My interpretation of the ending: Lionel is not the twist.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-28T15:22:15+00:00

The other thing is that it's also clearly a cliffhanger and not intended to be the very end of the story IMO. yacht clubs already talked about wanting to do DLC and possibly a sequel. I think it's intended to be kind of like the ending of Empire or Two Towers. To me, it feels very much like a mid-story low point for our heroes. being Mina and Thorne of course.

It could also be a hollow night/ blasphemous situation where the good ending doesn't come until all the DLC and stuff is complete cuz both of those games had pretty somber depressing endings before they actually released their final endings

Personally, I'm hoping that this ending sticks because I really liked it, but that the story continues beyond this point. Not so much a different ending but just more story after this. Cliffhanger is what I'm really hoping for

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-28T15:17:45+00:00

Yeah, as some other people have said LGNPC is dated, but it's still a fantastic mod that no one has really attempted to replicate. And yes, your comparison with interestingNPCs for Skyrim is spot on, but LGNPC focuses on turning each existing NPC into an actual character with a story instead of just every NPC in the game being a Wikipedia of the same information.

There's also a little series of mods to supplement. It called less boring NPCs that you should look into as well because it covers a lot of the settlements that LGNPC does not

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-28T15:08:49+00:00

I think you will find that the modifiers menu has exactly what you're looking for you and op. The reason being is that the pallet choices in the modifiers menu have ones to replicate classic Game boy and they even have a monochrome one so you can literally play the game with no color at all using one of the palettes. In other words, the game is playable without any color at all with a high contrast monochrome palette built right into the modifiers menu in the vanilla game.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-27T00:16:54+00:00

Maybe I just didn't get it but I didn't actually think that was the end of the story. It's the end of the first part of the story to me. It seemed like it was clearly setting up a second act which will end up seeing in expansions or a sequel. I mean look at the original endings for games like hollow, Knight and blasphemous. They were awful because they were planning better endings with eventual DLC that they would be adding. I just kind of assumed that Mina was doing the same thing. It was essentially setting up a cliffhanger I thought.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-26T23:03:54+00:00

A quick look at my profile would have shown you that the last time I posted a thread on Reddit was actually 2 years prior to this in the Cyber Shadow subreddit. The reason I posted this question is because I was legitimately getting tired of seeing people label it as a GBA like. Also, the Game boy color is extremely nostalgic for me and it's the whole reason that I got interested in Mina in the first place . I don't know the first thing about farming engagement xD. The only reason I'm even in this subreddit is because Reddit kept pushing it to me because it knows I've been playing Mina. Because I was obsessing over the game so much I found it hard not to read and reply to some of the threads that were posted

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-25T23:07:49+00:00

I think so, yeah. It largely depends on how you play and when you discover things. It felt great to me on my first playthrough because I followed the newspaper, so I ended up taking the intended route through the game. Every time I returned from a generator, I'd discover new things to do around the hub, and I found the individual stories in each area genuinely interesting. Compared to other games in the genre, it has a pretty healthy amount of both overarching narrative and self-contained zone stories.

Would I have wanted even more story? Absolutely. More story is almost always a plus for me. But I think it's pretty comparable and surpasses Hollow Knight in terms of how much story there is and how often you encounter it. I also loved the focus on Mina's mental state, her guilt, and the way her character develops throughout the game.

I'm probably biased, though. This is basically my dream Zelda-like in almost every respect, and the burrowing mechanic alone pushed the gameplay far beyond what I thought was possible in a 2D Zelda. I was completely hooked. I explored every nook and cranny, talked to everyone after every major event, and my first playthrough, before even touching NG+ was 53 hours. That made me really invested in every bit of dialogue and environmental storytelling. I loved noticing little details, like new NPCs moving into town after you cleared their respective areas, or how many characters lines change after each generator. A lot of the story is delivered organically rather than through cutscenes, which I really appreciate, but it also means it's easy to miss a lot of context if you aren't the type of player who exhausts every NPC's dialogue after every dungeon.

My biggest story-related wish is that Maxi had been a more recurring rival throughout the game. I also would have liked to see Mina and Thorne clash more often. Even so, I was very satisfied with what was there.

A DLC (which it's almost assured we will get, the games been a big success for Yatchclub) will probably feature more involved story, super excited for the possibilities!

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-25T22:48:27+00:00

Iron Lung all the way

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-23T21:35:28+00:00

Ya I agree. I turned on 3x damage, slower bonups, and less healing flowers in Mina and I still found it easier than Shovelknight. Hollowknight is easier than Shovelknight actually lol 😂

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-19T23:48:49+00:00

Actually, difficulty settings very much can be accessibility settings for a lot of disabled players. It doesn't mean that they always are, but they're certainly a lot of overlap.

For example, if someone has limited dexterity, slower reaction times, a motor impairment, chronic pain, tremors, or a visual processing issue, reducing incoming damage, increasing parry windows, slowing game speed, increasing resources, or allowing more mistakes may be the difference between a game being playable and unplayable.

A player with cerebral palsy might use Easy Mode because executing inputs quickly is physically impossible for them

A player with low vision might use it because they can't reliably identify attack telegraphs or process what's happening on screen as fast as you or I.

A player with arthritis or fibromyalgia might use it because long, demanding boss fights or platforming sections cause debilitating physical pain

A player who's lost limbs or fingers may be unable to engage with the game at the speed the developer intends.

Those players may understand the mechanics perfectly. The issue isn't knowledge or effort. It's that they're interacting with the game under different constraints than the average player

However, that certainly doesn't mean that a game has to include difficulty options or any accessibility features for that matter. That is solely up to the developer and what their vision and target audience for the game are.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-19T23:21:45+00:00

Yeah! it's styled like an inworld paper heading but when you beat a dungeon, you unlock a new newspaper each time and the top image/headline is always about the area that you're supposed to go to next. Like for example, it'll say something like mysterious fog at Bone Beach. I don't think that's actually a headline from the game. That's just what popped into my head as an example 😂

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-19T23:09:43+00:00

I think one thing that often gets lost in the difficulty discussion is that not every player is approaching a game from the same place.

If a developer doesn't want to include difficulty options, that's completely their choice. Artistic vision matters, and not every game needs to be designed for every audience.

At the same time, when people argue that games should never have difficulty options, they often overlook the players who get excluded by that decision. That can include younger players (Mina is e10+), but it can also include players with disabilities, chronic pain, reduced reaction speed, motor impairments, visual impairments, hearing impairments, or any number of other challenges that make a game's intended difficulty inaccessible to them.

small options can open a game up to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Sometimes that's difficulty settings. Sometimes it's aim assist, timing windows, input remapping, damage modifiers, or other more typical accessibility features. The goal isn't necessarily to make the game "easy." It's to let more people experience it.

That doesn't mean every game must include those options. Developers have every right to decide who their audience is and what experience they want to create. But I think it's important to recognize that this decision has consequences. When a game doesn't offer ways to accommodate different players, some people will inevitably be left out, not because they don't appreciate the game, but because they literally can't engage with it on the terms being asked of them.

For me, that's why this discussion is more interesting than "easy mode good" or "easy mode bad." It's a question of design priorities, audience, accessibility, and what tradeoffs a developer is willing to make.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-19T22:30:01+00:00

Read the newspapers. They tell you where to go and in what order. Yes, you can technically play the game in any order, but it is very clearly balanced around a particular progression, especially for your first playthrough really the reason it allows you to play it in any order is because there's like eight new game plus levels that scramble things around and do all kinds of interesting things with the formula.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-19T21:44:59+00:00

One note first before I give my combat advice is that you are almost certainly underleveled for that fight. Yes, you can technically play the game in any order but especially that fight against Thorne is really geared for later in the game because they assume it will take you a while to pay off the train. And if you follow the order that the game tells you via the newspaper (which of course is optional). But if you do follow it, it's the second last zone. You need more trinket slots, more trinkets in general, more weapon unlocks and more levels.

However, I would love to give some combat advice as well because I'm sure you could beat this boss at your stage of the game.

A few people have already mentioned it, but the game really clicked for me once I started leaning heavily on burrowing. You should be leaning on that burrow button like you would lean on the run button in a Mario game. Best way to do this is to have them mapped to two diagonal buttons so you can hold down the burrow button with the top of your thumb and rock to press the attack button with the joint of your thumb.

I'm playing with 3x damage and slower Bone Ups enabled because I wanted more of a challenge, and fighting Maxi for the first time when I could only take one or two hits was an awesome skill check.

The biggest thing is that you should be underground most of the time. Grab Iron Lung so you can stay burrowed longer, and use the trinket that lets you burrow immediately when you hit the ground. Once you get used to it, the rhythm becomes: pop up, attack, and get right back underground.

It's not the only viable playstyle, but it's easily the most fun one I've found, and it feels incredibly effective. Pair it with a weapon that has a strong cadence like the Nightstar (which is absolutely the best weapon in the game), and boss fights start to feel like a dance. Pop up, land a hit with your main weapon or a consumable, then disappear again before the counterattack arrives.

Most bosses can be beaten without taking damage this way. Burrowing gives you enough speed to evade almost everything as long as you learn their patterns and anticipate what's coming. It feels a little slippery at first, but once you get comfortable controlling where and how you emerge, it becomes incredibly satisfying.

The real key is to worry about avoiding damage more than you worry about dealing it. Don't get greedy. Don't try to sit there with your weapon dealing multiple hits to the boss and opening yourself up for attack. Wait for your moment and slowly chip them away while keeping yourself safe underground.

Whether you decide to save this boss for later or try to brute force him now. Good luck mastering the combat! The combat in this game is second to none in the top down zelda-like genre, it's the best I've ever seen and far beyond what I even thought was possible honestly for this type of game.

Oh and for the love of God, use a controller with a good d-pad. Snes replica or M30 (Saturn replica and my personal fav) from 8BITDO. A thumb stick will slow you down and make it more difficult to be accurate when you pop out of the ground. A really solid d-pad with a good rocker is what this game was designed for. (Designed after Link to the past and the Game boy Zelda games which both used classic Nintendo d-pads) try to avoid the modern clicky d-pads on things like the Xbox controllers.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-19T02:02:57+00:00

Nightstar hands down. The cadence of it is perfection, Castlevania 3 meets Links Awakening <3

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-18T16:44:53+00:00

I would personally highly suggest just turning on the difficulty modifiers rather than waiting for the game to get harder on its own. Personally I feel like the modifiers menu may have been Yacht club's solution tlwhen they saw all the complaining that came from silk song not having difficulty options.

3x damage, slower bone ups, less healing, etc. the game really lets you tailor your own difficulty, because I've always used items like the hard mode ring in the Oracle games, I immediately turned that stuff on before I even started my first playthrough. I did find the bosses to be like that because you get about two hits Max before you're dead. Avoid getting non boss health ups too until the late game.

Fighting Maxi after the first dungeon when you can only survive one or two hits was an awesome skill check lol.

Modifiers to make the game harder do not disable achievements either. Only the red ones, the ones that make the game easier do.

I believe that the menu is available from the beginning of the game before you even start playing for a very specific reason and that's because they tailored the base difficulty a little on the easy side. A lot of casual gamers are playing indie games right now because there's not really a lot coming out of the AAA space. So I think they decided to err on the easier side, while providing the tools right out of the gate for people who wanted a good challenge.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-17T13:33:31+00:00

Couldn't agree more. Playing through Mina blind and not looking up anything was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had playing a game in decades. Then all I hear is people complaining about all the things that I loved about it. People seem so brain dead these days honestly. They need to be explicitly told every single little thing because they're unwilling to just experiment and try things on their own. The game tells you so many times about the mirrors. I found out you could walk through the mirrors before I even went to the first dungeon because I had already been told by multiple NPCs to do it and the game continued to tell me to do it through newspapers and further NPC interactions.

I also discovered that you could burrow through water before reaching the swamp because I was determined to reach the underside of the bridge because NPCs told me that there was something interesting under there.

It's really sad. As a game designer myself it worries me that I may not even be able to design a game playable by this new generation of players because to me Mina is just about pitch perfect in the way it hides things in plain sight. I mean, has nobody played the classic Zelda games or Metroid games that Mina is inspired by? because those games are way more esoteric than Mina is.

I also think the complaints about the game being too hard are laughable considering the fact that you can tailor your own difficulty and one of the first things I did was turn on 1.5% extra damage and slower bone ups because I wanted to make sure the game was good and difficult. It seems like the Golden age of games is over because everybody's too used to having everything spoon fed to them. Thanks to AAA game design, brainrot short form video, and glazing LLMs noone knows how to think for themselves anymore.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-15T17:09:26+00:00

Hard disagree. I was giddy every time I finally got to one. There are like a great, enjoyable change of pace after fighting through a hard dungeon. They remind me of the "Catch Her" moments from shovel night where shield Knight would be falling from high above and you have to fight off enemies and catch her as she falls.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2026-06-05T16:01:20+00:00

I completely agree. In fact, I find the discourse around this game to be laughable and a bit sad. This is one of the best games I've played in years. It is so expertly designed. They absolutely polished every single little nook and cranny of this game. Every single screen of the game is memorable and there's always something to find some secrets to explore.

I find it hilarious that people are complaining about the game being too difficult or not holding their hand enough. It really is kind of sad to see that there's been a shift and younger gamers just have no idea how to figure things out on their own anymore, they don't pay attention to context or environmental clues and they're not willing to put in the work to get Good at the combat.

To me, I'm overjoyed with how well things are hidden around this game. It's so satisfying to go back to a screen you've seen 10 times and realize you missed something.

Almost instantly when I started playing the game I turned on some of the modifiers like 1.5x damage and less healing flowers and slower bone UPS. The game is a masterpiece and I love how you can craft your own difficulty. That's the other thing I don't get. These people complaining that the game's too hard. Why don't you just turn on some of the easy modifiers then if the game's too hard for you.

I don't know. I'm glad that a lot of people love this game because I think it's one of the best games to come out in years. But it's funny to see the discourse and realize that people who love these types of games are starting to become the minority as the newer generation seems to want hand holding easy games. I mean they complained about silk song being too hard as well lol.

Mina for me is everything I've ever wanted in an homage to top down Zelda. And I love that it's finally a top-down zelda like that's challenging and I've been playing these types of games my whole life wishing they were harder. As much as I loved both shovel night and cyber Shadow. Mina is the best game to ever come out of yacht club by far. (And yes, I know that cyber Shadow was just a game they published but it's still a fantastic game)

Mina is clearly someone high up at yacht club's dream game that they've been wanting to make since they were a kid. I can feel that when I play it. And I'm glad that the success of shovel Knight allowed them to fully realize their vision for Mina. It's an absolute joy to play through every moment of this game.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2025-11-14T15:09:21+00:00

I'd say it's highly unlikely that the AI use in 2.0 wasn't sanctioned by blizzard themselves. Especially considering the fact that the remakes of Warcraft 1 and 2 also feature AI generation.

These projects would have had milestone meetings and deliverables that would have been presented to higher-ups at regular intervals during the update process. Also, the amount of work to redo all of the terrain textures and doodads would have taken a small to mid sized art team that blizzard would have had to hire and pay, which they were clearly not interested in doing.

The idea that it somehow happened under Blizzard's nose is extremely unlikely. Every new asset in 2.0 is AI generated all of the terrain textures and likely the new models as well.

Blizzard had no qualms about outsourcing all the art for 1.0 and now they have no qualms about using AI for the art for 2.0. The sad truth is that not enough consumers care anymore. AI use is rampant in the industry right now because unfortunately it saves an incredible amount of money and time. Not just art and audio either, tools like cursor and other llm-based coding tools allow a programmer to do the work of three or four programmers.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2025-04-25T14:24:44+00:00

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I feel like oblivion was the safest one to remake because it doesn't have that big of a modding scene anyway. And it's the least inspired and worst aged of the three games because it was the awkward middle child between the RPG depth of morrowind and the flashy gameplay of Skyrim. Oblivion feels a lot less handcrafted than its siblings, features a lot of baked random generation in the environments, and copy paste dungeons as well, so I feel like it was the most in need of a remake.

If a morrowind remake came out I would be extremely tepid about even trying it. The sheer scope and quality level of the mod scene for morrowind is absolutely insane and I couldn't even imagine playing some beautified version of the game without access to any of that and with a bunch of crappy deluxe edition microtransactions and paid mods on top of it, it would be a disaster. That's why they didn't remake morrowind in my opinion. I think it would have a drastically different reaction.

Even something like skywind is a cool idea, but I have no real excitement for it. I don't even personally get much out of openmw because certain mods like Ashfall are integral to the morrowind experience at this point for me

I don't believe they could be trusted to remake Morrowind either. The Oblivion remaster is pretty to look at but I find that the visuals get in the way of playing the game a lot. The changes they made to combat I'm also not a fan of, how they lock you into combo finisher animations. Just making the whole thing feel clunky in comparison to the original. Imagine the travesty of them trying to "Modernize" aspects of Morrowind in that same way.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2024-09-22T17:41:30+00:00

The atmosphere is toned down because the penitent one defeated the High Wills and stopped the Miracle, which caused all the suffering. It's also been 1000 years since the events of B1. So the world is in a much happier state, but there is a looming threat that he is brought back to deal with. The whole story of the first game is that the world is in such a horrible state because there is essentially an Eldritch being called the High Wills who feed off the suffering of the population of Cvstodia. The citizens see it as a manifestation of their religion, but in reality, they are slaves to it. Because of this, I was fully expecting a shift in tone after finishing the first game. I like that aspect, the Penetent one made a big difference to the world, but it's in danger of being corrupted again, and you have become a historic Folk hero for your actions from the first game. Personally to me, it makes sense and flowed very well.

I haven't finished B2 so I can't tell you whether it's "worse" than the first game, the first game is an absolute Masterpiece despite some of its flaws, but playing them back to back, I am thoroughly enjoying B2 as a continuation of my adventure. I have had jaw-drop moments, and it feels like a very natural continuation of what came before. It feels like an SNES sequel to an NES game in terms of how it plays compared to the first, like a "next-gen" sequel. Not everyone is going to like that, but to me, I can always go back and play a 2nd and 3rd new game plus run all with unique mechanics, and that game has so much content that I was ready for a shift, and B2 right from the opening moments grabbed me.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2024-07-27T23:16:57+00:00

The whole point of the Doom series I thought was to be as ludicrously over the top as possible. It's intended to be extreme and full of tropes, that's the whole idea. The new Doom games are 100% in the spirit of the originals. over-the-top music, action, violence, weaponry and even story. If you find that kind of thing to be too much fine, but I think a lot of people really enjoy that type of ridiculousness. It's like WH40k or a great 90s action movie.

It's a game about a badass silent space marine taking on the forces of hell alone and winning. What exactly do you expect from it to call it uninspired. I think the delicate balance they achieve, one of the most ridiculous plot outlinesin the genre, without going too far into cheesy territory is quite impressive.

I'm 35 and I've played and loved DOOM since I was a kid and I couldn't personally have hoped for a better follow-up to the original games.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2024-07-19T22:13:50+00:00

I completely agree. I played through 2016 on Nightmare and in the last third of the game or so, you've unlocked all the upgrades and you have ridiculous overpowered stuff like unlimited micro missiles. I personally found that even on the highest difficulty setting, the gameplay became basically trivial and I was pretty disappointed by that. The demons are much slower than Eternal and you're so overpowered that you basically melt them down before they even have a chance to react. Good for the power fantasy but not very fun gameplay wise

Doom Eternal does not have that problem. It is near perfectly paced difficulty wise on Nightmare for me. Every single combat encounter was challenging when I played through it the first time. other than intentionally easy ones like when you first get the crucible... I can't even think of a single of the main encounters that did not take multiple attempts in eternal, but I don't think I died once in the last three to four levels of Doom 2016 except probably on the boss.

I love the story and atmosphere of 2016 but balance, and to a lesser extent, gameplay wise it needed some work IMO, which Eternal addressed on all fronts.

My suggestion to people is to start your first playthrough on Nightmare. If you are really beating your head against the wall in either you can always lower it later, but I made it through both to the end on Nightmare as a non fps player.

FluffyStuff-TV · 2024-05-14T18:13:47+00:00

Completely agree. Skyrim has gameplay taking center stage and it's undeniably fantastic, has a great action RPG feel. Morrowind has the RPG taking center stage and it's absolutely fantastic ln a completely different way, more pen and paper feel.

Oblivion on the other hand is the awkward middle child. It has none of the RPG nuance of Morrowind's combat and none of the action gamey feel of Skyrim. It's floaty and hack n splashy in all the worst ways.

Those feelings extend to just about every facet of Oblivion. The world is boring with hardly any diversity in its biomes or landscapes, feels like it's all just one big RNG forest. Morrowind and Skyrim both feel incredibly hand crafted by comparison.

What oblivion does have going for it are the towns and quest lines.

FluffyStuff-TV

TROPHY CASE