By the developers of Momodora, Minoria is the latest Bombservice sideways scroller RPG. Although appearing simplistic, Minoria has a well of complexity the player needs to explore in order to succeed.
Minoria is set during “The Fourth Witch War.” Sister Semelia along with her fellow nun, Sister Anna Frann, have set out to quell the witch uprising. Anna handles the sealing of the witches, while you, Semelia, handle the combat.
What immediately stood out to me was Minoria’s unique art style. Despite being a scroller, Minoria boasts an air of magical fantasy unique to the mainstream sidescroller. Sidescrollers are generally known for their 8bit style and low graphical quality, but Minoria’s character models were all animated fluidly. You can tell the effort that was put in towards the art.
Going into the game, I had no idea the amount of difficulty I would face. Granted, my experience with the genre is limited, but the skill ceiling for Minoria is extremely high. I enjoyed trying to navigate the parry and roll system. Many challenges felt like a bullet-hell game, constantly having to perfectly time your rolls to dodge several attacks. Failing to do so highly punishes the player, taking nearly half your health bar in damage from a single enemy. That in conjunction with damage taken when touching enemies themselves, makes for a highly demanding game.
Although Minoria’s difficulty is high, I don’t believe it is unnecessarily so. Heading in, the player should be ready for a challenging experience. Similar to games such as Dark Souls or Cuphead, difficulty and grind is expected. Much more satisfaction can be gained from beating it by elevating the ceiling. That being said, I suck at this game.
Unrelated to my skill at dodging, I do have some issues with Minoria. While playing the game, I found it extremely easy to get lost. Dialogue gives the player locations to travel to, but no directions. Many rooms have several different corridors to explore, all with long paths to travel before realizing you’ve gone down the wrong one. What doesn’t help this problem, is most of the backgrounds in the game look exactly the same. It’s as if all the budget went into making a few different high quality backgrounds, but then pasted and cloned them into every single level.
Additionally, the problems I hold with the limited background design extend even more into the gameplay. After death, the player is taken back to the last inkwell checkpoint. I have no innate issues with that as a feature, but often times it will take you back long before a challenging stage. In order to have another attempt, you must travel through the same enemies and navigate the same cloned backgrounds. A lot of the time, all you want to do is improve at a beating a specific challenge or boss, but most of your time is spent platforming and beating old enemies. This in tangent with the time spent trying to find the correct area, makes a majority of the game a walking simulator.
All in all, Minoria is a game meant for fans of difficulty or followers of the Bombservice studio. I realize I am not likely their target audience, considering my aptitude for the RPG sidescroller genre, and subsequent frustration. I do stand by the problems pointed out, but the positives outweigh the issues at hand. It’s for these reasons I rate Minoria:
6/10.
Check Out the Minoria Trailer:
You can wishlist Minoria for PC via Steam right now. The game releases August 27, 2019.
Steam Review
My name is Devon Huge. I'm passionate about writing, art, games, and lists that are one item too long.
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