Minoria

Verdict:
Recommended, wait for a sale.

Content Warnings:
Religious prosecution, mentions of slavery, violence, imprisonment, death.

Do you play as a woman?
Yes, you play as Sister Semilla

Do the women drive the story?
Yes, every major character is a woman

How many men are there?
1 side character

What are the Romance options?
None

Is the game any good?

Minoria is a sidescrolling action platformer with combat similar to Salt and Sanctuary, or a 2d version of Dark Souls. It’s a short game, taking only a few hours to beat, being possibly slightly too short for my tastes.

Minoria’s graphics are unimpressive, but they are functional while being stylised enough to be pleasant. The few times the game does closeups of a character’s face is really the only time the graphics don’t hold up to scrutiny. Animations are all quite nice, with most of them having good telegraphing and impact.

Gameplay consists of running around a 2d environment and fighting the enemies you come across. Options for platforming are limited early on but open up later in the game. The focus of the gameplay systems is on the combat, which is quite difficult when you first begin. Alongside a standard attack chain, you have incenses that act like spells, a parry, and a dodge roll. None of these actions cost any kind of stamina, giving you the freedom to do them as much as you like.

Most enemies in the game aren’t particularly tough, going down in just a couple attack chains. Those that are tougher are either trivilised when you like the timings for parries, or continue to pose an interesting challenge for the duration of the game. Unfortunately, those enemies that remain interesting are few and far between, meaning each individual enemy is usually a pushover. Minoria solves this by giving you large combat encounters, which make for totally acceptable challenges.

There are only a few bosses in Minoria, but each manages to be enjoyable. Parrying does not trigger a counter attack on bosses, and their attacks do a lot more damage, meaning you have to be very careful. None of them gave me too much of a challenge, though I did have to try a couple of them more than once. As a warning, a few bosses enter a ‘weakened’ state when they are close to death. There is no option to spare them, so you are forced to kill them, which I found upsetting.

Minoria lacks the death punishment mechanics similar to other games like it, such as Salt and Sanctuary or Hollow Knight. I count that as a blessing, the mechanics never really made sense to me in the first place. The design seems focused on easing out the difficulties and frustrations of other games in the genre, and they mostly succeed.

The story is nothing groundbreaking or particularly noteworthy. You are Sister Semilla, part of an expedition of nuns sent to drive the invasion of the witches out of the castle. Unfortunately for you, you’re last to arrive and the only surviving nun is Sister Fran, who joins you and acts as your voice and advisor for the journey. The story touches on some fairly dark topics, most notably religious prosecution and religious violence, and it does so with a good measure of care. Ultimately it comes just shy of making a definitive statement on where it stands in relation to those issues, which is disappointing.

The friendship of Sisters Fran and Semilla is truly very enjoyable though. They seem to genuinely care about and comfort each other. It’s very sweet, I’m always a sucker for women supporting women.

Minoria is a fun little game that doesn’t take too long to play and isn’t too difficult. While it doesn’t stand out in any particular area, it also isn’t terrible at anything either. It’s worth a play if you can find it on sale.