Comment on Mina The Hollower Is Now Metacritic's Highest-Rated Game Of 2026
popcar2@piefed.ca 12 hours ago
I’ve played around 7 hours since release, it’s really good! It’s literally Castlevania x Zelda, taking so much inspiration from both for its mechanics and themes. The art and music is just chef’s kiss. Everything about the game is full of charm.
Fair warning though, the game is pretty tough. Not “NES Castlevania” levels of hard, but you will die a lot. The game has a ton of modifiers that can make the game easier if you need them though. In fact, it has a ton of modifiers that can even make the game harder for challenge runs or wackier modifiers for future playthroughs. So cool. I’ll definitely be playing through again once I’m done with it.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 6 hours ago
The beginning is especially tough, when you don’t have a ton of options yet and every mistake is punished quite harshly.
The Castlevania inspiration is definitely there in the fact that Mina is kind of slow, her weapons have very constrained damage areas (while some enemies have very annoying move patterns) and every miscalculated attack or jump locks you into a dangerous move. Dodging in general is not easy.
Once you get used to it, it’s great though. After a first game in which I died and lost exp way too many times, I just tried restarting from the beginning. I almost breezed through the parts that gave me so much trouble, didn’t drop any bone for a while and levelled up a lot before reaching the same point.