Mina the Hollower Reviews
Yacht Club Games have once again hit it out of the park. While Mina the Hollower’s influences are readily apparent, its gameplay features enough flourishes to stand out from the crowd of nostalgia-driven games that have emerged in the years since their splendid maiden voyage with Shovel Knight. Though the game’s story doesn’t quite live up to everything else in the game, the sense of adventure the experience provides makes up for it, leaving you to handle Tenebrous Isle as you see fit. It manages to capture what made the 8 and 16 bit eras of gaming so captivating, willingly pushing forward with its inventive and distinct ideas for dungeons and areas even with the occasional jaggedness that sometimes accompanies sticking with a particular idea or gimmick. All the while, it doesn’t feel like it depends on nostalgia to succeed, as it still feels fresh, taking the right lessons we’ve learned in the past few decades of game design, to combine the best of old and new into something absolutely worth playing for itself.
Mina the Hollower is yet another testament to the talent of Yacht Club Games. By skillfully blending the 8-bit aesthetics of the 1990s with the ruthless action and management mechanics typical of Souls-like games, the team has crafted a punishing, captivating, and deep adventure. Despite a difficulty curve that spares no one, the rock-solid combat system, excellent technical fluidity, and masterful art direction make Mina’s journey a memorable experience that comes highly recommended for lovers of challenges or classics.
Review in Italian | Read full review
If you're a Zelda fan and want a classic adventure, play Mina the Hollower! If you're a Castlevania fan and miss the "unique" atmosphere of the classic games, play Mina the Hollower! If you are... OH, YOU GET IT, PLAY MINA THE HOLLOWER!
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Mina the Hollower is the perfect example of a game with a retro look but modern feel. With fluid combat and snappy controls making for an enjoyable and inventive combat loop, this game became a favorite.. Trying to learn each puzzle and find every secret this great game had for me was well worth my time.
Everything the game sets out to do, it executes with an impressive level of quality. It's a beautiful game, extremely enjoyable to play, with charismatic characters, fun missions, challenging and satisfying combat, and constantly rewarding exploration.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Mina the Hollower is an amazing adventure. It pays homage to different types of horror movie monsters, and like a good horror movie, you don’t realize it’s multi-layered on the first viewing. This humble looking game embodies the spirit of the genre with its robust atmosphere, bosses, creatures, and puzzles.
Yacht Club has exceeded all my expectations. You can add Mina the Hollower to this generation and this year’s list of modern classics.
Mina the Hollower is a glorious modern-meets retro affair with oodles of amazing ideas, almost all of which coming together to offer a fluid and fun experience focused on freedom. Admittedly, some of the limitations of the retro-inspired top-down 2D approach do lead to clunky, imprecise platforming and cheap deaths. But all in all, this is a glorious continuation of indie excellence from the Shovel Knight Devs.
Mina the Hollower is simply a blast to play and is another success by Yacht Club Games that will make anyone who plays it ask for more of this darker world they’ve created.
After Shovel Knight, the new game from Yacht Club applies a similar approach of modernizing the past to create one of the best action RPGs of recent years.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Many will surely compare this title to classic Zelda games or FromSoftware titles like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but Mina the Hollower is much more than that. This fantastic game has its own unique personality and a playable charm that goes beyond its open world and difficulty. Furthermore, it understands, like few others, the satisfaction of discovering a well-hidden secret.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Yacht Club Games' highly anticipated follow-up to Shovel Knight can be a lot of fun and positively infuriating as well.
Over a decade on from Shovel Knight, Yacht Club Games has returned in full form. Mina the Hollower is a joyously ambitious modern take on classic action-adventure games, blending carefully executed mechanics with a world that isn’t afraid to bite back, making for an experience that continuously empowers the player and rewards curiosity at every turn.
Is Mina The Hollower better than Shovel Knight? Yacht Club Games seems to think so because In their words “Mina is the biggest and best game we’ve ever made...we squeezed every good idea we had into it." After finishing, I agree. The combination of platforming, combat and its unique burrowing mechanic create an action-adventure that doesn't play like anything else. The learning curve is steep because the game doesn’t hold your hand, which might push away some and turning on the spark generators, which is a recurring mechanic each biome lacks precision like the rest of the game but if you have any affinity for classic adventure games like Zelda, then Mina is a must because Yacht Club have done it again.
There is a timeless feel to this game, with its homage to games from yesteryear, while also pushing the boundaries of what retro enthusiasts expect from titles that look like this.
Mina the Hollower is fascinating on many levels. Its world is captivating, with details everywhere, and challenges that flourish in both movement and melee combat. Given the arsenal of weapons and gadgets, which can drastically alter how the player controls the protagonist, and the non-linear progression, the replay value is immense and should certainly make this title another gem from Yacht Club Games.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Mina the Hollower delivers a retro-inspired adventure packed with rewarding exploration, stylish pixel art, and a standout soundtrack. While its punishing difficulty may frustrate some players, the flexible Modifier system and massive amount of content make it a journey worth digging into more than once.
I knew this was going to be a good game, considering its dev team’s track record, but even then, Mina the Hollower surpassed my expectations. It is a bonafide masterpiece of a game. Not only does it pay homage to the Game Boy era of Zelda, I’d go as far as to say that it surpasses its main source of inspiration. It’s colorful, it’s charming, it’s incredibly well-written, well-designed, with a great combat system and a dense world that just begs for you to explore every single corner.
Mina the Hollower pulls the gameplay right out of the Game Boy Color-era of action adventure games and mixes it with a bunch of modern mechanics to produce another instant, retro-inspired classic. Endearing and often hilarious characters, great music, and even greater puzzle-and-platforming based exploration overshadow some wonky difficulty hiccups and a flat heroine.
Mina the Hollower takes the best of retro gaming and elevates it to the next level, delivering an incredibly fun, challenging, and entertaining experience that lasts dozens of hours. It breathes charisma and originality in every single pixel, making it one of the best titles of the year and an instant classic.
Review in Spanish | Read full review