way to design encounters to punish your habits in the way of enemy and hazard placement (think Sen's Fortress in Dark Soul 1). Platforming is often done under pressure and demands a good level of precision. If that intrigues you, and you spend the time to learn the flow of the gameplay, then this will be a very rewarding experience.
Difficulty aside, the exploration/art/vibe are all on point.

Okay, so I have completed the game twice now, collected every item, done pretty much everything I could in terms of stuff to grab.
I still probably have like 60 hours left of doing stuff in this game.
This is easily my GOTY thus far and I have extreme doubts it will be topped. The gameplay is immaculate, I love the art and world, Jake Kaufman OST, cute victorian mouse girl, it's really just perfect.
I wasn't a huge fan of 2D Zelda going into this. I just didn't grow up with it and never found any avenues to change that. Mina has changed that. It's so fascinating that a game largely based on a genre I really have zero interest in is probably one of my new favorite games of all time.
Mina does this fascinating thing where if I wanted something from this game, and I DARED to think it wouldn't have it, the Yacht Club Devs break into my house and spit in my mouth for ever daring to doubt them. Randomizer, hard modifiers, palate swaps, being able to customize your base, etc. It's just so rare to play a game nowadays where you can tell the team behind it ALSO thought about the thing you wanted and wanted it while playing their own game, and put it in.
I think the absolute best thing about Mina is obviously the level design. It is actual witchcraft. I have zero idea how you create what is effectively an open world that so effortlessly guides and teaches the player while letting the them feel they're doing it all on their own with no help. Like this is level design so good it should be studied in school. It's a world that's also incredibly dense and fun to explore, while still being pretty huge. It's just so fascinating how the team has created a world that is so vast and also so speed-runnable. It's tight as ♥♥♥♥.
Minor things
- I like how the animal characters act like animals. Obviously Mina digs around in the ground as her main ability. There is a moment in the game in which mouse traps are laid around to stop Mina and she lets out this horrible incredibly sad heart-wrenching bit-crushed shriek if it snaps on her and it is so funny. There's also an enemy later in the game where they just grab Mina in their mouth and shake her around like a dog toy.
- I like that Mina is an actual character. Not necessarily in an depth one, but she has a personality and ideals and I feel like I'm playing as MINA the whole game, not as myself as many other games often feel.
-I like the mirrors, I wish you could also make Mina do different poses along with the facial expressions. Give me a photo mode DLC.
Nitpicks
- The story and world was so fun and cute I was sad it didn't feel like there was enough of it. I think more character interaction and dialogue from Mina especially would have made me love the game even more.
- Some side quests and achievements are a little annoying and unintuitive. They feel less like challenges and more like; "Do this random ass thing I thought of during my lunch break." I wish the feats especially more accurately represented mastery of a weapon or sidearm.
- I wish there was something fun you could do with spare bones. Not 100% sure what, but on my new game+ run I had literally tens of thousands of them and they were useless which was sad.
- More people should have called her "Meens".
I also wanted to give a PERSONAL NOTE to a lot of the negative reviews I've seen.
Comparisons are bad, you're hampering your enjoyment of your own accord. This is not a straight up 2D Zelda, and it's not a straight up soulslike either, it's also more than just a mashup of the two. Mina is it's own, fresh, game. I wish people would realize this.
Anyways sorry for the slightly disjointed review. I wanted to blab about this game a bit because I'm obsessed.
9.8/10
Give me a Mina amibo
Give me DLC

What a videogame should and shouldn't be
Mina The Hollower starts very, very rough. The game has no intention of holding your hand at first and on the contrary it immediately throws at you some of the most annoying enemies in the whole game, even overpowered for being in the first area. Chances are the weapon you chose at the start still doesn't click very well and you're struggling understanding some of the mechanics about Mina's movement. Maybe this was the devs intention or maybe the start is just not well balanced but, to put it simply, you must endure and get through it.
Mina the Hollower is a testament that top-down 2D platformers have still much, much more to say. The devs created a special game that, albeit a bit slowly, opens up beautifully and shows just how full of surprises it is.
- Thanks to 5 weapons to choose from the combat is diversified well enough. You'll feel the need to have a dash or roll at first but this game isn't called The Hollower for nothing, you need to hollow in order to evade and it's a quite original mechanic implemented cleverly, after a bit of practice you'll pass more time underground than not.
- Hollowing, as stated above, is well implemented and used in both combat and exploration in many ways. As a mechanic it's a breath of fresh air.
- Exploration is the best element of the game, almost every screen in the game has an hidden secret and while some are obvious you'll be surprised to come back later to a screen and see what you have missed. Although the game is very reminiscent of old GB Zelda games it has no puzzles in it, you'll just need good observation and... reading skill to find secrets.
- The game has a myriad of... extra things to do. They're not all exactly miniquests but just errands and stuff you'll occasionally find yourself doing. They're blended with the world very naturally, you'll not need to go out of your way and do things like backtracking to complete them.
- Trinkets and Side-arms. The game has 60 trinkets and a dozen of side-arms to find. Some of them even change Mina gameplay and they're necessary to find some secrets. They add a nice extra layer of depth to the game, although I wish side-arms would be easier to find and use at all times.
Almost only praise for the game so let's address the elephant in the room, at least for me. Although I loved the exploration the game has its fair share of annoyingly designed screens which seem to have been made only to be... surprise surprise, annoying. It's mostly a combination of deadly pits + cheap enemy placement + environment hazard which all work out against you and you don't have much room for error, since the space you can move on is very limited. These screens always felt a bit overturned over the course of the game for me, like it was more a design problem rather than a skill issue on my part. Sometime they even reminded me of Dark Souls 2 infamous enemy placement (I like DS2, do not come in my DMs please), which has always felt unfair to me. This is probably the only weak point in the game for me.
Overall, at least until you master the combat and the movement and get enough upgrades, this game at first can be a tough cookie to face and if you're not eager for a challenge maybe consider carefully before buying it.
For every other veteran player willingly to put in the effort, this is almost a no brainer, Mina the Hollower will become a classic for most.

I tend to swing positive on reviews when I find some things to criticize.
I don't find difficulty to be a turn off for a game, but I think there's some things to be said.
I think the advertising for this game kind of leans into Legend of Zelda but it's mostly a Castlevania game with an overworld map in terms of design and difficulty. I also think that games with so many options for playstyle can be hard to balance for developers, and they need to walk a fine line as to what they feel appropriate strategies are when approaching the game. Mina fails rather explicitly in onboarding the player to it's experience, and really enjoys smacking the player in rather malicious ways in order to teach them.
A healthy way to look at enemy design is introducing an enemy (or several of the same type) in a single room and let the player learn how to deal with it and then steadily introduce them into the pool of challenges that the player might face.
Instead what you often get are extremely cramped spaces with mixes of several enemies, a new enemy, or sometimes even 2-3 new enemies in a single room and just sort of tells you to deal with it. The problem in this game are not the enemies, but both the placement and encounter design.
There's a lot of love put into this game, but you really have to be in the right mindset for it.

Link's Awakening DX, Dark Souls and Castlevania had a baby and it is magnificent.

A wonderful and charming metroidvania-type game that I'll most definitely come back to for a NG+ in the future, but one that nevertheless does have some glaring flaws.
First, the good. The music and art are absolutely fantastic. Immaculate pixel art, world design, and aesthetics, and a soundtrack by Jake Kaufman that's just perfect. The world itself feels vast and infinitely stuffed with secrets to the point of being almost overwhelming (in a good way). The gameplay is, in general, perfectly acceptable for something like this. The platforming is intuitive, if often very difficult, and the combat can take some getting used to, but there's nothing too egregious in the core mechanics.
And now, the bad. Okay, sorry, I know there's like six paragraphs of "the bad" compared to the single one up there for the good, but I swear this game is like an 8/10 overall, I just yap a lot about stuff I'm critical of.
Anyways... Losing your currency and XP upon consecutive deaths remains a mechanic that really just never feels like it needs to be in a game, and almost feels more like an obligatory carry-over from Shovel Knight than something implemented with real strategic intent. It's too punishing in the early game and almost comically trivial in the late game, masterfully failing at both points in progression.
Next, the secondary weapon system is, quite frankly, bafflingly unsatisfying. You initially lose your secondary on death, and a new one can only be recovered from breakable objects spread all over the map. Some regions have specific weapons that may be found exclusively in that part of the map, and very rarely elsewhere. This starts out as frustratingly intrusive (especially if you lose a good weapon after a loss and can't get it back easily!) and promptly drops right off into trivial again once you purchase the upgrades that allow you to save them across lives. This solves most of the frustration, but it still doesn't let you pick and choose new secondaries on the fly. In the best-case scenario, you might be able to have two out of the 12+ secondaries on hand at any given time, and if you want a different one, you need to trudge across the map AND swap out one of your two to replace it. Why this wasn't just made into a menu of equippable side-weapons like Silksong's tool system is beyond me.
...I am aware that there's a ton of accessibility options to tweak a bunch of that aforementioned stuff, but I was turned off from using them upon realizing they disable achievements. I mean, I get it, you want people to have some way to show they beat the game "the right way"- but why market the game on how intricately customizable it is for different skill levels if you still punish people for making the game more accessible for them? I know, it's a little extreme to say disabling achievements is a "punishment", but like... It's still a very tangible thing that will make a lot of players avoid the modifiers.
Lastly, and oddly maybe my biggest disappointment with the game, is that Mina herself just... really isn't a character. She's a fine hero for the game's purposes, but alas, she walks this line between being more talkative than a silent protagonist and way too quiet for a regular protagonist and it simply doesn't mesh well with the narrative and world. Maybe 90% of NPCS are just there for Mina to quietly lend an ear to without a word in response, and aside from the intro sequences, she barely even says a word during story-relevant periods until the very end of the game! You really get the sense the story is just kind of happening around her, and she's going along with it until the very finish.
The game does an absolutely excellent job of cluing the player in to what's going on in its narrative, but unfortunately, the player will likely figure it out about ten hours before Mina does, and watching her gormlessly plod through the island's regions with nary a remark to be found to indicate she's wising up on everything going on around her is underwhelming at best and irritating at worst. The very sparse times she does get to talk are great! It'd legitimately be wonderful to get a little bit more inner dialogue from her, or at the very least more plot-relevant cutscenes where she gets to exist as more than a vessel for player inputs, but I guess that's a lot to ask for a game with non-linear progression like this one.
In short... I had a lot of fun with this game, but it could use some work. I'm hoping that maybe a future update or DLC or something might help relieve a few of these things. If you like exploration and bashing stuff with a mace as a little mouse thing then you'll probably also enjoy it, but maybe try it with the modifiers if you can stomach the loss of achievements.