Mineko's Night Market Review (pissed off ragegamer)
While I knew I wanted to review this game whichever way it fell, I really wasn't sure whether I would recommend it or not. At this point, having finished the first season and some change, I think the answer is yes with some caveats.
Mineko's Night market was hyped up for years before its release, and I think that's partially responsible for the downfall of its reception. While we've had a flood of entries into the 'cozy' genre, this game made a lot of promises that positioned it as unique and engaging. I think it delivers on the first and fumbles on the second.
TL;DR: If you are looking for a full-time replacement for built out games like ACNH or Stardew Valley, you are doomed to disappointment on this one. Mineko's Night Market is beautiful in presentation, but the game loop is grindy and the social system is undeveloped. Listen to what the $15-20 price point is telling you. This is a cute wind-down game, not a full-time endeavor.
Pros
Graphics/visuals: If MNM delivers on one expectation that arose during development, it's the visuals. This game is beautiful and feels hand-crafted, in an art style that departs from both the 3D mobile game bobbleheads and pixel art that seem to be the only two styles the genre can produce lately. Not only is the art style gorgeous, but it's well-suited to the fantastical Ghibli-esque world.
Music: After reading the initial wave of rough reviews for this game, I went into it expecting disappointment and was pleasantly surprised. I was particularly blown away by the music and how comfy and unique it makes each area feel. This is a soundtrack I would listen to outside the game.
Story: The Ghibli influences are also heavily apparent in the story for this game. It's a simple story simply told, easy to follow and approachable for everyone. As a sucker for folklore and folktales, this hit a lot of very nice buttons for me, and heading to fix up a rural town with your father was a nice departure from the very tired 30-year-old "grandpa died and you inherited the farm" genre tradition.
Crafting system and market: While obtaining the recipes for crafting is a pain (more on that in the "Cons" section), I really loved the breadth of things you could craft to sell at the market and the integration of the materials into the game world and seasons. This game does more than most others in making crafting feel like a part of worldbuilding. Characters mention idol groups or shows and you're able to craft memorabilia to go along with them. It's just neat. And I found myself really looking forward to the market at the end of each week, to see what was on sale (although also because it signaled an end to the grinding).
Cons
Lag and hangups: Switch players have been vocal online about the load times on their console, but even with a high-end PC and a brand new SSD Steam Deck, I get lag and hangups during loading times and transitions into cutscenes. I don't think the number of loading screens is a problem necessarily (in fact, it's comparable to ACNH in that every time you go into a building or change a zone the game loads a new area), but the fact that the game hangs up and takes 10-20 seconds or longer to produce it is. I don't know if it's an optimization issue that can be solved, but I very much hope they figure out how to address this in a patch, because it's a legitimate pain point.
PC controls and key mapping: After playing half the first season on my PC, I gave up and swapped to my Steam Deck because of how egregiously bad the key mapping on PC is. You're expected to play with both hands on the keyboard, and you aren't able to map things onto mouse buttons even if you want to. By default, crouch and sprint are mapped to left and right shift (Ctrl and Shift being the standard in, oh, every single other game), canceling out of menus has no default keybind, and the key remapping screen is absolutely perplexing, with "Default" sprinkled on it eight different times with no clear meaning.
Pacing and game loop: I won't belabor the point because many other reviews already have, but this game requires you to grind. Grind (random) recipes, grind collection, grind fetch quests, with a very limited energy system that keeps forcing you to move the clock forward to be able to pick hairballs up off the ground (apparently a task nearly as laborious as chopping down a stump). What's more, you can pick exactly one place to go every day, so you have to plan out the schedule for which materials you'll need in advance. By the end of every week I find myself absolutely dying to get to the market and hopefully make enough money to advance the story.
Social system: I actually don't think this is necessarily a con, but I'm putting it here because it does not meet players' expectations. FYI: 90% of the NPCs in this game solely exist to grant you random recipes as a fetch quest reward, with a handful of them having fleshed out personalities. The ones who do are very cute and well-written, but you engage with them in mostly very shallow ways.
To reiterate: please, please do not spend your money on this game if your budget only affords you one and you are looking for the next cozy game to fall in love with and dump hundreds of hours into. The game is beautiful with a cute story, but there's not enough content and too much getting in the way of making this your primary cozy game. If you're like me and you're lucky enough to have the expendable income to pick a game with soothing music and 100 stumps to chop that sends you to sleep at bedtime, this is the one.