Mina the Hollower Review: Worth the Wait

Overview

Mina the Hollower feels like a direct pull from the late-'80s 8-bit era, but it is not just a nostalgia piece. It is hard, often brutally so, without usually feeling cheap. The adventure follows Mina as she returns to a land she visited ten years earlier, where she and Lionel helped build six Spark Towers that harness a mysterious life-like power called Spark.

The story leans heavily on showing rather than overexplaining. Dialogue and cutscenes hint at older history, hidden motives, and the truth behind Spark, but the central mystery is not especially hard to read. The game does not seem desperate to hide who is good, who is bad, or what is really happening. What helps is Mina herself: she comes across as sharp and tough, not as someone wandering cluelessly through obvious danger.

The main structure is built around reaching and repairing the six Spark Towers. The one real story-and-structure frustration is the final tower, which asks for a lot of backtracking. That sting is softened by how strong the progression feels everywhere else.

What Works

Tight Movement and Burrowing

Mina moves across a 2D overhead plane, and her identity as a Hollower defines both traversal and survival. By jumping with A and then holding A again, she can burrow into most surfaces. That burrow is not just for exploration; it effectively replaces a traditional dodge.

Since B is used for healing, staying alive often means jumping, diving underground, and popping back out as enemies and boss attacks close in. Combat and movement stay mostly consistent from start to finish. The game is not built around constantly unlocking new traversal abilities. Instead, mastery comes from learning how to use the tools Mina already has.

Trinkets Matter More Than New Abilities

Progression leans heavily on trinkets, which can improve movement or provide passive buffs. The standout is the first trinket obtained: a red fairy that appears when Mina gets hit. When Mina stays close enough to it, it transfers increased attack speed to her over time.

That attack speed buff is powerful enough to carry boss fights. With the X-button main weapon boosted, difficult bosses can melt if Mina lands a strong attack string. It is the kind of trinket that can stay equipped from beginning to end without feeling obsolete.

Weapons Have Real Personality

Mina has two attack buttons: X for the main weapon and Y for the sidearm. The available main weapons include a morning star-style chain with a spiked ball, dual daggers, a large hammer, and the blaster.

The morning star works well for much of the game, but the blaster becomes a late-game favorite. It has two modes: one fires up to eight shots that bounce off most surfaces and hit enemies, while the other is a melee mode used to reload. That creates a satisfying give-and-take rhythm between ranged pressure and close-range commitment.

Healing Rewards Aggression

The healing system is one of Mina the Hollower's smartest twists. Underlabs act as checkpoints, fully healing Mina and restoring healing vials. The vials themselves do not simply refill missing health for free, though.

When Mina hits enemies, she gains plasma. That plasma fills the empty portion of her health bar after taking damage. A vial only restores as much health as there is plasma available. If half the health bar is missing but Mina has barely attacked, healing does very little. To heal properly, she has to fight aggressively enough to build plasma first.

The result is a system that echoes the aggressive spirit of Bloodborne without copying it directly. It is not about hitting enemies to instantly heal back damage; it is about hitting enemies so healing can function at all.

Boss Wins Feel Earned

The difficulty can be extreme. Bosses may take twenty or thirty attempts before the rhythm clicks. Even then, victories rarely feel like they came from overleveling or lucky damage. The game is at its best when a boss finally falls because the patterns have been learned, the safe attack windows are clear, and the timing between offense, burrowing, and healing feels natural.

What Falls Short

Cardinal Direction Combat Can Be Frustrating

Mina fights on a 360-degree plane, but most weapons operate through the four cardinal directions: up, down, left, and right. Attacks must connect with enemy sprites to register. That makes sense mechanically, but it can create rough moments when an enemy appears directly above Mina, the attack is only a pixel or two off, and the enemy's larger swipe connects anyway.

The blaster helps because it can shoot diagonally, and unlocking it late in the first playthrough feels fantastic. Going back to the hammer or whip after that can immediately bring back the frustration of near-miss melee attacks.

The Final Tower Adds Heavy Backtracking

The broader exploration loop is strong, but the final tower stands out as the one major structural issue. It requires a lot of backtracking compared with the rest of the game. The strong traversal, shortcuts, and overall pacing keep it from ruining the experience, but it is the clearest point where the adventure drags.

No Map Means Real Old-School Navigation

Mina the Hollower has no map. Navigation depends on road signs and newspapers after area clears, which offer hints about where to go and how to get there. The main city, Osex, branches out toward the rest of the world, with paths hidden in every direction.

That old-school commitment can be rewarding, but it also takes adjustment. Tiny paths, burrowable routes, and breakable passages are easy to miss if your brain is used to modern maps, waypoints, and obvious markers. Getting from the first major area back toward the city and out to other regions can take hours while the world layout starts to settle in.

Challenge, Assists, and New Game Plus

Standard difficulty with no assists is already extremely demanding. Mina the Hollower ranks among the hardest games in recent memory, and the death count can climb fast. A first playthrough can run around twenty hours, with some of that time spent lost or figuring out where to go.

Assists can make the game easier, and some options can even make it stranger or harder. God mode is available for players who want it. The easier assists appear to disable achievements or trophies, which matters because some achievements already look extremely demanding, including one tied to never entering the underlabs.

New Game Plus is a major part of the package. The game can be played through seven times to unlock new modifiers and assists. Levels carry over, but higher New Game Plus runs remove more checkpoints, while many shortcuts still remain available.

Progression and Resources

Mina levels by earning bones, the in-game currency. Bones come from defeating enemies, breaking pots, and digging them up while burrowing. Shops use bones as currency, and hitting certain thresholds allows upgrades to four stats: damage, health, sidearm damage, and the amount of protected bone dust Mina can carry.

Death ties directly into Spark. When Mina dies, a spark either flies into the enemy that killed her or remains in the environment. If she dies while sparkless, all bones are lost. Yellow diamonds provide a safer version of bones that remain protected, and the final upgrade stat determines how much of that bone dust can be held at once.

Because the game is so punishing, lost bones can pile up into the dozens of thousands over a full playthrough. The system adds tension without requiring healing vial grinding, since vials return whenever Mina uses an underlab checkpoint.

Exploration and Secrets

Osex works as the central city, with hidden routes branching out toward every major area. The world is packed with secrets, including entire systems that can be missed on a first run.

One major optional unlock is the train system, which costs 10,000 bones. It allows travel to train stations in each main area, and one station is only accessible by train, so unlocking the system eventually becomes necessary. Areas also contain shortcuts and a healthy number of checkpoints in the base run, making repeated traversal smoother once routes are understood.

Presentation and Performance

The soundtrack is excellent. Each major area has its own catchy MIDI-style music, and the tracks play continuously while exploring. The sound and visuals evoke the Nintendo Entertainment System and Master System era while clearly exceeding what those machines could have produced.

The cutscenes look and animate better than a true NES-style production, but the gameplay visuals stay committed to the old-school look. That dedication supports the atmosphere, even when it makes tiny paths and hidden routes harder to read at first.

Performance appears solid. No major bugs appeared while moving between PC and Xbox during the review period through Steam. The game launches on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC, and the polish shows.

Verdict

Mina the Hollower is well worth the wait. It delivers the feel of classic old-school games while adding modern pacing, smart exploration, tight combat, and flexible assists. It is unbelievably difficult, but also deeply rewarding when its systems click.

At a launch price of $20 and with well over twenty hours of content, it is an easy recommendation for players who want a hard, atmospheric action-adventure that rewards patience, aggression, and careful route learning.