I picked up on the townsfolk talking about the crypt, but its a very weak hint for ‘you should go here first’, when there’s townfolk complaining about all sort of issues. I had loosely had the crypt in mind, as I was exploring, but I never found it before getting pulled forward by the Spark dropping into Septembersburg, and I just figured ‘if the game didn’t want me here, then it shouldn’t be possible to be here’. Which, I think is a natural assumption, considering how Zelda coded the game is visually and mechanically.

Its just, the game isn’t structurally a zelda game, so that was a bad assumption on my part. I just wish there was a bit more communication, that the game is structurally Elden Ring, not Oracle of Ages.

One of the first things I stumbled into in Septembersburg is the Wallower section, which lent itself well to the (incorrect) assumption that Trinkets are going to be a way the game mechanically gates sections (a la classic Zelda)

Edit to add: I still think Mina is a great game. But I think it fails in setting tone and expectations properly, for how it wants you to approach it. My favorite game of all time is La-Mulana, which is unflinchingly retro and cryptic. But I feel like it does a better job of communicating that. I’ve seen people say “don’t be fooled by its appearance, Mina isn’t Zelda, its Bloodborne”, which I think is very true, and that I would have enjoyed the game more had I went in with that perspective, instead of stumbling upon it.

Yeah, my favorite soulslike by far is Sekiro, which is mostly linear. Hollow Knight and Silksong are also fantastic, but I felt there, too, the ‘souls’ mechanic is kind of just unnecessary.

I’m in the endgame area (manor) with like 90% completion. Can’t be assed to do some of challenges (like fishing).

I like the game a lot, and love the pixel art, but the game lacks some tightness in some areas. The platforming, esp. big jumps and flying enemies, is frustrating a lot of the time. Lots of me not knowing where exactly I am or hoe I’m going to move.

There’s also a bit of a muscle memory problem for me, with how I kept thinking things would be grid-based, due to the world, but I’d often think I was line up with foes, only for my weapons to squeak right past them.

My last complaint is purely a me problem, but I hate charge weapons, which the game seems to use a lot of innthe various upgrades. I ended uo using basically only daggers, as all the other weapons just feel so shitty to me.

Biggest complaint, only thing that’s more than a quibble, is I really didn’t like the inclusion of both vague region order and the souls-dropping mechanic. Dropping your money on death punishes poking into places to look around, drawing you forward into challenges repeatedly. First area I beat, I was like, ‘fuck, that was hard. Does it escalate from here?!?’ Spoilered myself, only to learn I had just done the 3rd area, and the doing 1 then 2, they were easy enough with all my upgrades to kind of kill the fun. Really soured the whole first half of the game for me, and it feels solvable bt either having some clearer guidance on intended region order, or dumping the (imo unnecessary) ‘souls’ mechanic.

Still, all of those above frustrations didn’t ruin it for me, and I’d still give it a 8.5 out of 10 maybe.

I agree with the point this is trying to make, but I don’t think it does its job.

Like, the whole argument from the ‘good guy with a gun’ crowd is about stopping them early. You’d need to cross reference each of these catagories with ‘how many people did the mass shooter kill’. And, this would really only be a strong argument vs the ‘good guy with a gun’ point if the ‘shot by bystander’ result had no fewer average deaths.

Additionally, it’s easy to clap back with ‘well, yeah, our society doesn’t have enough “good people” trained with guns, that’s why it’s only 5%!’

Again, I don’t agree with those points, it’s just that this chart is pretty bad at presenting an argument against them.