Mina the Hollower

Mina the Hollower is one of those games I respect. I think anyone throwing around 10/10 Perfect scoring may have some blinders on and is very focused on the niche it fills - which is to say it's very good for what it is, but I don't find it revolutionary as far as video games in general. Good, sure. Pinnacle? Nah.

It is hard, yes, but it also comes with selectable modifiers that can make it incredibly easy in the moment-to-moment play. I mean, if you don't care about achievements, you can pop on invulnerability and remove falling in pits and the only real challenge left are the environmental puzzles. There are lots of "lesser" modifiers available too. That makes it about as accessible as you could want.

But there is a certain "difficulty" from the old design sensibilities, too - there is very little direction given on how to do things or where to go. It takes a while to even get a map, and it just lays out where the zones are in relation to one another, no detail of how to get from room to room.

Together, that made it hard to get into for me. Maybe I'm getting too old to have the patience for it, or maybe I'm spoiled by more modern design.

But, with help of some of those cheaty modifiers, I did gain some momentum and got up to the end of the game. It has a charming look and vibe to it, with some dark undercurrents. The Spark generators remind me of FF7's Mako generators in a lot of ways. There are no huge volumes of dialog, but characters get flavorful bits here and there, which can make them memorable even with so little.

The endings... hmm... Pre-spoilers, I will describe them as not entirely satisfying. The "secret" ending requires avoiding acting in a way that is inconceivable for a new player and it's... probably not considered better.

-Ending Spoilers-

So the normal ending involves Mina being accused of a bunch of things, mostly trivial and silly, by the townsfolk so the mayor can cast her out. She has to fight him to shut down the generators, which brings chaos to several zones and a positive future to a couple. She's then chased off the island by the villagers, who kill the one sailor trying to help her and leave her guildmates in a bad situation (though possibly not dead). She escapes and seems to heal Thorne, the ex-marshal revolutionary who was trying to stop the generators from the outset. So that's not catastrophic, the generators stop poisoning the land to allow some places to heal, but a lot of innocent people are hurt or killed. That's an appropriately bittersweet gothic ending (but kind of unsatisfying).

The other ending, which requires being so "sinless" you can't break candles or do almost any side quests offered to you throughout the game, means siding with the mayor, keeping the generators on, and calling it a day. No fanfare, just the knowing that a calamity has probably been kicked down the road.

Certainly, not every story needs a "clean" and unambiguously happy ending. I can appreciate the payoff from a narrative perspective. But it hits emotionally how it hits, and I'm not going to ignore that.

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