This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
As someone who loves Metroidvanias, I started into Micetopia with high hopes. The artstyle is cute and well done, but that's about all the positives I have for the game. I never write reviews, but for the negatives:
Combat: Rich the mouse, whose name is not mentioned anywhere in the game to my knowledge, fights with a short sword - and I mean SHORT. If you're standing on a breakable object, he can't hit it - the object needs to be in front of him. I found it frustrating to try to break pots for health because I would be literally touching it and unable to break it. Enemies are interspersed sometimes in a way that makes it nearly impossible to avoid being hit. Rich only has 3 lives from start to finish, so one hit was a significant setback. This combined with the fact that health drops are rare (and one-time per foray) means that most of the game, I was sitting in near-death to very-near death territory. Enemies are very one-note, with only one plan of attack - bosses included. This made them a joke to defeat upon seeing that attack for the first time. Enemies are often hidden, which I actually don't have a problem with, but sometimes, you would be falling without the opportunity ahead of time to see one and you'd land on it. And likely die.
Movement: Probably my biggest gripe with the game. Jumps are not variable in height, and upon unlocking double jump, you can't double jump after a fall - it needs to be after a jump. The roll that you unlock does give you invulnerability frames, but it's unclear when you are safe from damage. Overall, not good movement for a platformer and especially for a Metroidvania.
Exploration: Often breaks one of the most fundamental rules of level design: always reward the player for exploring. Several dead ends with no reward made me feel cheated - even just a much-needed health would have been appreciated. There are secret rooms which lead to secret areas, although the most they're hidden is simply that they don't appear on the map. The secret areas are simple platforming challenges that don't really fit the Metroidvania vibe as they are isolated levels, but I don't really have a problem with that. "Challenge" is giving them a bit much credit, though.
Furthermore, there are only three sections to the game: the Caves, where you spend most of the game; the Forest; and the Village. The Caves has 69 rooms and very few "save points" - save points being portals that take you back to the village. However, as you can only have one active portal at a time, it's often much faster and easier to die and reenter the region than to backtrack from the dead end you just reached (usually a boss fight with an unlock, at least - but you have to return to the village to claim your new ability anyway). I used this technique upon defeating the final boss and entering his secret portal, as it took me to another secret portal in the Caves that I had already completed and I had more exploration to do in the Forest. These huge regions with little variation, lots of backtracking, and awful fast-travel options made exploration extremely repetitive and dull, sometimes even downright frustrating.
Music: Well, since there were only three songs in the game (Caves, Forest, Village), the music got extremely repetitive. I wouldn't say it's bad, although the Village music does not loop well - just kind of annoying after a while.
Unlockables:
Double Jump: same issue as jump, non variable height and can't double jump after falling, only after jumping.
Arrows: fine, although only had use in a couple places - one of which (a target) was not obvious that it was intended for an arrow. Arrows also inexplicably fly through map geometry, which was not obvious nor was I informed, until I accidentally used that feature (or is it a bug?) to bypass a fight that I had essentially no chance of surviving without it.
Roll: allows you to get through small spaces and avoid being hit. Would have been much better if I had any idea when I would become vulnerable, but it was difficult to test.
Healing: pointless. This "upgrade" allows you to heal upon returning to the village. Which means you need to make it to a portal, which is likely far out of your way. It's easier to just die, then use the portal with full revived health.
Presentation: honestly, pretty lazy. There is no use of capitalization whatsoever. Signs say "to the caves", portals say "secret", and their appearance does not fit with the world at all.
Writing: Not good. The story was bland and almost nonexistent, essentially shoehorned in at the last second. The end of the story implies there is more to the adventure, and I found myself worrying that there might be more I had to play through to get to the end.
Reason for the score:
+The game had no discernible bugs or glitches, it wasn't literally unplayable
+The artstyle and GUI design were quite nice
I wouldn't recommend this game but I don't regret buying it… Expand
