Mina the Hollower reviews roundup: a retro masterpiece that fuses Zelda with Bloodborne

Yacht Club Games' latest leaps to the front of the GOTY race

Mina the Hollower, the new retro adventure from Shovel Knight studio Yacht Club Games, has received a rapturous response from critics that immediately places it as the best-reviewed game of the year to date. (Forza Horizon 6's reign was brief.) Currently sitting at a rating of 93 on Metacritic and 92 on OpenCritic, Mina has been hailed as a retro masterpiece that fuses elements from both classic and modern games to make something truly compelling.

Reviewers praised the enormously characterful, Game Boy Color-style graphics and chiptune music; the enthralling storyline; the gameplay, packed with challenge, depth, and mystery; and the hugely flexible suite of customization options that can be used to temper the game's Soulsike-inspired difficulty.

"Mina the Hollower will burrow into your brain and set up a cozy little house there," wrote IGN's Samual Claiborn in a 10/10 review. "Mina achieves the same heights in both action and style that its impressive inspirations – Zelda, Castlevania, and FromSoft RPGs – reach on a regular basis, and with far fewer resources. Even if all you’ve played is Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring, don’t let the retro look fool you: Mina the Hollower will scratch the same itch, with an open world that’s crammed with mysteries worth finding and lively, clever combat I couldn’t get enough of. It’s a big game in a small package, and an absolute masterpiece of an adventure."

GamesRadar's Dustin Bailey was wowed by how many classic inspirations the developers at Yacht Club Games managed to incorporate into the game: Game Boy Zelda, Bloodborne, Ratchet & Clank, Resident Evil 2, Super Mario Bros. 2, and more. "Mina the Hollower is able to combine this massive pile of old, familiar ideas from across the vast history of gaming into something that still feels all its own," Bailey wrote in a four-and-a-half-star review. "Yacht Club Games clearly understands what works about the classics, and Mina the Hollower is an incredible collection of tested ideas rebuilt in new ways."

Kotaku's Rebekah Valentine adored the game, but had one warning for players. "I don’t really have any asterisks to put on my love for Mina the Hollower: it’s fun, it’s full, it’s mysterious, nice to look at, and very nice to listen to, thanks to another bangin’ chiptune soundtrack by composer Jake Kaufman," she wrote. "It’s a very friendly Soulslike: you always get at least one chance to recover yourself before you lose all your currency on death, and there is a fantastic suite of game adjustment options to make it easier, harder, or even (hell yes) sillier that you can turn on and off at literally any time you want, even mid-fight. But it is a Soulslike."

Eurogamer's Christian Donlan will file his full review later in the week, but published a short piece highlighting the game's sense of mystery and wonder. "You can use all this quality-of-life stuff to render platforming and enemies no problem whatsoever and the game is still a beast," Donlan wrote. "Mina's whole world is one big puzzle, and it's a puzzle where you're constantly learning how to make even the tiniest bit of progress. [...] While you could say I'm stuck, I'm also immersed: I'm so deeply set into Mina the Hollower's world I'm thinking about it all the time, when I'm playing and when I'm not playing."

The closest thing to a dissenting opinion comes from Giant Bomb's Mike Minotti, who admired the game but felt it "doesn’t come together as expertly as Shovel Knight" and is "often the victim of overdesign" in a three-and-a-half-star review. "Somehow, the Dark Souls influences keep Mina from being the best Zelda-style game it could be, while the Zelda mechanics prevent it from reaching the heights of the best Soulslikes," he wrote.

Here at Polygon, Giovanni Colantonio fell in love with Mina's engrossing secrets. "Clearing six dungeons is the main objective in Mina the Hollower, but my favorite moment of my playthrough was simply when I commandeered a ladder and dragged it around a swamp to discover a wealth of hidden pathways," Colantonio wrote. "All of these games fulfill my curious instinct to poke my head into a foggy door frame and find what lies on the other side. That’s why I’m still drawn to video games even after playing them for over 30 years of my life."

You'll be able to discover Mina the Hollower's secrets for yourself when it launches on May 29 for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC (and MacOS and Linux), and Xbox Series X.