Maidens of a Hollow Dream is a horizontal Bullet Hell that has us take control of two girls on a quest to save their academy. It is set in a world a few thousand years after humanity has all but been wiped out. This setting has a surprising amount of lore behind it you can read up on from the main menu. In the actual game though, it mostly retains a cute chibi style look with dialogue mostly consisting of a regular back & forth between school girls. The only indication of how grim the world is comes in the form of a few bosses that nearly look out of a different game due how much their appearance contrasts everything else.
This is quite a unique game, featuring many unusual systems at play that sets it apart from other bullet hells. Chief among these is the fact that you control two characters at once. One is your heavy hitting type, while the other is based around weak attacks that set magical rings around your enemies. These rings will destroy all the surrounding projectiles in its range once a foe is defeated and turn them into gems. It is a great way to both make room to navigate around a screen that is usually full of bullets, and to rake up huge points.
Setting up these magical rings is not as easy as just shooting at enemies. Firing at them from across the screen barely has any effect and will create a tiny ring around them. In order to be at its most efficient, you need to get up close and personal. The closer you are the better. This method obviously carries its risks, but the rewards are just as worthwhile as its dangers. Once you’ve got an enemy where you want them, you should switch to your fire-based character to quickly finish them off with her powerful attack strength. It is possible to destroy enemies with the secondary character, though you’ll be going at it for a long time due to the feeble damage behind her attacks.
Teamwork is vital to your survival and taking into account where both characters are is just as important. The character you are not controlling is invulnerable, but as soon you switch over to them she can take damage again. Some projectiles patterns are impossible to avoid by yourself. You need to position the other character just right and switch over to her to safely find yourself on the other side. This also works with some walls, which you will need to ‘teleport’ through. Mastering the ability to switch between them is invaluable, though doing so blindly or out of desperation will likely see you teleporting face first into a barrage of bullets.
Receiving a couple of hits is no big deal. Both of your characters have their own health bars and they do slowly regenerate over time. Taking sustained damage over a small course of time is what will get you. It is also worth noting that the secondary character’s health recharges slightly faster, so it may be wiser to play as her during difficult sections to take the brunt of any damage. Just make sure not to overdo it since if one of them goes down, they both go down, and you only have a single continue to get through the game. If you are playing on Normal mode, you will gain money to permanently upgrade their stats and attacks, so it is not a complete loss.
You can attack in both directions and will have to deal with enemies rushing in from both sides. Each direction has their own dedicated button, allowing you to shoot where you want very quickly. Mashing the attack button will cause you to shoot a wide spread of projectiles, mostly for your secondary character. It is most useful as a way to quickly set up magical rings around foes, more so than quickly destroying multiple enemies since her strength is quite low after all. When you want to destroy everything in your path, merely hold down the attack button to make your main character shoot a sustained beam of fire that will make short work of most any foe.
Both of them attack together, so even if you are playing as the side character, you can make the other one shoot her fire beam to obliterate the enemy you just set up with a magical ring. Since you do not control the other girl directly you will need to position her before your attack. It is also handy to remember that she is invulnerable when you are not controlling her, meaning you can position her in otherwise extremely dangerous areas to wipe out enemies. There is an insane amount of depth to this game. Controlling two characters is not just a gimmick.
Converting enemy projectiles into magical rings will also fill up a meter at the bottom. It can be filled up to three times over, with each possessing a more powerful special attack for when you need them. That is what makes using the magical ring system so important, as it not only destroys the projectiles giving you a temporary safe haven free of bullets, it also gives you a countermeasure to use against otherwise overwhelming odds. Playing this as a regular ‘shoot em up’ and immediately destroying everything will make it more difficult on yourself in the long run, though it is entirely doable.
There are four levels overall and each contains both a mid-boss as well as an end boss. The bosses are far larger than you and fire quite the dangerous volley of projectiles. They all have individual destructible body parts or allies. This allows you to make use of the magical ring skill as to destroy their projectiles whenever you blow off a limb or kill their minion. Easier said than done since as you may imagine, getting near a giant spider nearly the size of the entire screen may prove bad for your health. You will have to play aggressively however, since the bosses will simply leave if you take too long. That includes the final boss. Few things are more anticlimactic than beating the game because the last boss got bored and left during the epic final battle.
Right before the boss fights are where the only in-game dialogue take place. What they have to say is not terribly interesting and there is an option to turn off the story sections, which I would definitely recommend for future playthroughs. It doesn’t turn them off entirely however, it simply automatically fast-forwards their speech when it occurs. Also worth noting is that this game is not as lewd as it may first appear. Sure the girls wear nothing but a sticker to cover up their genitals, but the only time you’ll see it is when activating a special attack and a brief CG pops in. Whether you like that sort of thing or not, it is not really worth taking into consideration when considering buying this title.
Four levels may not seem like much, though they are pretty lengthy and do not contain a single dull moment. It also features two modes, Normal and Very Hard. Playing on Normal will allow you to select any level that you have reached and also features the upgrade system. By defeating foes and picking up their coins you can eventually buy all kinds of goodies. These range from new attacks, faster health regeneration, extra credits to use, and much more. It takes quite some time to buy anything however. A bit too long if you ask me. In any case, you can beat the game without buying anything, and it is even encouraged as equipping an upgrade reduces your overall points by certain percentages.
Very Hard mode features more complex bullet patterns to contend against as you may expect and you can’t select stages. You only have one credit before you need to start over from the beginning of the game. More importantly is that your upgrades or anything else you’ve spent long hours saving up to buy has no effect here. Regardless of all that, it is actually easier in some regards. Primarily is the fact that your characters start out already decently upgraded, making it a ton easier than when you started off in Normal mode with a peashooter. Still, it is ill-advised to start off on very hard since there are a ton of unique quirks to this game you should learn before jumping into the deep end.
The music is quite catchy and fits the cheeky nature of this game well. In fact, the first stage features a Vocaloid song which is how you know this will be a quality title. It also features online leaderboards, replays of your playthroughs you can save, and in-game achievements to work toward unlocking. The only real complaints I have toward it is that bosses leave if you take too long and that upgrades feel too grindy to buy. Maidens of a Hollow Dream is a deceptively unassuming looking title that one may immediately write off due to its lewd premise. That would be a huge mistake as it is a title any fan of the genre should try out.
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