Press B 303: Mina the Hollower - Masterpiece or Misstep?

Mina the Hollower is finally here, and we're still torn on whether it’s a genuine Game of the Year contender or just a frustrating attempt at a 2D Soulslike. This week, we discuss our progress and breaking points in Yacht Club Games' long-awaited, Game Boy inspired adventure.

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00:00 --> 01:04 It's been a week today on. Hello, welcome everybody to another episode of Press me to cancel your favorite retro gaming podcast. This week we're talking about the famous retro game that came out like two weeks ago, Mina the Hollower. It's a game that's been making for quite some time under Yacht Club Games. The guys who made Shovel Knight one of my favorite platforming games. Shovel Knight I think is a game that defines its genre. Mina is more of a top down, Zelda inspired game in a Game Boy graphical style. Does that, is it the same as Shovel Knight? Does it define a genre? Well, we're going to talk about that this week. I'm joined by a panel of experts in the realm of indie games and Dark Souls ish games. Char, how you doing this week?
01:05 --> 01:30 It's been a week. No, it's been good. This has been cool. This is a cool game. I'm excited to talk about this with you guys because this was not something that I was like, I told you at the beginning, I was like, I wasn't waiting for this to come out forever. But I had put it on my fantasy critic for at least the last year and a half and it finally came out and it came out to glowing reviews. So I was like, I gotta pick this shit up because you see it, like you said, it's very Legend of Zelda. So I'm excited to, to dive into this guy.
01:30 --> 01:41 You put on your fantasy critic the year after I had out of mine where I'm like, it should have came out, but it didn't. It came out this year though. The reviews are pretty positive. Speaking of positive, Wolf, how you doing this week?
01:43 --> 01:45 I'm feeling qualified this week.
01:46 --> 01:47 Qualified good.
01:47 --> 01:49 I like it. Great.
01:50 --> 02:49 Okay, so in terms of like we're going to avoid spoilers one because these two guys haven't finished it. So there is something at the ending the game I would like to discuss. Maybe, maybe I'll save it for a Discord chat later on. But we're going to avoid story spoilers and certain mechanical spoilers that are surprises in the game. We don't want to ruin this game for anybody because this kind of game is more about the journey and the exploration and figuring out some stuff. But there are some mechanics I do want to discuss and you know, we're going to start right off on it and how we define this game. It is certainly top down Zelda inspired. It's basically using, I think it's game, the game Boy color palette if I'm not wrong. But it's definitely Game Boy inspired graphics. A lot of the style reminds me of Link's awakening for a lot of folks, but it's blended in with Castlevania influences. But the one thing mechanically, it is definitely not a Zelda is there's people who claim it is a soulslike. Do you guys think Mina the Hollower is. Is a souls, like, to a degree.
02:50 --> 02:52 Okay, great.
02:52 --> 02:55 Moving on. So, okay. So.
02:56 --> 03:06 Okay, so I say to a degree because, you know, usually one of the qualifiers for a souls like is you die and you lose all whatever your currency or.
03:06 --> 03:06 Right.
03:06 --> 03:08 Yeah. Okay.
03:08 --> 03:10 Collected doohickeys.
03:10 --> 03:11 Right.
03:11 --> 03:30 And you have to go recollect them. This game doesn't really do that to you. It's. You have to go collect what are called sparks. And if you don't do that, then you lose all your currency. But if you have the chance to just go spend it all or use it all before you die, you don't lose it. You've used it.
03:30 --> 03:31 Right.
03:31 --> 03:32 So it's fine.
03:32 --> 03:33 So that's.
03:33 --> 03:44 I've had that happen a couple times where I'm like, I'm in a situation where it just sucks. I am not getting these sparks back. I'm gonna go spend all my cash and then just tank it.
03:44 --> 03:50 Yeah. In that. In that sense of the word souls, like. Yes, that it is. It does have that.
03:50 --> 03:51 But.
03:51 --> 04:01 But you are protected. But it. But just like in souls games, you. Your currency is your souls. And just like this, you use your cash to either level up or your bones.
04:01 --> 04:01 Yeah.
04:01 --> 04:06 Go buy items. Yeah. Bone dust, bone shards or whatever. So, okay. She.
04:06 --> 04:07 Sure.
04:07 --> 04:09 I would maybe call it a Soul's Light
04:11 --> 04:11 and that's fine.
04:11 --> 04:14 Making new genres on us. We're going to get the people angry again.
04:14 --> 04:15 Yeah.
04:15 --> 05:09 So here's the thing with. So yes, there is the concept. You collect bones. That is the currency in this game. And the unique thing here. Well, maybe not so unique, is you use the bones to level up your attack, your sub weapon damage, your defense, or you can bank it. But it's very similar to another Zelda game, Zelda 2 on the NES. Right. Where in that game you got XP and you spent your XP to level up and. Or you could save it and level it up later. And that's what meaning let you do. So you have a choice whether you upgrade, upgrade your attack or you bank it for, you know, a defense that you might have done earlier or whatnot. In terms of the death mechanic where you lose your bones, I only ever had that happen twice in the 20 hours I played this Game I died lots. Don't get me wrong. Like the game is hard, but I only ever lost bones twice and it wasn't a huge deal because it was fairly easy to get more currency. Did you guys have an issue where you're losing bones a lot? Was that frustrating for you guys or
05:09 --> 05:26 was it okay at the beginning? I probably lost a few hundred bones twice. I hit a point where I was about to lose 1850 and I hadn't figured out the fact that I could go spend it instead of losing it.
05:26 --> 05:26 Yeah.
05:27 --> 05:56 And so I, I don't remember how I handled it. No. I actually it was this stupid little secret boss fight and the guy was a pain in the ass. But I love. One of the things I love about the non major boss fights is they let you leave the room. So I would go in and try and if it wasn't going well, I'd run right back out, go back over to my hole, jump in, heal, come back out, go try again. Because it was like a room away.
05:57 --> 06:36 Right, right, right. I did, I did. But I was, you know me, I, I Tank, I face Tank. A lot of trying to figure this thing, this, this game out and figure out what we were doing. And, and, but I just, I just thought of it like any other Soulsy type game where I was like, oh, just go get it back. Just go fight the thing. But there was more than enough times that one, the jumping attack, like, like hitting flying enemies was my, my biggest bane at first was trying to land those attacks on things that would fly around. I died from the stupid bats and those pointy tail things that fall on you in the ground.
06:36 --> 06:38 Oh, the owls, I think.
06:38 --> 06:49 Yeah, yeah, those, those. After a little while I, when I, when I started getting used to their existence then I, I stopped losing them. But those, those were just attacking anything. Flying was, was my biggest headache.
06:49 --> 07:31 Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely much like Souls games. It pays to memorize the attack patterns of enemies even if there's not as many obviously as like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. The, the other aspect of this that is very Souls like is the, the healing system or the potion system, which I don't, I don't mind the concept of having flasks to heal yourself. I think that is great. But what annoys me in Mina is you kind of have two health bars in a way. You have your health and as you've taken damage, it goes down. But if you use the potion right away after taking a big chunk of damage, you heal nothing in order to heal properly, you have to either collect yellow flowers or you have to kill enemies to build up your. I forget what they call it, but it's a yellow plasma.
07:31 --> 07:32 It's plasma which I.
07:33 --> 08:05 Which does nothing for you health wise. If you have a whole yellow meter of health, but you only have a sliver red health, you take one hit, you still die. But if you have a full yellow meter, you can use a potion to instantly heal it. So you can't just. If you take a really bad hit, which can happen with some bosses or really bad run of enemies in a particular room, you have. You can't heal right away. You have to build that plasma up. That felt not Souls. Like I don't know if there's other Souls games that have that mechanic or if this is unique to Mina, but that one drove me crazy. I did not like the healing in this at all.
08:05 --> 08:38 You know, bloodborne kind of has that. Where if you. If you get hit by an enemy, you have a. A split amount of time that if you hit the enemy back you will heal up. It's not the. It's not the plasma and sense where you actually get life back. It's like a life stealing technique that you can get some of the stuff back after you've taken damage from another enemy. That's the closest thing I could think of it that in a Souls game that's like that this one is kind of its own. Its own ball game with the having to have plasma to heal up to a certain point. That's. That's kind of a new thing.
08:38 --> 08:39 Okay.
08:39 --> 09:03 Yeah. I'm not the biggest fan of that late game. It's a lot less of an issue than early game. But yeah, early when you're struggling with trying to, you know, avoid getting whacked out of your brains by like the flying monsters that you're just trying your hardest to even hit and you miss all the time.
09:03 --> 09:03 Yeah.
09:04 --> 09:12 Like that's a definite mechanical learning curve there. Now I. I struggle a little, but not nearly as much as I did at the beginning of the game.
09:12 --> 09:12 Yeah.
09:14 --> 09:25 But yeah, with things like that, the. The plasma vial, it's. It's a pain in the neck and there was a trinket I got that made it to where you always heal at least some health.
09:25 --> 09:26 Yeah, I think that's.
09:26 --> 09:52 And at the point I got that like it was like a third of my health bar at that point. So I was like, okay. But that amount never goes up. That. That sum that you heal never increases. So as your health bar gets way bigger, that little bit that you heal gets way smaller. So late game if you're just burning those heels with that thing. And I keep that equipped a lot of the time because it's two extra plasma vials as well.
09:52 --> 10:03 So was one I never took off. I rare. I still have that. I. That's. I will put however many I could find, but that guy is just permanent. I just hold on to that.
10:03 --> 10:18 I've taken it off for a couple of things, depending on the area or boss fight, what other trinkets I need. I do find myself shuffling trinkets, usually partway through a new area and then maybe for harder bosses.
10:19 --> 10:35 So that's a good segue into what the trinkets are in this game. And that's. That's pretty awesome for Mina is you start with one trinket slot, and these are items you can equip that give you a boon of some kind. But you can unlock definitely more trinket slots. I think I end up with five when I finish the game, if I'm not wrong.
10:35 --> 10:41 And I have five now, and I think there's one more that I've seen, and I just can't get to it just yet.
10:42 --> 10:50 So one of the reasons why I like the trinket slots is they don't use any resources. They just take a spot in your inventory and you can use them. There's like 60, I think, in the game. There's a good variety of them.
10:50 --> 10:51 There's a ton.
10:51 --> 10:52 There's a bunch.
10:52 --> 10:52 Yeah.
10:53 --> 11:09 And the great thing is, everything that you may find frustrating in Mina, there's usually a trinket to counteract it. Like, you don't like lava damage. There's a trinket for that. You don't like taking health damage when you fall down a freaking pit every five seconds. There's a trinket for that. You don't like.
11:09 --> 11:12 Yeah. You don't like getting zapped by lightning bolts.
11:12 --> 11:12 Yep.
11:12 --> 11:13 There's a trinket for that.
11:13 --> 11:32 Or even, like we just said with the sparks, the issue of, like, well, I can't get my spark back, I'm screwed. There's a trinket that likes you, lets you regenerate sparks by killing enemies. So there's always a trinket for something. So. And that's. That was really great. There's one where I got. And if you die, you come back to life on the spot. It's a free life. That's like the.
11:32 --> 11:32 Yeah.
11:32 --> 11:34 That one I've never taken off.
11:34 --> 12:04 Yeah. Like, once I got that and once I. And it Was a pain to get, but once I got it, yeah, it never leaves my bar. So there's certain, definitely certain ones that you want to keep. But there's a few that are related to plasma and healing. There's one that I think it. It deploys bombs. If you use a vial I think is what it does. I never really took. Took a slot to use it. But there's some interesting stuff. There's one that makes it so you heal faster. I use that for a while. Because when you use a potion, if you get interrupted during your heal, much like silksong, you get. You get screwed, you get no health back and you take more damage.
12:04 --> 12:04 Right.
12:04 --> 12:19 So there's one that do that. There was one I used for a little bit where you automatically use vials to heal just while you're playing the game. And that was helpful during some pretty chaotic boss fights. So the trinkets are a prequel system. Was there any other trinkets you guys felt like are must haves?
12:23 --> 13:01 There's. Yeah, that I would definitely say the heal faster one is an absolute must have. There's some that I cycle in and out specifically movement based. So there's one that lets you constantly just dive back down. As soon as you pop out, you just hold the jump button and she'll just dive right back in, jump out, dive right back in. That's super useful under certain circumstances. There's also the claws of the wallower which lets you sort of like dig into a wall next to a pit and slide along next to the pit like you're in the ground.
13:02 --> 13:03 Oh, interesting.
13:03 --> 13:25 So that's super handy. I've used the crap out of that. There's the one with the air dash which can be good. But if you're trying to get around a lot and you're. You're also trying to, you know, attack things and do a dive to like slide under something and jump over a pit. You're going to end up accidentally air dashing just trying to prepare for a dive.
13:25 --> 13:25 Right.
13:25 --> 13:36 That screwed me over a ton. The slow fall is great. I. I keep expecting there's going to be one that lets you high jump, but I've not found it yet.
13:38 --> 14:14 I think there is. I don't think I ever using it. The one I used a lot when I got. I got it late is it lets you stay on the ground longer. Because in this game mechanically there's no. At least in the beginning there's no parry or dodging really. Your dodge is digging into the ground and moving away. It's not it's not quite a dodge roll like in the Souls game or Witcher, but it's, it's the best you got. But if you have this thing. Yeah, it's closest thing but when you use this trinket I think it' lung you get more time to stand the ground and get away. And that was invaluable during some certain boss fights, especially ones with screen filling attacks. This let me get away. So that was pretty useful. Char, what about you? What trinkets have you found? Are really great.
14:15 --> 14:32 I love the vials. I'm a big fan of the vial and the, and the like you guys said the life one has been has been quite quite useful. I like like the steady shoes that allow you to to do the water that allow you to go on like you can walk on things a little bit better.
14:33 --> 14:36 Whole ice dungeon. That was nothing because I had those.
14:36 --> 14:41 I probably should have had those equipped for that ice dungeon where I was struggling with the air dash.
14:41 --> 14:42 Yeah.
14:42 --> 15:31 I like the, the flies that you get that, that you get a little protective ring of flies that help in certain areas when you're surrounded by things. I I, I'm like guy that falls falls into something that I'm like this is cool. And I just run with that. And even though there's things that could astronomically benefit me later on in certain areas I'm like nope. I like these three trinkets. That's what I'm running with for the foreseeable future until something else pops up and, and I don't even, I don't even think about this could be useful here. Switch it out. Because I'm like. But I still need blank and blank to come with me. And I really like these shoes. So I'm gonna leave this on. It's there's definitely a learning curve that comes with the trinkets and and, and the amount of them. I was not expecting there to be.
15:31 --> 15:32 Oh yeah.
15:32 --> 15:48 As many trinkets as they they came out with. So it's insane at what what it does to, to change the sh. I like the, the, the life vest too. That one's a pretty good one too. It's like a, the, the water ring that you get or the little what the donut? The little floating.
15:48 --> 15:51 Oh the life. I don't. Is that a trinket? What does that one do?
15:51 --> 15:55 Yeah, there's like a lifesaver one that I think helps you with water. That water level.
15:55 --> 15:59 Like I don't think I got that one. Yeah. But I'm with you on the builds like once you find that.
15:59 --> 16:00 But I never used it.
16:01 --> 16:42 Yeah. Okay, fair. So my thing is you do have five slots. But I always wanted the shoes. I always like the lung for longer burrow time. I had to have the spark for instant recovery. So that's like three, four right there. The other one I used to use a lot was. I can't remember. It's. I can't remember what the name of it is. But the more you attack in a sequence the you get a boost in damage. So the first attack is normal damage. The next one is 1.25. Then 1.5 to 1.75 or something. And then if you miss. Oh yeah, I never used that. So it's great when you're using certain weapons. So like I. I started the game with daggers. There's five weapons in this game. You get to pick. In the beginning of the game you pick either daggers, the whip or the. The hammer.
16:42 --> 16:43 Hammer.
16:43 --> 16:50 I started with the daggers which was rough cuz you have no freaking range of those things. But they attack fast and with this trinket.
16:50 --> 16:53 That's why the flying enemies were such a pain to me.
16:54 --> 17:29 But once you. Once you have this trinket, stabbing repeatedly in a row was wrecking bosses like it was really awesome. And like later on when I got the gun, rapid fire like you have. You have bullets. You have. You have to build up bullets with the gun. So you whack enemies with the club in a diagonal. So that's your diagonal attack. And then when you have your ammo, you can shoot it as a gun. But when you're shooting the eight bullets in a row against bosses from a safe range and they're hitting eight times, it's doing solid damage every single time. So I was kicking the ass of bosses toward the end of the game. But the beginning was rough until I got that trinket. So I guess that kind of segues into like what weapons did you guys find were useful? Like you. So you start with daggers chart. Did you use anything else or. No.
17:30 --> 17:47 I have since switched to the Morning Star. And I really like the Morning Star. The whip. Whatever you want to say. Yeah, I do like the gun. Um, once you. Once you kind of dropped. You should try this and see it. See how it works. I. I dig it. I. I absolutely dug it. And then I realized I. It's good.
17:47 --> 17:47 Both.
17:47 --> 18:04 It's good with the shooting is fantastic and the. And the range on it is really good. But I really like the. The whip. I. I like how far I can hit Things from. And I just got an upgrade to the whip that allows that if it's the distance is further, the enemy takes more damage. It's like it's second stage that you get when you upgrade that weapon.
18:04 --> 18:05 Yeah.
18:05 --> 18:05 So.
18:05 --> 18:17 So I try to get as far back as I can when I attack something and it causes massive damage than something that's close to me. And I honestly have been really cruising once I. Once I got that whip that. It's been a huge changer.
18:18 --> 18:19 Wolf, how about you?
18:19 --> 18:29 I started with the Morning Star and I basically never used anything else except for when I find a weapon and it automatically equips it and then I'm stuck with that for a time.
18:29 --> 18:30 That's the worst.
18:31 --> 18:39 Yeah. I found. I had a point where I found two upgrade two weapon upgrades on the same screen, like in the same secret area.
18:40 --> 18:40 Oh, nice.
18:41 --> 18:41 Okay.
18:41 --> 19:11 And I ended up taking the dagger one second and then all of a sudden, you know, my dagger had its second upgrade. And I don't know what the hell is up with it, but it just wanted to do whatever the hell it wanted to do. She kept like doing jump kicks and shit when I was just trying to walk around where it was getting on my nerves. Like I had to put. It took three attempts to just dive into the. The. The hollow hole to be able to go change the weapon because she kept like just dive bombing away for whatever reason. So I.
19:11 --> 19:12 Okay, strange.
19:12 --> 19:18 So the one experience with the daggers was limited and that I absolutely hate. So the daggers.
19:18 --> 19:50 So the one. The first upgrade, you get this and the first upgrade actually once you start using it is excellent because it lets you charge forward and it kind of homes in on the enemies. So that's in. When you're in this game, much like Link's Awakening, you really only normally attack in the four directions. Right. Meanwhile, the enemy can come at you from any freaking direction. It doesn't matter. But you're limited to the original four. But the daggers, when you get the charge upgrade, that was how I was diagonally attacking things. You have to get used to it flying at angles at times, but it's pretty. It was good. Once you get used to it, you can still attack normally.
19:50 --> 19:58 I was touching the attack button and she. I'd just be walking and she's like, well, there's something to do, so I'll just kick. And I was like, why are you doing this?
19:58 --> 20:00 Mine was. Yeah, mine wasn't.
20:00 --> 20:02 So I could not wait to get it off.
20:03 --> 20:12 Because the. The second upgrade, you actually throw the dagger and does it does the same amount of damage. It's a range attack. Does a lot of damage, but then you have to go pick it up afterwards. And that's where I'm like, you only
20:12 --> 20:13 have to go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:13 --> 20:17 That I thought was really neat, but when she started doing that, it was getting on my nerves.
20:17 --> 20:18 Yeah.
20:18 --> 20:36 I do like the. The. The battery buster. Like, basically the Mega Buster. That is really cool. I only have one upgrade for it so far. Same with the coffin shield thing. I have one upgrade for that, but apparently I can use it to, like, jump off of it with that upgrade, which is pretty cool.
20:37 --> 21:10 So the one I got. I know I tried using the coffin because it said you can parry with it, but I guess I couldn't get the timing right because every so often it would do like a weird, creepy hand from the coffin attack. But I couldn't figure out the. The timing of it. So again, what. I got the upgrade. I got the weapon in a chest somewhere. I used it for five minutes, and then I immediately switched out for the. The buster. I really. The buster's how I beat the game is honestly. Yeah. Daggers is the. The lack of range of this game definitely hurts. I think if I were to do it again, I would probably stick with the whip. I think because the whip seemed like a good standby.
21:10 --> 21:12 That's a good starting point.
21:12 --> 21:13 The whole game.
21:13 --> 21:14 Yeah.
21:14 --> 21:24 It's what I started with in the demo. And so when I bought the game, it just let me bring my save file into the game. So I was like, all right. So I picked up right at the end of the.
21:24 --> 21:26 I like Final Fantasy 7.
21:27 --> 21:33 Yeah. And so I just was like, I guess I picked the Morning Star. I don't remember what my choices were, but.
21:33 --> 21:36 Right, okay.
21:36 --> 21:48 The. Yeah, the. The coffin seems interesting. I've never actually used it in combat. The Daggers I used a little bit. The hammer I used a little while because I found an upgrade for that in the middle of a new area.
21:49 --> 21:49 Yeah.
21:49 --> 22:00 It was a while before I could get to a burrow, so I was stuck with that for a bit. And I didn't mind it, but it was too slow and very slow. Too short range for my liking.
22:00 --> 22:00 Yeah. Yeah.
22:01 --> 22:10 The Morning Star. Like, it works like a cat, like the whip in Castlevania has for the last 25 years. So I'm like, okay. I. This one, I know it's.
22:10 --> 22:13 If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
22:15 --> 22:21 So I guess, much like Castlevania, so you have the whip. I mean, this game is very Castlevania coded, right? In terms of, like, the. The theming.
22:21 --> 22:22 Yeah, to a degree.
22:22 --> 23:08 Like the Victorian area inspired design of stuff. But you have the whip, the morning star, which very much is like the vampire killer. But then also you have subweapons, like Castlevania. So in much like that. So you have. There's. There's daggers, right? Yeah. There's a throne dagger that can hit twice. There's throwing axes, but then there's. Which are very much from Castlevania. But there's also crazy things like a fog machine. There's one that spawns portal. Like, there's. There's quite a variety of sub weapons, but I can tell you guys, I almost never use them. I did not like them. I don't know if it's because of the limited resource that you had to collect to use them or just that they didn't do much damage to me. I also did not put points into updating, like, upgrading it, the level. I always put points into defense and attack. Oh, did you guys find any use of the subweapons? Like, there's a lot of them.
23:08 --> 23:19 Oh, yeah. I've used the crap out of the mist jar. Like, that. Saved my ass. Because it actually heals you when you use it to go through something. Oh, it generates plasma at the same time.
23:19 --> 23:22 I knew about the plasma. I didn't think it healed you.
23:22 --> 23:26 Yeah. Dash through foes, restoring health and plasma.
23:26 --> 23:27 Oh, I missed that.
23:27 --> 23:43 It doesn't do damage, but it heals you. So I've used the crap out of it. And then, you know, I turn around and start wailing on them to get a little more plasma, get some damage out, and then heal. Because I'm like, usually once I start using that, I'm like, I'm in a bind. Time to start healing.
23:43 --> 23:44 Okay.
23:44 --> 23:46 And that has saved my ass a ton.
23:47 --> 23:57 Huh? I. I'm gonna have to put that one. Try that one out. If I can ever separate myself from the bike. The iron steed is dope. I love that goddamn thing. I ride that bike.
23:57 --> 23:58 Pretty cool.
23:58 --> 23:59 I like that one.
23:59 --> 24:25 I. I've only used it really, for traversing long pits, because there's been a few pits where I've had to use that. And, like, still slow fall. In fact, there was one that was like, you needed that plus the air dash, plus the slow fall to get across the pit to get to a really difficult boss. And that boss stomped the crap out of me for a while until I finally was able to beat it.
24:25 --> 24:27 But I wonder if I did that one.
24:27 --> 24:27 Yeah. Like,
24:30 --> 25:53 yeah. Because there's like, I don't know. I'd have to. I'll have to check because there are definitely some pits that were hard to get across. There's. Because normally Mina can jump one space, no problem on her own two spaces. If you do a burrow jump where you go underground and you leap out of the ground, that's two spaces. And if you want to do three, at least early in the game, you need the iron bike, right, To. To do it. But you do get. I. I believe it's trinket. No, not trink. It's either a trinket or a subweapon that. That lets you use spiderwebs to walk one or two spaces ahead or something in a pit. So there's different ways of traversing pits, but you don't get them necessarily until later on. The weird thing with the subweapons is where you find them is static. So there's. There's an iron bike in town that you can eventually unlock, and it's always there. So whenever you want an iron bike, if you want to pick it up, you can go grab it from town. Similarly, there's an ax just south of town that's right at the beginning. So if you want an axe, well, you know where to go. But even with that in mind, there were some sub weapons I really liked a lot. Like, there was a good drill shield thing where you went charged forward with it. I used a lot of that because you could knock enemies in the pits with it. You can bump into things. You're invulnerable when you're knocking, when you're charging forward with it. So I use that quite a bit. But when you die, at least in the beginning, you lose a sub weapon, which. Which I didn't like that at all. I. I like having the subweapon that I was accustomed to. I didn't like change. Like, eventually you unlock ways to keep sub weapons, right? So they're readily available. But it was a while before I got that unlock. I don't know.
25:53 --> 25:56 I don't want you press B to cancel. Doesn't handle change well.
25:56 --> 25:59 Yeah, we don't think to change. No.
25:59 --> 26:03 It took them seven years to be okay with me and Sinistar. So, you know, it's fine.
26:03 --> 26:09 We got there. It's good. But yeah, that iron break, there's also.
26:09 --> 26:15 I did want to tell you guys, there's a trinket that basically acts as the Tanooki suit from Mario 3.
26:15 --> 26:16 Oh, I haven't seen that one yet.
26:16 --> 26:17 Well, like flies
26:19 --> 26:22 no, like you stand still and you turn into a statue.
26:22 --> 26:28 Oh, really? Okay. I didn't get. I don't think I got that one. Interesting. Yeah. There's so many of them in the game. There's a bunch.
26:28 --> 26:34 It's crazy. Oh, they're numbered. I have the game open on the other screen. Just going through my story and stuff.
26:34 --> 26:39 I saw you turn it up on. On Steam. Was he playing it while we're talking about it?
26:39 --> 26:40 That's.
26:40 --> 26:41 That's very GP of you.
26:41 --> 26:43 Yeah. Can you do a few laps for us?
26:43 --> 26:46 You know, I'm just going through my finds, that's all.
26:48 --> 27:39 Yeah. So I guess going into like. I guess more in the difficulty aspect of this and just the. The Zelda ish of it. Zelda is of it, I guess. Well, it's unlike Zelda. In Zelda, famously, you. You kind of do the dungeons in a certain order. You can sequence break in some of the games, but generally you're supposed to go through the palaces in a certain order. But in Mina, actually there's. There's basically six dungeons. There's a. There's a final, final dungeon. But the six dungeons that are core to the game, you can actually do them in any single order. And I. Some are more tricky to get to than others, but you can do all of them in any order. And I found it interesting when I talked to you guys which dungeons you had done first, because I started with a crypt, which is generally considered one of the easiest ones. And I struggled with Bone beach, where you go inside the dead whale. That was one of the hardest dungeons I did. I did that toward the end of the game. But I think you guys did those. The Bone beach early, if I'm not wrong. Charlie, you did first.
27:39 --> 27:41 I think Wolf, the first dungeon I did was.
27:41 --> 27:42 It was my second.
27:42 --> 27:58 Yeah, it was the first one I pulled off. Yeah. The first one I found, I didn't. I didn't know where the hell I was going. I was just trying to be. Bop around the map, which is something I'll. I'll discuss here, you know, in a little bit, was trying to find my way around because it's not a lot telling you.
27:58 --> 28:02 So it was definitely something. It was tricky at first.
28:02 --> 28:03 Yeah.
28:03 --> 28:43 It doesn't do the. Like, I. I try to compare. I try to do a lot of comparing this to Link's Awakening and maybe Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, because there's some definite design choices there that are very similar, but usually in those, you hit an area and it's like pretty obvious you can't go this way. You're gonna need a tool of some sort. And Mina doesn't do that to you. It's just like, do you know how to go this way yet? Because if not, good luck. But you could try all you want. We're not gonna make it real clear that you can't. So you can just keep trying and maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe you'll figure something out.
28:43 --> 29:36 Yeah, that's the thing. I think that was one of the things that hangs me up. Why? My brain. My brain looks at it and goes, Zelda. So I think I need to go to this dungeon to get whatever I need out of that dungeon to progress to the next thing. Doesn't do that. It's not anything like that. So I'm like, okay, well, how do I traverse the rest of this stuff? Because I, I assumed that that's. That was going to give me what I needed to move on to the next site. And it's. There's just another way. You just haven't found. I just haven't found it yet. So it's. It's crazy. It's crazy. The amount of. Of things that are going on in this game and directions you can go and places you can go with, with little to no assistance on helping you get there. It's. It's. It's very like classic retro in that sense of maybe I should get a map book out and get some graph paper and start trying where I'm going.
29:38 --> 29:52 There's some stuff that they make it real clear this is how you overcome this thing. It's like something that sounds innocuous from an NPC telling you something. And it's like, oh, that was a big clue to be able to do this spot.
29:52 --> 29:52 Right.
29:52 --> 30:10 And I didn't figure it out until late game. And there's one that's like told to you right off the bat is like in the first town early on. And I didn't figure that out to get in there until I had done four or five dungeons. And I was like, oh, I'm dumb.
30:11 --> 31:01 If it makes you feel better, just the concept of. We didn't really mention it again, like souls, like games, there's checkpoints, right? The bonfire equivalent of this game. There's holes. And that's. When you touch that, you. It's a checkpoint. When you die, you start there. I didn't realize you could burrow into the goddamn thing. And it was like a mini base thing for at least an hour or so. I didn't, I didn't realize that's what you're supposed to do. So, like, I kept dying, starting back at the pier where the checkpoint was. It was not until I got to Ossix, where I'm like, oh, you can actually go into the damn thing and it's like a base and there's stuff there, and you can store things there and change your weapon. And, like, I didn't realize that for at least an hour or two. It was pretty. It was pretty stupid when it was the same thing with Tunic. Tunic did the same damn thing. When you realize when you play Tunic what you can do with the checkpoints, you're like, oh, I'm a. Okay, now I know, right? But, like, the game doesn't hold your hand. Right.
31:02 --> 31:11 There's a lot of correlation between this and Tunic, honestly. Like, it's. It's. It's souls. Like, Souls Light. It's got Legend of Zelda aspects to it.
31:12 --> 31:12 Yeah.
31:12 --> 31:14 This one just looks like it's on a Game Boy color.
31:14 --> 33:29 It's got, like, you know what it does too? Like, it does do the Zelda thing in that when you. We go to a dungeon, you kill the big boss, you get a health upgrade. Right. It's roses in this instead of hearts, but you get a health upgrade. You still get utilities in the games in the form of trinkets. You get at least a trinket in every single dungeon. So there is that aspect. You just. Nothing. It's not required to progress necessarily. It just makes things easier in other ways. Right. The trinkets you find could help you in certain dungeons, but you don't necessarily need them. So it does. But it does have that. I like how it handles weapons and upgrades. There is a blacksmith in town that sells the weapons, but you can also find the weapons out in the world. But if you already have the weapon, when you find where it would be in the world, you get one of the upgrades. Right. So it dynamically kind of fills in the blanks. There's another way to get weapons in a certain spot. I won't spoil. And you can go that way and get them. And again, it all dynamically takes into account where when you go to find the chest in the world, you can maybe have the item ahead of time and it changes it for you. So I thought that was pretty interesting too. It's a game that's meant to be played in different ways. You're not forced in the set path. So, like, there is a newspaper system where in town there's a person hands up newspapers and that gives you. It tells you basically your death stats, which is always fun to see how many times you freaking died. But it also gives you a vague clue on where you're supposed to go through next. But you can ignore it and just go wherever you want. There's definitely ways to do it. Different orders. The game has a pretty robust new game plus system if you want to dive into it after you've beaten the game. And you're encouraged to take them in the dungeons in any order. Like when you do many. Any order you want. And then once you. And they do the final seventh area. So it's. It's pretty interesting in that regard. Yeah. What a hard game, though. So I can't believe you guys did Bone beach early on. And, like, that would have thrown me off of the game entirely. I even like the boss, like, which is this giant brain thing. He has like three or four different attacks, and the bosses take a lot of hits. But for the brain itself, it's like he's got these heads that poke out of him and you have to knock the heads off. But when he's down to one head, he starts moving around more, and it's hard to hit that one head to damage him. It took me way more attempts than I wanted. So I really struggle with that. That brain boss. Did you guys do the ice dungeon yet, both of you?
33:29 --> 33:30 I haven't gotten there yet.
33:30 --> 33:31 I have.
33:31 --> 33:32 Okay, I haven't done that one yet.
33:32 --> 33:35 All I have left is the. The Astral Orrery.
33:35 --> 33:49 Okay, so what? The what? The ice Dungeon. All I'll say is that the. The boss very busy, constantly moving like it's. There's no down time with. In between the attacks. And it was a real struggle for me to beat that boss too. Like, those are the two bosses.
33:49 --> 33:51 That was one of my favorite boss fights.
33:51 --> 34:01 I hated it. Like, she's dropping barrels on you, throwing crap at you. She's diving into holes. And just like, I never had time to get ammo back. So that was one of the bosses.
34:01 --> 34:04 I was like, this is one of the coolest fights in this game so far.
34:05 --> 34:16 Know, I like the Brain boss and I. And I like the. The bayou boss so far. That those two are probably. The Brain boss is frustrating itself. Yeah. The crocodile, I thought he was pretty fun.
34:16 --> 34:17 The croc was interesting.
34:17 --> 34:17 That was.
34:17 --> 34:41 I do. I do like the pixel art style in this game. Like, the. The graphics are wonderful. Like, I'm. I'm hit or miss when it comes to the. The color palette choices, but Mina does it pretty well. Like, they nail the style they're going for. And the music is. It was Jake Kaufman. He's the one who did Shantae, so his music is always a banger. So it's visually great. Sounds great. It's really just the gameplay that I think might scare people off.
34:42 --> 34:54 This. This definitely tickles the nostalgia bone. If you're. If you're interested in, like, playing a new retro game, this. This is right up all of our retro friends alleys. This is a. This is a really good game in that sense.
34:54 --> 35:04 Yeah. Feels like. And I know I. I mean this in the best possible way. It feels like a Game Boy game in terms of how it plays.
35:04 --> 35:05 Yeah.
35:06 --> 35:38 But, like, you know, that's like a modern Game Boy game, which sounds really weird, but I mean, like, mechanically nailed down, it's super tight. It's really pretty. It looks like a Game Boy game, but with many colors. So, like, little different characters and objects have their own little color palettes instead of just like four shades across the screen. But I mean, I think every character, everything is like, you know, three or four colors is what the limitation is, is what it looks like.
35:38 --> 35:39 Yeah.
35:39 --> 35:45 Maybe there's some stuff that's a little more. But it generally seems to be like four colors per 16 by 16 dial.
35:45 --> 35:49 Yeah. Because I think even Mina herself, you have the option later on to change her colors.
35:49 --> 35:50 Just four colors.
35:50 --> 35:50 Yeah.
35:50 --> 35:51 Yeah.
35:51 --> 35:51 But she's just.
35:51 --> 35:53 Which I thought was really cool.
35:53 --> 35:56 Yeah. Like kind of like a card from Symphony.
35:57 --> 36:14 Yeah, It's. It's a reward after you. You know, in the original Zelda, you find the upgraded tunic and then another upgraded tunic. And, you know, now Link was. He went from blue or green to red to blue or to blue to red. I don't remember the order.
36:15 --> 36:15 Yeah.
36:16 --> 36:35 But in this, it's like you start with her red, and then you find another color, and then you find another color, and then you can go back to one of the shopkeepers and they let you choose your palette. The three colors that Mina is, which I thought was super rad. So of course I made her like blue and pink. But, like, you do. Yeah. Yeah.
36:35 --> 36:44 That's pretty cool. I also like when you mentioned you compare this game less links awakening, more like, what's the combat heavy Oracles game? Was it seasons? That was more combat heavy.
36:48 --> 36:49 I think it was ages.
36:49 --> 37:54 Yeah. So that's. And that reminds me because, like, there's puzzles in the game, but there's no. There's no sliding at blocks, really. Right. Like, the. The most puzzly thing are More like platformy puzzles. Right. Trying to navigate a. A certain situation. There's one. There's one particular sequence where you're moving across platforms, but then there's also enemies attacking you. And then also periodically on the screen, lightning strikes the screen. Unless you have a lightning rod nearby, then the lightning will hit the rod and not you. Although even when it hits the rod it still does a four way blast. To lighten, you have to make sure you're not in the path, which is really frustrating. But that was like a puzzly platforming type of situation and then the game's full of those kind of things. In fact, every area in the game around each of the six dungeons has one like, has a very core unique mechanic to it. Whether it's like burning pumpkins that progress using lava and using lava to destroy its rain to make your progress, or the icing and grinding on rails. Like every area had a really cool unique twist to it that I don't think I've seen in a Zelda game. So it definitely does its own thing too, which I thought was pretty cool.
37:55 --> 38:01 Yeah, there's also, yeah, I did find the sonic rail grinding kind of interesting.
38:01 --> 38:01 Yeah.
38:02 --> 38:25 But there's also like the darkness mechanic in this game was really neat. You. Sometimes you'd find a way to create light in the darkness that you wouldn't expect it to create light. Usually in most games it wouldn't do that. But they're like, yeah, this would cause light to happen. So we'll give you a little light for a moment when you do that in the dark. I thought that was really neat.
38:25 --> 38:30 Or like me, you actually break a torch because you have to hoard all the items that collectibles, even if you
38:30 --> 38:31 don't need them, and then all of
38:31 --> 38:34 a sudden dark and now you can't see anything. Been there.
38:35 --> 38:40 I have to ask, I don't want to spoil what happens, but did either of you ever stand in the dark too long?
38:41 --> 38:57 Yes, but I don't understand what that was like. It's. I know what happens because there's one particular room that happens in, but I couldn't figure out what the. If it was a. If it was an encounter I could fight or it was just a thing to make you not go in the darkness willy nilly. I don't know.
38:57 --> 39:00 I think it's just a thing to keep you from wandering the dark too long.
39:01 --> 39:01 Okay.
39:01 --> 39:04 It's essentially the dark's version of falling in a pit.
39:04 --> 39:15 Okay. There was one thing in this game. There's several instances where you have to do a escort mission of sorts, where you have to escort an NPC across an area where you die.
39:15 --> 39:16 Oh, my God, I hated that one.
39:16 --> 39:29 There's a couple that are okay, but. Yeah, there's one where you're in a dark room and you have a guy you're escorting who has the light source, but then I think he also does. When he does the light source, he also pushes you backwards. I think is the one I'm thinking
39:29 --> 39:30 of if he's near you.
39:30 --> 39:50 Yes, yes. So the idea is you want to keep him at a distance, but not too far, because you need the light he casts on so you can see where you're going, but you're also trying to navigate around edges and ledges and lips of holes, and he can knock you into the holes if you're not paying attention. That whole sequence, it took me, like, four tries, and I got so fed up by the end of it, I almost quit.
39:50 --> 39:51 Probably took me a dozen.
39:51 --> 41:10 Yeah, it was really. It was really brutal. And there's a few. There's a few that are. That are kind of frustrating. And there's also one sequence in terms of platforming issues. There's a mechanic for lily pads, right? And that's been in games before, where lily pads are in the water, and then they have a timing base where they go under the water and you can't jump on them, so you have to wait for them to rise and you can jump across them. There's one secret in order to get through it, or maybe not secret, maybe just a shortcut through a dungeon, because the game is full of those. You had to get ahead of a statue and then safely bring the head of the statue and jump across the lily pads, and. And you got to toss it on a statue to complete a statue, and that unlocks something for you. But of course, similar to Mario 2, when you pick up a statue head, Phanto comes flying on the screen and will damage you. And of course, when he's trying, Phanto's trying to hit you while you're trying to jump across the lily pads. The head falls in the water, and then, of course, it despawns. You have to go back and get it again. That was another sequence which was just incredibly frustrating. There's a lot of frustrating elements in this game, and a lot of it, I think, came down to the platforming elements, where every time you fall in a pit, you lose a sizable chunk of your health bar. Or the case of, like, the statue head, where you need it to kind of unlock something. It was several screens back, so you have to go back across the pits. You just made it across in the first place. It was, it was challenging. It's not an easy game. So I don't like. Did you guys find that frustrating or was that just part of the charm of this game?
41:11 --> 42:11 I did not care. I'm not a jumping puzzle guy. Most people who know me know me well. I don't do well with jumping puzzles. I don't do well with falling into pits constantly. And I'm sure we'll, we'll, we'll touch on this quickly. But there's a lot of accessibility in this game. There's a ton of accessibility in this game. And for the first time I was like, I am not. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to enjoy this game because it's fun. So I turned off falling into pits damage because that was like the first thing I took off because I just like, I can't, I can't do this. I need to figure it out because my. When I played on the Steam deck, which has been primarily what I've played this on, you, you jump and if you're just a little bit on the stick, you'll go diagonal and into a hole like every goddamn time. And I was getting real, real frustrated with it. So once I turned that off, then I was fine. I had a very enjoyable time after that. That got changed. So the only thing that I'm kicking myself over is because now you don't get any achievements for anything that you do.
42:11 --> 42:25 You also don't get Steam achievements either as well. There's an in game achievement system called Feats. But then you also don't get the Steam cheap, as I found it afterwards, which is kind of a bummer. But at the same time I was. Without those modifiers, I don't think I would have finished the game. Wolf, did you use any of those or.
42:25 --> 42:30 No, no, I'm actually just looking at the menu now to see what kind of stuff is in there.
42:30 --> 44:03 So here's it. So what you look at, there's a ton in the. When you first boot up the game and we're talking things like half damage, right? Or you can make it so you take more damage, extra damage, longer jumps, floatier jumps, all the trinkets in the game. Like when I said that if there's anything in the game, gameplay wise, that frustrates you and annoys you, there's probably a trinket for it. If you can't wait to find that trinket, there's a modifier. It'll do the same thing and you can just turn it on the one the, the one I use. So like, listen, don't judge, but the only reason I beat Elden Ring, the only reason I bought I beat Elden Ring is because I spent time farming for the currency. And it's the same thing in Mina. There was a lot of items in the shops that I wanted, mostly health upgrades. And I'm like, I found a great spot to farm bones, but it took a few minutes to do a run around my loop for my kills. So I sat down, I'm like, am I going to really spend two hours farming the currency? Yes. Yes I am. And then I saw the modifier that would just boost the gain. I'm like, you know what, instead of spending two or four hours just grinding it, I'll just turn it on and do it in 30 minutes. And that's what I did. So I used that modifier. I have no shame in it. It made the game faster for me to do what I was going to do anyway. What it's there for, that's what it's there for. And honestly, the game I think is designed with that in mind. I like how it lets you customize the difficulty however you want. There's also fun ones in there too. Like there's one that has me in a dance at random. There's one where she's double the size. There's. There's dozens and dozens of them. Yes.
44:03 --> 44:05 Type cheap stuff.
44:05 --> 45:52 Like they even have in categories. There's harder ones, easier ones and weird ones. Like they have different categories. But when you beat the game there, it unlocks another hundred of them. Like there's like 200 modifiers in the game. It's a huge massive list. But one of the modifiers that unlocks is an item randomizer and like and they. I saw an interview with the developer and he came right out and said it is like I love Legend of Zelda randomizer runs that people do. Which is like for those who don't know, it's. It's a fan made ROM hack where you can take a Legend of Zelda game and it randomizes the location of items, but the game is still beatable even though the items are randomized. Mina has that as a, as an option you can turn on once you've beaten the game. And I messed around a little bit. But it's not just like it randomizes items, it gives you options. Like the first pouch you get in the game is meant to be a health. A health potion. You can, you can make that random or you can keep a static. You can make it so you can. It's randomized what item, a weapon you start with or the option, the chest is randomized. So instead of the daggers and the flail and the hammer, it could be any of the five weapons. So that could be randomized. There's quite a bit you can randomize enemy stats and damage. They do. It's pretty, it's. It's really interesting. And what was really great when I was looking at it, like, I don't have the energy to do a second run right now, but when I come back to this game in the future and I think I would, there is an option to normalize the damage. So it's more like a Zelda game. I tried just a little bit to see what that was like. It's still hard as crap. But knowing that I can normalize the damage to be like a Zelda game and I can randomize all the items and weapon placements and all that kind of stuff. And Tinkerwright, you can really customize how you play this game. And the difficulty that. I think this could be very interesting. I could see speedrunners or people doing Races of Mina. Could be a very interesting thing if people could get into it. But the initial difficulty and frustration I think might be off putting for a lot of people.
45:54 --> 46:12 Maybe. I, I don't think it carries the same weight as like a souls type difficulty. I could see that being off putting to some people. I think to me this just carries a very retro style difficulty challenge. I think it's very much on the vein of Castlevania. Castlevania is not a easy game. None of them are. Notoriously.
46:13 --> 46:14 I can't beat Castlevania.
46:14 --> 47:34 So, yeah, honestly, I think the biggest thing is that it's just, it's just, it's any as hard. Like it's, it's. It carries that moniker, I think fairly well. And if you are like, like me for the first time in my life, I was like, I am not going to smash my head into this wall anymore. I want, I want to play this and enjoy it and, and see where it takes me. You can change that. You can change the damage rate that you get hit on. You can change falling into pits. You can make me to walk faster. If you think she walks too slow, you can speed that up. You can speed up the jumps. There's a ton of that makes this game like cool. I just want to play it. To play it. Not. Not because I'm worried about any challenges. And now that I've done all this stuff and once I learn the map and I figure out where things are a little bit more accurately, I will go back and play it with the difficulty, turn normal. Like turn the. All the stuff off and try it that way again. Now that I figured out how things work and how I feel, how she, you know, what the. The inputs lag is or if there's anything crazy like that, when you get comfortable with it, then you can play it at any level or any rate you want to. And I. I'll be the first one to say, turn all the shit on. Yeah, that makes the game fun for you. And then go back and play it without it. That's what it's designed to do. Usually I'm the one that argues that, but I'm. I'm waving the white flag. Within 15 minutes, I was waving the white flag.
47:34 --> 47:41 I beat Silksong for the easier time than Mina. Mina was harder than Silksong for, which is crazy. Yeah.
47:41 --> 47:44 I still haven't finished Silson, so I
47:44 --> 48:31 can tell you one. One good example of modifier too. The other one I turned on. One of the core things you do in the game after you beat the dungeon. You have to climb a tower. It's a different perspective on the gameplay. Sparks towers and you have to rush, because if you don't rush, there's a spark line that chases after you and if it touches you, you fall down. You have to repeat it. By the third tower, I was done with that line. Like, I don't like the towers to begin with. I don't like the change in movement and how you have to rush. I didn't like that at all. But having that Sparkline chase after you was driving me freaking nuts. So I turned it off. There's a modifier to turn it off. So I turned it off. And the game, the rest of the towers, I think there's the handful I did after that. I'm like much more of a fun time. I still. They were still hard. I still had to figure out how to navigate up the tower and all that stuff because each one has a little bit of a different hook. But not having to deal that sparklight made the game a lot easier for me, so. Or a lot more fun for me.
48:31 --> 48:51 I want to say. Yeah, I want to say the first tower I did probably took me three or four tries. Starting to understand the mechanics. Most of them have taken me three or four tries. One of them Took me like a dozen. It was pissing me off. And one of them I got first try.
48:51 --> 48:53 Yeah. Which one was the hard one?
48:53 --> 49:04 Like it's gotta be. I wanna say Home beach was my biggest, my most difficult one. But that was the first one I did too. I've been able to do first tries
49:04 --> 49:06 on the other two for me.
49:08 --> 49:08 Yeah. This.
49:08 --> 49:09 Let me see.
49:09 --> 49:26 Some of them are definitely easier than others. That's why I'm like it's crazy you guys did that one first. Cuz I. I had so much trouble that like the crypt is so much easier but knowing that I could do this in any order. Like I might do the arcane ordinary first to see if I could do it next time. Like there's definitely. There must be a way to get in there. Lot of cool stuff.
49:26 --> 49:28 Septemberg was the hard one for me.
49:28 --> 49:30 That was the one with fire on the tower.
49:30 --> 49:30 Tower.
49:30 --> 49:31 I think.
49:31 --> 49:32 I think so.
49:32 --> 49:32 Yeah.
49:32 --> 49:34 That's the one I'm going to next.
49:36 --> 50:00 But yeah, I mean. And also this game is 20 bucks. They. They deliberately priced it the same. The Silk Song price. Right. I think, I think they could have gotten away with charging 25 or 30. There's definitely. I mean it took me 20 hours to beat. There's a lot of game here plus the new game plus there's. There is a dedicated new game plus system if you want to use it. I don't think I'm going to do that but you unlock all those modifiers and you can just customize the runs however you want.
50:00 --> 50:00 That.
50:00 --> 50:17 That part is really cool. The randomizer. There's a lot of game here. They usually could have charged 30 bucks but they aggressively chose 20 I guess to get some sales. And I think so far, I think I saw it was 500 copies I think so far at least the other day. So it definitely sold well for yacht club games which is good.
50:18 --> 50:26 So didn't they say that this was like their. This was their Hail Mary and it's easily done what it's supposed to do. So good for them.
50:26 --> 50:48 So famous famously for Shovel Knight when they had the Kickstarter they did the Kickstarter for Mina. But they learned their lesson from Shovel Knight where their stretch goals was dlc. And if you bought, if you funded Shovel Knight in the. In the Kickstarter you got the DLC for free. That hurt them I think financially because a lot of those DLCs for Shovel Knight were not short. They're full on campaigns and they're all very distinct. So there's nothing.
50:49 --> 51:01 Just that it Was like if you bought the game early on, you got all the DLCs. I bought the game for the Wii U and I think it was the Wii, Wii U.
51:01 --> 51:01 The Treasure Trove.
51:01 --> 51:13 It might have been Wii, I don't remember. Yeah, it wasn't the Treasure Trove edition. It was just the disc. It came with all the updates. Yeah. So it was a $20 game, but it came with all the updates.
51:14 --> 51:24 So like they, they, they, they came out and said that there's no DLC planned for Mina and if there is, it won't be free, which is, which is fine. I don't think I need anything free for this game.
51:24 --> 51:27 Sold me a $20 base game. I'll buy your fucking DLC.
51:28 --> 52:15 Like when I was watching an interview with the developer, he said like this game got delayed a few different times. It was supposed to come out a year ago or released a year ago. And he said they're glad, he's glad they were able to delay it because the last couple dungeons while they were finished, they weren't polished, they weren't great. There were some things that were a bit knowing with it. So they took the additional months of work to polish those final dungeons to give you a more cohesive experience all the way through. Which I think was, was worth it because like, this is a game that stands on its own. When you play it, nothing feels missing, nothing feels underdone. Every single area has something unique about it. The number of trinkets is crazy. There's a ton of, ton of secrets which we're not even going to go into. Right. Because I don't want to ruin it. Like there's tons of things in this game that are really awesome to find and explore. So there's a lot there. And yeah, there's, you know, the further
52:15 --> 52:21 you get in, the easier it gets to be able to track down secrets that you didn't find. Which I like.
52:21 --> 52:24 Yep. Yeah, that was a great game. This is a fantastic game.
52:24 --> 53:33 Yeah, like when I beat it, I, it's, it gives you, it does the Metroid item percentage completion or items found. I got 65, I think percent of items found. So there's tons that I missed. Right. And it's, it's, it's pretty cool. So I, I. Not easy at the start, but it does get easier as you go. I don't like calling it a Souls. Like, I think you're right, Wolf. Maybe we do call it a Souls Light coin, that term because it definitely is elements of Dark Souls. But it's not the death, the Death part of it is not nearly as frustrating as, like, a souls game would be to me. Right. Right. And, like, even though I say I had issues with certain bosses, I don't think I ever spent more than maybe five times on one boss, like, death, like, attempts. Like, whereas Elden Ring hours on a boss. Years. Yeah, years. Right. Like, never mind. Millennia. Just. There's. There's a. There's a bunch of bosses in Elden Ring that took me hours to get through, whereas Mina is, like, half hour, tops. So difficult game. Retro hard. Sure. But it's not impossible at times. So. Yeah. Anything else you guys want to touch on about Mina? I think it's a pretty solid game.
53:34 --> 53:57 I would. This is not. Wouldn't call this game of the year, in my opinion, but this is a fantastic game, and I would absolutely suggest any of our retro friends that like this kind of style of stuff to jump on this thing. It's 20 bucks. You can't. You can't spend that kind of money and get this kind of content nowadays, you know, 20 bucks in this economy? Absolutely. Pick up, Mina. Run it. It's. It's a lot of fun.
53:58 --> 54:27 I like that there's multiple forms of mass tra. Of fast travel, depending on, like, what you find when. But the one that I got first, and the reason I didn't get it earlier than I did, is the. The train. And for me, I thought it was. I had to unlock each station, and I figured out pretty quick. I was like, this is gonna take a lot of bones to unlock the station. So I never deposited anything.
54:27 --> 54:28 Yeah.
54:28 --> 55:02 And then later, I was like, all right, I'll pick one. I'll unlock that one, and I'll just put the money in that. And I put a bunch of money in it, but I didn't have enough yet. And then I was over near the other one, and I had enough to max it out. I knew I did. So I was like, all right, let's do it here. And it only took the remainder of the full amount. And I was like, oh, my God. I could have done this way earlier. I was. I was kind of annoyed. I wish it were a little clearer, and I'm sure it probably was. And I just didn't catch it when they introduced it because I was still learning so much about this game at once.
55:02 --> 55:07 This game is very vague on what it tells you, information or where to go or what to do.
55:07 --> 55:13 It's. Yeah, there's a lot of things that seem innocuous that are not.
55:13 --> 55:14 Yeah.
55:14 --> 55:26 Is. I think what it is. And there's, like I said, there's been a bunch of situations where I was like, oh, somebody straight up told me how to do that and I didn't realize they were telling me how to do that.
55:26 --> 55:27 Yeah, nice.
55:28 --> 56:10 Like you'll see an NPC do something and it may not click with you until, for my case, hours later and you realize, oh, okay, they told me how to do this hours ago. I could have saved myself some issues with something, but if I was paying attention more for sure. So the train thing is interesting in that some of the stations are easy to get to or required to get to, but then there's others that are kind of out of their way or locked in certain ways. And there's one I didn't find too much later in the game. So that part was pretty cool. You have to find the station first before you can use it, but once you find it, you have to pay for anything, right? But yeah, different. Very cool game. Anything you guys want to shout out videos or streaming that you guys are doing,
56:14 --> 56:24 working on some stuff, but I'm going on vacation in a week, so I don't know if there'll be much content coming out of me, but I'll be upgrading my PC so I'm pretty jacked about that. So.
56:24 --> 56:26 Okay. Wolf, how about you?
56:28 --> 56:29 No, I got nothing.
56:29 --> 58:23 Okay. We did have summer Games a week. Our Summer Games fest is now over. There was a ton of game announcements. We did do a live stream last week with Steve from Find Time podcast. Just watch doing a watch cast of the Summer Games fest. Even watch that and check it out. Lots of great announcements. And also the Nintendo Direct was this week and they announced more Star Fox News, but they also released a demo of Star Fox the Switch 2. So I downloaded that and I kind of compared the demo with the Original Star Fox N64. So there's a video up on the Presby Channel. Feel free to give a. Give that a look at the game is. I'm torn about Star Fox. I kind of want to buy it, but I kind of don't want to spend that money on it because I know how fat, how short that game is. But anyway, there's a video there. If you enjoy our show, you always can support us financially if you like over@patreon.com presbyterganzel don't have to, but we appreciate if you do. We have different tiers there you can support us at. And if you support us at our Circus Charles tier, we do shout out your name during the podcast. So we have two members of our Circus Trials, Tier enthusiast Jeff and Von Beardley. Thank you guys for your support. And thank you to all our patrons, regardless of tier, for your generous generosity there. And of course, you don't have to support us monetarily if you want to. Just like the show, share with friends, subscribe on YouTube and on Twitch, please. We try and get those numbers up. It definitely makes a difference. So we do appreciate that. Check us out@pressmetocancel.com as our main website. There's a link to our Discord there. Feel free to come to Discord. Tell us what you like about Mina or what you don't like about Mina. That's fine. We're used to it. And as well, you can listen to our audio versions of our podcast the following Mondays over any of your favorite podcasting apps. Or you can watch us live on Friday evenings over here on YouTube or on Twitch. Press B2 cancel. Otherwise, I think that's the show, guys. Mina hollower. It's 20 bucks. Check it out. We'll talk to everybody next week.
58:23 --> 58:32 Hollowing in this economy, It.