Video Game / Minoria

Minoria is a Metroidvania game created by rdein of Bombservice, incorporating many elements from their previous work on the Momodora series, and sharing its dark tone with Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. It was published by Dangen Entertainment, and released on 27th of August, 2019 for PC through Steam, with a Nintendo Switch port that released on September the following year.

It takes place in a world ruled by the Church, controlled by His Eminent Grace and the Sacred Office. They train missionaries from birth to combat the witches, heretics who reject the teachings of the church and oppose them. Three great wars have been fought in the past against this menace, but yet another one is brewing.

You play as Sister Semilla, a missionary in the Church's service, who, along with the fellow missionary Sister Anna Fran, are the only nuns who survive an assault on the Ramillia castle by the witches. Princess Amelia Soliette, one of the two princesses who reign over the kingdom, has been betrayed by her sister, Princess Poeme, who has sided with the witches and now leads them in trying to conduct a ceremony that will wipe out the Church. Now, It's Up to You to rescue the Princess Amelia, thwart the witches' ceremony and do everything necessary to protect the common-folk from heresy. However, as you begin to achieve these goals, it soon turns out that there's a lot more than meets the eye...

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Tropes found in this game:

• Accidental Misnaming: Can be invoked by the player as Sister Semilla when they meet Pin in the gardens, ranging from 'Pen' to 'Poo.' Even Sister Anna Fran will get in on it.
• Action Bomb: Some of your opponents are black-and-red bomb-headed creatures that'll leap towards Semilla once they detect her and immediately detonate.
• Action Girl: Sister Semilla can slice apart dozens of enemies with her sword.
• Anti-Frustration Features: There are a few little tweaks rdein's made to the formula to make Minoria somewhat more accessible that its sister series, Momodora.
  • While Collision Damage is still in play, there's a small degree of mercy invincibility when you attack straight into an enemy's hurtbox.
  • Following up from the above, it's much more difficult to attack your way into an enemy's hurtbox, as Sister Semilla will keep a certain distance from enemies when attacking - generally, this is just outside the enemy's hurtbox.
  • Magic items are much more useful in this game as opposed to previous games in the Momodora series, being far more plentiful, possessing much greater ammo, and doing far greater damage. Past the first few bosses, it's entirely possible to beat boss fights with incense alone, if that's what the player wants.
  • A stun gauge has been added to enemies, making it more obvious when attacks will interrupt their animations and give the player time to lay into them. Passive bonuses from various incenses can be used to create a build for the player to focus on filling up the stun gauge faster; various offensive incenses like Storm and Northern Sky greatly increase stun buildup; and a weapon, the chain mace, was added via an update to appeal to these 'stun gauge' builds by having a slightly slower combo (and thus, less damage) than the other weapons in return for dealing increased damage to the stun gauge.
  • While flawless victories are still required to get items from bosses, there are less bosses with special items than in previous games,^note if there's no name and life gauge at the bottom of the screen, there's no special reward and most of the magic items found in this game are earned through exploration or the shop system.
  • The first boss is very easy to beat flawlessly, and possesses the one incense in the game that acts as a direct increase to damage to the player's main method of attack. Players who want an easier time with the game realistically only need to beat Lisette flawlessly to have a dependable passive incense for the rest of the game.
  • For players who really want to beat bosses flawlessly to get their items but just can't manage to do so, the penultimate boss, if beaten flawlessly, gives out the Calming Sea Incense, which gives the player a barrier that absorbs a single hit from any attack. Witch Deity Parushee, the boss in question, is almost trivial to beat flawlessly, meaning even players really struggling with the game can eventually do it with little trouble if they're patient and don't attempt any dangerous strategies, and the New Game + feature allows the player to take her incense back to the beginning of the game. This makes flawless victories far more reasonable to achieve, as the Calming Sea Incense also comes with two charges and can bank a third charge by being activated before the player restocks items at a save point, giving the player three free hits against bosses.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Frikka, who is otherwise an arrogant rogue and a murderer, nevertheless manages to land a good one on Fran, to which she can only stammer with "you don't understand!"

  Is this torture hell down here^note you encounter her at the end of the so-called "Halls of Absolution" area, used for imprisoning and torturing heretics by the Church an example of your god's infinite purity?

• Badass Boast: Sister Devoir gets one in this memorable exchange before her boss battle.
  Fran: Surrender yourself, witch!
  Devoir: Are you not going to address me by my convent name, sister?
  Fran: I said, surrender! You are not worthy!
  Devoir: My worth is not going to be decided by your Church, Sister. For too long you've plagued this land with your faith. It sickens me how boundless your cruelty can be.
  Fran: As commanded by the Saints! Our acts reflect their will!
  Devoir: Do something of your own accord, for once. Your Church should have no place in this world, and no one to adore it. Such rotten faith should not exist.
• Big Bad: Princess Poeme Soliette is the leader of the witches invading Remillia who wants to kidnap her sister, Princess Amelia Soliette, to perform a ceremony that will wipe out the Church. However, she only does this in response to the oppression that Amelia put the witches through in service of the Corrupt Church, and the good ending requires you to defeat Amelia as well.
• Bittersweet Ending: Both endings count, though for different reasons. In one, Sister Semilla and Fran allow Princess Amelia to execute her sister and are venerated as saints while Amelia continues to lead the genocide of unbelievers and swears to keep burning the Ceremonial Forest for as long as it takes. Alternatively, they stand up to her, but Amelia still manages to kill both Princess Poeme and Sister Fran before being subdued by Semilla. She survives, but is driven out of power. Ultimately, though the violence perpetrated by both sides is not quite fixed, peace is achieved, with the Sacred Office calling for a truce, but this also means that the Sacred Office gets away with staring the war and turning the sisters against each other.
• Black-and-Gray Morality:
  • You see how ruthless the witches can be from the get-go, as they storm the convent and murder every nun they come across. On the other hand, you soon learn from the conversations and lore that the Church of the land is just as eager to burn anyone they consider a heretic at stake, and that they were the ones who started the war with the intent to genocide the witches in the first place - though the gray comes back into play given many of the Archives, 27 especially, note that while the Church did strike first to maintain its authority in the face of theological competition in the form of the Archwitch, the ceremonies performed by the witches were inscrutable and thus an unknown factor in just how dangerous they would be for the world.
  • Against all odds, this actually verges closer to Grey-and-Gray Morality come endgame. For all of the Sacred Office's many, many problems, many of the nuns are innocent women who, at worst, are literally forced to fight by the upper echelons of the order, and those upper echelons can be coerced into at least attempting a truce with the witches. Meanwhile, as more information near the end of the game becomes unearthed regarding Archwitch Minoria, the Ceremonial Forest, and the process for summoning the Ceremonial Forest in the first place, the witches come out a lot closer to black than initially presented, as the summoning tears the land asunder and requires an obscene amount of blood sacrifices - including a human skull. As revealed in Poeme's dossier, the witch faction's stated goal is to 'free the planet from the destruction caused by mankind, and become one with nature,' which doesn't paint the witches in a positive light, given the homicides necessary to bring about this 'freedom.' They too, however, are willing to at least try to cease hostilities with the Sacred Office in the end, lending credence to the idea that, for all of both factions' flaws, there is hope for both sides improving.
• Bloodier and Gorier: than the Momodora series with blood splashing with each strike and the bloody remains of the witches' massacres and church executions shown throughout the game.
• Bottomless Magazines: One of the bosses, Frikka, mainly attacks by throwing several knives at once, indefinitely.
• Breath Weapon: Both of the witch Deities, Saora and Parushee, have an attack like this: for Saora, it's a solid blue beam she fires from her mouth in an arc that must be rolled through, while Parushee breathes out a line of blue flame along the floor that needs to be jumped over.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": As Archive 27 notes, 'witches' is a very broad term. Anyone talked to who has something to say about witches is quick to label anything opposing the player a witch, which fits the Sacred Office's definition but can get rather out there - including exploding dragonflies, ghosts, little gremlins with symbols for faces, and more.
• Church Militant: Much of the Sacred Office is made up of orders of battle nuns, who more closely adhere to a traditional military structure as opposed to an ecclesiastical hierarchy. The main character, Sister Semilla, is one such nun.
• Corrupt Church: While the rest of this page should make it clear the Sacred Office isn't without massive quantities of blood on its hand, it's noted in the Archives that the Saints themselves display almost comical levels of lust and greed, holding secret origies and getting fat off their fame among the populations of Ramezia and Ranillia.
• Crapsack World: The world is subjected to a large demonic invasion, curses taint the land, and it is amidst of an brutal ongoing civil war between the witches and a church that isn't composed of many saints.
• Critical Existence Failure: Played straight for all but two notable instances.
  • First, this trope is averted during a boss battle with Sister Devoir; once her health is reduced down to the final third, she is reduced to limping and slashing ineffectively, while her attempts at spellcasting fail.
  • Likewise, the next boss, Witch Deity Saora, is plant-like being who "grows" out of a tree, while attacking you with her vine-like arms and an energy beam from her mouth. Once the damage from Semilla's attacks stacks up, she falls off the tree and collapses in a heap, where she remains motionless for the rest of the fight, unable to defend herself with anything besides a short-range energy pulse.
• Curbstomp Battle: Actively encouraged in gameplay. Against bosses whose health bars occupy the bottom of the screen, beating the boss without taking damage - thus completely overpowering the boss utterly - rewards the player with an incense or item associated with the boss, often far better in comparison to other abilities of their type at the time.
• Dark Action Girl: Nearly every boss is one.
• Disc-One Nuke: The Clairemont, gained by beating Sister Devoir flawlessly. It's a very simple boost to damage that will last you about half of the game, and it's obtained in the second boss fight. Pretty much every weapon you get from that point on following the Clairemont's acquisition is just a variant of how Sister Semilla uses her standard attack, leaving the Clairemont uncontested until the Persephone is available, and even then it's mostly a matter of preference.
• Epic Flail: Post-release update added a Chain Mace weapon as an alternative to swords, with a different moveset and a greater focus on stunning enemies.
• Flash Step: Sister Devoir can flash a couple of steps forwards or backwards to avoid attacks.
• Gallows Humor: Almost certainly intentional. After beating the game, you can visit the dev room in the Library. When Sister Anna Fran is contacted here, she'll cheerily talk about '[meeting our] makers.' She's talking about the dev team in a meta sense, of course, but in the 'good' ending, Sister Anna Fran is dead. She is both literally and metaphorically 'meeting her maker.'
• Ground Pound:
  • The Witch of Lust can briefly fly upwards and offscreen before landing onto Semilla's last location with a damaging pound.
  • Princess Poeme has a really powerful version, where she flies high in the air and then does a Three-Point Landing that generates magical shockwaves across pretty much the entire screen.
• Improbably Female Cast: Pretty much every named character in the story is female. The exception is Olivier, a minor character who gets little screentime before getting stabbed by his own "ally" for incompetence, and His Eminent Grace, leader of the Church who is never seen.
• In Harmony with Nature: The Witches, as a whole, are aligned with the chaotic forces of nature, and some can be seen praying to nature entities. Unlike many examples of this trope, however, the Witches are not painted as innocent - though the Church struck them first, their natural ceremonies overtake large swathes of land in forests, and the Witches are brutal in their response to attacks against them, to the point of murdering innocents to send a message.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: After defeating Princess Poeme, either Sister Semilla allows Princess Amelia to finish off her wounded sister, or she and Fran stand up to her, but she proceeds to murder both Poeme and Sister Fran, before being subdued in a short "boss" battle.
• Magic Knight: Sister Semilla starts out fairly limited in her magical capabilities, but following the boss fight with Sister Devoir, it's really easy to fill out her magical capabilities with the massive amount of offensive incenses outside the starting cathedral - to the point fighting bosses with magic alone becomes a viable strategy.
• Missing Mom: Sister Semilla's mother was burnt at stake for heresy while she was very young, leading to her adoption by the church and becoming a missionary.
• Multiple Endings: Two of them, determined by a Last-Second Ending Choice after defeating Princess Poeme.
  • Semilla and Fran obey the command from Princess Amelia and allow her to finish off her sister. They are then officially canonized by Amelia, who commits to using the full might of her domain towards crushing heretics and razing the Ceremonial Forest in perpetuity. The last line of this ending is Sister Fran asking Semilla if they did the right thing.
  • Sister Semilla and Fran stand up to Amelia and try to dissuade her from further violence. However, she kills both Poeme and Sister Fran, before trying to fight Semilla and losing. Semilla leaves her alive but she's driven from power by the Church's Sacred Office, who finally agree to a truce with the witches. It finishes with Semilla's internal monologue that while there's been slow amount of change, they cannot undo the violence of the past, but may only learn from it, and we are shown the grave of Poeme and Fran in the Ceremonial Forest with a gentle butterfly atop it.
• Nature Is Not Nice: Part of what muddies the Black-and-Gray Morality waters of the two opposing sides in the Church's war with Witches. While it's very blatantly and very quickly made clear the clergy can participate in the worst aspects of what being a church implies in a dark fantasy setting, the rituals performed by the Witches in respect to nature involve mass terraforming of land, and the forces of nature are quick to respond to violence in kind, slaughtering innocents just as readily as the Church. By the time Sisters Semilla and Anna Fran arrive in Orimier, the majority of the populace has either been forced to flee or try their luck barricading their homes to survive.
• Nature Spirit: Some entities among the Witches' forces include nature deities, like Saora.
• The Needs of the Many: Though not framed this way, the choice between endings ultimately comes down to this. If you choose to continue working under Princess Amelia, Sister Semilia's companion, Sister Anna Fran, will survive, but the war between the witches and the Church will continue and the bodies will pile up with no end in sight. Anna Fran has to die at the hands of Amelia as punishment for turning against her in order to get the good ending where the war is ended with a truce.
• Religion is Magic: Through the use of mere incense, Sisters of the Sacred Office can summon shockwaves, produce energy bolts, heal themselves, form explosions, conjure lightning, create magical constructs with which to attack enemies, and much, much more.
• Remixed Level: After you escape Mercy Cellar, you have to make your way back through St. Hildreth's Cathedral. While the level hasn't changed much, the addition of fauna has made transversal a bit more involved, and the enemies are overall tougher.
• Sad Battle Music: Every boss theme is sad, since you are almost always fighting against members of a persecuted minority (the witches) who were Driven to Villainy by the Church's Final Solution.
  • Special mention goes to Decisive Battle, which is played during the battle with Sister Devoir, and starts off heroically, but then quickly takes on a much more sorrowful tone. Then, once she's heavily wounded and reduced to limping while slashing ineffectively and saying her last words, the music shifts to a slower and very appropriately titled On the Brink of Death.
  • The Final Boss theme, Auto-da-Fé (Portuegese for "act of faith"; usually associated with the Inquisition's ritual of public penance and/or execution of the heretics) is already sad ss by that point the player should well realize they were fighting for a geocidal theocracy against non-believers trying to defend themselves all along, and it also shifts to Auto-da-Fé II when Princess Poeme Turns Red and becomes even more angelic-looking as Snake Witch Poeme. Then, Standing up to Princess Amelia after that battle triggers the final, short fight, scored to Auto-da-Fé III.
• Shock and Awe: Northern Sky Incense and Chrysanth Incense casts down lightning around Semilla.
• Shockwave Stomp: Sister Devoir can gesture to generate a wave of red energy along the floor.
• Storm of Blades: The aptly named 'Storm' Incense summons a veritable rainfall of blades over an enemy.
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: The Mercy Cellar area is the Church's Torture Cellar where convicted witches are sent to endure a slow and painful death.
• Sword Lines: Sister Devoir wields a two-handed black sword, and so every swing with it leaves dark lines through the air.
• Turns Red: Downplayed. Due to the game's somber tone, the "transformations" are subdued and viewed less as something powerful and more as an act of desperation.
  • The first boss, Blossoming Witch Lisette, prays for protection from Mother Saora, one of witches' deities, halfway through the fight, and gets somewhat stronger attacks.
  • The next two bosses, Sister Devoir and Witch Deity Saora, become outright weakened instead; see Critical Existence Failure entry above.
  • The Final Boss, Princess Poeme turns from red (starting the battle in a red dress) to pure white in her 2nd phase, becoming even more angelic-looking than she was before.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: If a boss is beaten flawlessly - that is, without taking a single point of damage - Sister Semilla will get an item or an incense related to that boss. As an example, beating Lisette flawlessly gives Sister Semilla an incense that deals extra ice damage on a hit. This often works with Variant Power Copying rules, as many of the powers gained - like with the aforementioned Lisette's ice powers - aren't used as their former wielder intended.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Lisette might trip up first-time players or players rusty with Bombservice's previous games due to how she can't be shot at from a safe distance with a bow, but she's overall really manageable and telegraphs her attacks well in advance. Her immediate superior, Sister Devoir, however, will pound the player into dust if they don't come into the battle prepared. Her main combo is intentionally deceptive, since she can choose between keeping it to two hits, tacking on a third hit, or even adding a fourth hit that comes out incredibly fast, all meant to punish fighting aggressively. Her magical shockwave punishes panic jumping, since it needs to be dodged, and she also punishes jumping with a crescent slash she may use instead of her normal combo. Worse, while a player using healing items may be able to brute force their way through her, players going for special items need to beat her decisively in a Curb-Stomp Battle, because any hit landing, whether it be her deceptive combo or her shockwave, is an automatic reset. She's meant to teach the player the importance of noticing tells, since the only 'safe' way to go at her is to attack her during the long cooldowns for most of her combo finishers and her spells.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After Olivier's plan to poison both Sisters and lock them up fails to keep them contained, a frustrated Frikka stabs him before their eyes.

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