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Beat Mina the Hollower! I was very impressed by it at the start, but the closer I got to the end, the more its issues stood out to me. Worth a playthrough if you like action-platformers and/or Fromsoft games. If you just want something slower paced/puzzle oriented like Zelda, this game is not that.

There is a lot to like about the game. The world is incredibly dense with secrets, level design does a great job teaching the player, and the limited screen space is utilized remarkably well. Music is fantastic. The weapons are fun and they do so much with the central digging mechanic.

This isn't criticism but for whatever reason, I was going into this expecting a lot more Zelda influence than there turned out to be. Mina is a very intense action game with platform challenges and linear-ish levels branching from an open hub. Puzzles are basic and more focus is placed on traversal.

Ultimately, my biggest gripe with the game is its very strange difficulty curve. If you just play the game normally and upgrade as you go, you just get SO strong and the dungeons become really easy. It starts off in a really sweet spot with its challenge level but gradually just falls off.

I appreciate the choice of having in-game mechanics you can opt into to make things easier (not the options you can enable, I mean like certain trinkets/upgrades) but even avoiding those, it gets almost mindless at times compared to the deliberate, very intentional play style you need at the start.

The balancing feels far too reliant on player self-selection. I don't like having to police my own play by intentionally forgoing upgrades/doing optional challenges/ignoring stuff/etc on a first playthrough. Again to be clear I don't mean the settings menu with the optional modifiers.