Mina the Hollower

Mina the Hollower is like a mix between a GBC Zelda game and Bloodborne. It successfully evoked the mood and vibe of that era of games, where everything was kind of weird and disjointed. The world is populated with characters who all look like they're from different worlds and the game never acknowledged it. It beautifully rides the line between light hearted and at times, disturbing. The game is incredibly satisfying to play. Mina and most of her enemies most in the cardinal directions and attacks are simple and telegraphed, but burrowing and trinkets make it MUCH deeper than what you might expect from a game like this. Trinkets especially essentially allow you to tackle every problem in many different ways, some combinations just break the game wide open or allow you to completely cheese some challenges. It's almost like am immersive sim in that regard, or some of the more weird dark souls builds. The world is masterfully crafted. Each area is tightly packed with secrets, puzzles and challenging but fair combat. It's just so incredibly dense and cohesive. Many areas will eventually interconnect with hidden shortcuts and pathways which make is easy to get around without making the world feel small. The game suffers from a very uneven difficulty curve. In the first dungeon is the only time I actually lost bones (this game's equivalent of souls or blood echoes), until the final boss but the bones stopped mattering by that point. But I guess this will be very subjective, I'm a god gamer myself so often I'll find games easier than most other people. The story is interesting, I feel like it had a lot more potential than it realised. I really didn't care about it through most of the game and then the ending I loved so much conceptually this it just made me sad that I didn't care about it much. Great game overall, I want to replay Shovel Knight now ...