A Playthrough of Mina the Hollower to the End with Nothing but a Hammer

The game opens with a letter to Mina from the Marshal of Ossex. The "spark generator" Mina invented ten years ago brought prosperity to the urban areas of Ossex. But that glory has begun to fade, and the era is at a turning point. Worried about the situation, Mina's patron, Count Lionel, is asking for help from Mina, the inventor of the device and a skilled Hollower in her own right.

The story begins aboard a ship bound for the island, but the ship is suddenly attacked by a monster and the sailors are taken out. Mina retreats to the hold for the time being, collecting the island's currency, "Bones," while learning jumping and movement controls as a tutorial.

While looking for something to use as a weapon, Mina is given one by the foreman. The choices are a dagger, a mace, and a hammer, and the player picked the hammer because it "looked the strongest." The chosen "Blast Hammer" has a charge attack, and it's nimble enough to let you roll around while charging. This charge attack becomes the centerpiece of every boss fight that follows.

The creature wrapped around the ship is a "Kraken," which the player treats as a practice dummy for the hammer. Stepping out onto the deck starts the fight, and the crew are devoured first. Taking advantage of that opening, Mina pounds away at the tentacles.

The "Kraken of the Underworld" has only two attacks: a tentacle slam and a sweeping tentacle movement. The sweep can be dodged by jumping over its thin section. Beyond that, you just bait out the slam and finish it with a charge attack. Even after being defeated, the Kraken still has some life left, and its thrashing leaves the ship out of control until it crashes into the island.

After landing, Mina receives a healing item, the "Plasma Vial," from the captain and heads for Ossex, the island's main town. Passing through streets engulfed in spreading flames, she finds a large guard blocking the entrance, but she smashes him with the hammer too and moves on.

Despite the town being in turmoil, Lionel, the town's leader, was holding an opening ceremony for a new orphanage. From how little he seemed to care about the state of the town, the player concludes that its chaos apparently isn't anything new.

Following Lionel to hear more, Mina encounters Marshal "Thorn," who is quickly revealed to be the culprit who set the town on fire. Lionel and Thorn are at odds over the spark generators installed on the island, and Mina, as their inventor, has been dragged into the conflict. This leads to the first fight with "Thorn," which Mina wins.

The spark generators draw on energy dormant underground, and six of them have been installed around the island. All of them are awaiting repair, so Mina must make a circuit of the island and fix them one by one. The player remarks that, judging by Thorn's behavior, the spark seems to hold some ominous secret, but stays relaxed, figuring that if things get tough, they can just hit it with the hammer.

Before setting out, Mina browses other weapons at the blacksmith and orders the "Battery Buster." But a letter comes down the production line, and since the blacksmith's older brother appears to be angry, she heads to the forge.

"Armand" is a troublesome boss who can only be damaged for a few seconds after touching lava. Digging into the nearby ground lets you guide the lava, so the strategy shown was to carve out paths that keep the lava flowing while you hit him.

In the ossuary leading to the first generator, Mina finds a man who looks extremely smelly, "Stinko," gives him a light whack, and obtains a piece of equipment. The big boss at the deepest part of the ossuary, the "Duchess," appears once you carry her head back to her room. You land a fully charged hammer strike and follow up with a second hit without pause. Just when she seems defeated, she shifts into her second form, so the player readied the hammer again, waited for the moment she appeared, and finished her off with one last blow. Repairing the device restores the spark's glow to that land. Five remain.

On the way back to town, "the true master of the whip" Maxie, who sees Mina as a rival, picks a fight, so Mina smashes and defeats her as well.

Hearing that a giant lord of the waters lives in the nearby fishing pond, Mina takes it on to test her skills. "Thalassion"'s weak point is the yellow part of its tail fin. Dodge its breath attack while readying the hammer, time the swing right, and it goes down.

In the swamp where the next device is located, a mysterious moon rises from the water. Without ever really figuring out what it is, Mina smashes it, defeating the "Fake Moon." Next, the big boss guarding the device, the "Beast of Nox," emerges from the water with its huge mouth open, but it too falls to the hammer as usual.

Entering a large house in the forest, the house sprouts arms and legs and a battle begins. Joking that "a new page has been written in the history of architecture," the player defeated the "Mad House."

After that, Mina is chased by a suspicious man and cornered in a dead end, only to turn the tables on him. By this point the weapon had been upgraded along the way, unlocking a follow-up attack. The player says the hammer, which was already "a bit OP," became even more powerful, making progress that much smoother. This opponent turned out to be the "Pumpkin Man."

After repairing the third device, Mina meets a little winged insect that wanted to tour the device and brings it along. But the device's spark strikes the insect directly, and it evolves into a strong-looking form. In the "Dark Deluxe" fight, the wind makes your footing slippery, so the player finished it off quickly. Around this point, it's also suggested that the medicine Lionel gave Mina seems to suppress the effects of the spark.

Mina heads to the desert in search of the fourth device. This area was once a thriving mining region, but lately zombified miners have been running amok, and public order has deteriorated. Here she defeats the "Miner Boss."

Inside a giant creature lying on the beach, Mina fights a brain that's been chained in place. The player describes the earlier bosses as "flimsy," and rates this one, by contrast, as having very high HP—a "tough" opponent. The first step is to destroy the six orbs around it while watching out for holes in the floor. This frees the brain from its chains and it moves to its next form. From there, you dodge its falling attacks for a while and strike when you see an opening. Because the orbs change position with each falling attack, the player explains that it's best to adjust your dodge direction so you can attack the instant they stop. This is how the "Captive Giant Brain" was defeated.

To reach the fifth device, Mina boards a luxurious train bound for the snowy, icy "Mount Coltrain." People of all kinds of species ride together in the cars. Then the brakes fail, and the train is about to plunge off the tracks. When Mina climbs onto the roof, Thorn appears again and stops the train by piercing it with her spear.

This leads straight into the second fight with "Thorn." Her stance of firm opposition to using the spark hasn't changed. The player remarks that, while traveling the island, the protagonist should also be starting to realize how frightening the spark is, and says they're curious how she'll deal with that going forward.

On reaching the mountain, Mina fights "Miren," a ghost who seems to have lingering attachments to this world. As a mid-boss, it goes down in about two combos. The flow is to dodge through its full set of attacks and then land an all-out blow. On the mountain path, Mina cracks open a suspicious octopus blocking the way, the "Ice Horror," with the hammer and continues on.

Boarding the train and ringing the bell summons the vengeful spirit of the conductor, "Conductor Agnes." She floats around, making her hard to hit, but you time your charge attack to land. The player's approach was to push her into her next form before she could unleash her troublesome attacks. Since you can get a hit in while she transforms into her second form, that's where the player finished her off.

Aiming for the last device, Mina makes her way through a suspicious research facility. The "Lumen Ark" fight is staged like a boss battle, but it's really just a group of small fry. You smack them in the order they pop their heads out. Left alone, they'll quickly start using ranged attacks, so the player says it's best to keep a steady rhythm and hit them before they can. It seems you lose if you're pushed all the way to the left edge, but the player says it was easy, since the firepower of their hammer could take each of them out in a single hit.

Research on the spark was underway at the facility, and research into fusing living creatures together apparently flourished in particular. The "Horde of the Dead," standing in front of the sixth device, could be killed instantly in its first form, but its second form is persistent. The fused creatures split apart, run around, and then fuse together again. However, what comes out is a weaker version of before, so one hit each finishes them. Just when it seems over, a third form appears, and the player looks back on it as "quite a back-breaking opponent."

Just when Mina reaches the last device and it seems the two have reconciled and all is resolved, Thorn is hurled in and turned into a monster by the spark's influence. Here, Lionel reveals his true nature.

After all the devices are repaired and Mina returns to town, the monstrous Thorn appears, leading to a third battle. Once she's defeated and the threat has passed, Mina has a bout with "Wonder Willis" in the town hall. In this fight, direct damage doesn't work; instead, you whittle down his HP bit by bit by knocking him out of the arena. The player comments that after so many fights against incomprehensible monsters, a boss fight like this was a nice change of pace.

In the mansion's front garden, Mina rudely awakens a reclusive woman who'd been sleeping in a coffin, "Ebra the Undying," and then defeats her.

When Mina enters the mansion to confront Lionel, his retainer Myagus blocks the way. According to the player, the bosses up to this point went flying with just a light tap, but Myagus is a formidable foe who won't go down until all of his heads are destroyed. The strategy shown was to use the hammer's hitstop to land your attack first, then immediately back off and dodge. The player destroyed the heads one at a time and took out the last one by aiming for the moment he attacked.

In the following duel with "Count Lionel," he fires ranged attacks using the power of the spark. However, the player didn't consider them much of a threat and defeated him with the hammer as usual.

At the deepest part of the mansion is the central generator, from which all the generators can be shut down. There, Lionel, who should have been defeated, revives with a vial and attacks, accompanied by some familiar tentacles.

The final boss fight is split into two halves. In the first half, you climb a tower while managing your distance from him, then close in and strike when he leaves an opening. When the tentacles appear, the first half is nearly over, and once you whittle down his HP, the battle moves to the rooftop. In the second half, you hit him once and then burrow underground to avoid his attacks. From here, troublesome ranged attacks start coming, but the player prevented them from being used by quickly whittling down his HP to push him into the next phase. When the enemy wound up a big attack, Thorn rushed in to support Mina, and taking advantage of that opening, Mina pressed the attack all at once and defeated "Radiant Lionel."

In the ending, Mina destroys the island's spark generators. Having lost both their leader and their infrastructure at once, the townspeople fall into chaos, but Mina somehow manages to escape the island. The video title's phrase "wrecking the island and escaping" refers to this ending.

Finally, the player shares their impressions of the game as a whole. They say the world, where cuteness and menace coexist, is hard to describe, and that they could feel a strong passion behind the retro graphics. The controls are simple—just jumping and attacking—but the gimmicks in each area run deep, and the player rates the game as having plenty of content. The protagonist's equipment options are also extremely varied, and they conclude by saying that on this adventure, they had fun swinging the hammer around from start to finish.