Huuma Mina: The Secret of Immortality is a third-person Hack & Slash game that sees us take on the role of Mina, a ninja who is unable to die. We start off with a cutscene showing a mad scientist that is desperately trying to uncover the way to achieve immortality and has seemingly managed something before it cuts to black. This leads us directly into the first scene containing our heroine Mina, as she rescues random stray cats around town for some money. You’ll quickly discover that the plot has a few serious occasions to it, but it is for the most part a tongue in cheek affair that revels in keeping the player wondering what wacky thing will happen next.
It’s not long before we finally get into some combat as you find your underground base under attack. This quick fight will get you accustomed to how this game handles as it does do some things differently than your typical Devil May Cry styled combat titles. First and foremost is that enemies do not flinch from your attacks. This means they can not be interrupted mid-attack and will carry their actions through like regular despite receiving damage. You, on the other hand, will be completed stun locked as soon as you take any damage and left merciless against their continued attacks.
Given your only skill at that part of the game is to throw a shuriken that costs nothing to use, has an infinite amount, and does a ton of damage from a safe distance, it can be easy to get the wrong impression. You can easily cheese your way through the entire game by doing so. No, the intended method of this combat system is to parry enemy attacks in order to stun them and do three times the amount of usual damage against their armor. Once their armor is destroyed, it is then that they flinch from damage, so can be stun-locked and disposed of much easier. Or you could just keep using the shuriken. It is a massive slow-moving projectile that will continuously damage everything it touches, and made even more destructive thanks to the areas you traverse are usually quite constrained.
The combat is interesting in theory but has many oversights and flaws that keep it from being much fun. It works well enough in one on one battles, though those are quite rare. Most of your fights will be with multiple enemies and not only do they lack a flinching mechanic, but they can directly attack through one another making a melee approach a chaotically frustrating affair. There is too much nonstop pressure from that and your foes do not go down quick. Everyone aside from the basic drone can take a truckload of punishment, while you can not. As long as you dodge roll, you are impervious to any damage. This allows you to try to position yourself in a more advantageous position, yet remember, one hit and you are permanently at their mercy.
Huuma Mina has an answer to being stun-locked too. It goes the nuclear route and gives you a special ability that can be used every half minute. Activating it chains up any regular foe near you and gives you ten seconds of invincibility. This skill will take up one of your two slots and you’ll obviously want to carry the only way to escape a combo. The shuriken projectile will be a tough one to convince yourself to swap out due to its usefulness. It was a mistake to limit your skills to only two, and even more of giving you the best the game has to offer right off the bat. There are two other fighting styles and other skills to unlock, but they are all simply inferior, while the combat is nowhere near fun enough to tempt you into experimenting either.
I’ve talked a ton about combat so far and this is for good reason. It is most of what you will be doing in this title once you are let loose into this open-world, split across multiple zones. You will have a ton of coins to collect if you want spare cash and there are “torture device shards” that you can find. More on that later. The issue here is the absurd spawn rate of enemies that pop out of thin air right on top of you. You will be fighting a squad of goons every few feet at such a rate that it would put most JRPGs to shame. Luckily, you can run right past them and towards your objective. Just hope that your objective doesn’t require you to be stationary, such as when talking to someone or you will be unable to defend yourself if they catch you.
You do level up by defeating them. It will net you extra HP, SP for skills, and armor. This is kind of useful, though by itself will not make combat any faster. What you need to do is complete side quests or gather enough coins to buy more cosmetics. Outfits increase your Attack, Lingerie your Defense, and Hairstyles your Break to destroy enemy armor faster. There is no need to equip any of it if you are fond of your look, simply purchasing them will permanently boost your stats. It makes gathering money from either jobs or collecting the infinitely respawning coins off the streets more meaningful, yet at the same time the already dull combat encounters that much more unbearable.
Most of the side quests are of the MMO variety. They either involve collecting a certain amount of random scattered objects or defeating a certain amount of enemies. This has a catch too. You can only accept up to five at any one time, including the main quests. Until you accept the quest, the objects you need won’t spawn and any of the enemy types you need to defeat are a waste of your time if you haven’t accepted that quest. It makes exploring feel like a dull obligation instead of something you’d want to do if these restrictions didn’t make wondering off for the sake of it a pointless endeavor. That makes having to travel to locations far from a fast travel point the exact opposite of fun and makes the open-world feel like more of a negative. Not helping matters are that some of the most common zones are unnecessarily large and empty, save for the coins scattered everywhere, and the endless enemies that phase into existence every few steps.
The main theme of this title is bondage. You will on occasion have to capture someone and torture information out of them. This takes place in your dungeon, where you can use a selection of unlocked torture machines to pry at their weakest stats, be it Humilation, Physical, or Brainwash. It is a very interesting idea. Unfortunately, aside from how they are seated, the torture device is just scenery for the most part. In all of them, you will have to whip them in a rhythm styled mini-game. Once again, it is unfortunate, but eh, I could live with that. But since this game likes to shoot itself in the foot with nearly all of its features, I’m afraid there is more bad news here.
You can not buy the multiple “torture shards” to unlock them nor are they given via quests. Remember a few paragraphs back when I said you could find them by exploring the environments? That’s not all there is to it. In the first area of the game, the dungeon, you’d have no doubt seen multiple locked doors with shards in them. They contain the last pieces of multiple sets. It is not the only area of the game that has Shards walled from you, far from where the rest of that set’s pieces are located. You can not unlock the wide majority of devices, if any with just exploration. It is necessary that you break random scenery and hope that RNG blesses you with a key. Then you have to find the location with the last shard you need for a set. Oh, and there are story missions that require you to torture someone and that task will be much more difficult without a good device for them, so it is not a simple side feature.
I do not take any pleasure in shredding an Indie game. This is not a bad game. It has cool ideas and I did ultimately enjoy my time with it, yet near every feature has a “but” attached to it. If it was an Early Access title, things such as the complete lack of music that makes areas feel lifeless, it randomly locking up whenever you activate the Quest Board or enter a cutscene, and other things could possibly be glossed over. With that out of the way, let’s focus on the positives, shall we? One thing this title certainly gets right is the customization of your character. From her hair, costume, undergarments, and even breast size, the naturally white-haired ninja can be changed to your liking with a large variety of options. Be as formal or as lewd as you want since your stats are based on how much clothes you own, not what you are wearing.
Another thing I’d like to mention is that this is not a hentai game. Downloading the R18+ patch just gives you the choice of purchasing some topless costumes. It is extremely tame and not any more lewd than what you’d see on other mature games or movies, really. This is not a positive or a negative, just something to keep in mind. The story is another one of its strengths. It is a very silly plot that knows just how wacky it is and keeps things playfully tongue in cheek. When it wants to, it does have some slightly interesting moments. And while it has way too much filler beforehand, I appreciate all the endgame content that contains the toughest fights, and most of the girls you’ll need to fill up your dungeon.
It is jank no doubt, however, jank alone does not make a game bad as fans of either Deadly Premonition or Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines can attest to. The ideas it contains and its “soul” can make it an experience that certain individuals can appreciate more than others. In this case, an open-world anime game with a bondage theme and a Devil May Cry styled fighting system will raise more than a few eyebrows. In this case, you will need a high tolerance to repetition and pointless game length padding above all else. It won’t blow your mind like any of the prior games I’ve mentioned, though it can be an enjoyable experience if you know what you are getting yourself into.
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