Review: Mineko’s Night Market Might’ve Opened too Early on Switch

I’ve wanted to play Mineko’s Night Market for so long. I’ve watched the trailers. I interviewed the developers so I could learn more. It seemed like the sort of simulation made for me. In many ways, it is absolutely that. I’m having a great time. However, Mineko’s Night Market doesn’t run quite right on the Switch, and the extended loading times and lag can make that a drag on top of the other balancing issues.

Mineko’s Night Market begins with Mineko and her father moving to a small house on a tiny island. It used to be home to Nikko, a legendary cat, as well as tons of other felines. However, strange agents patrol the island collecting artifacts and caging kitties. Also, it isn’t nearly as prosperous as it once was. So, after being cajoled into it by new friend Bobo, Mineko ends up managing a night market stall, creating crafts to sell, saving cats from agents, visiting island locations, and learning more about the mysteries surrounding Nikko.

There’s a fun sense of progression in Mineko’s Night Market. Every week, you spend Sunday through Saturday afternoon gathering materials for crafts, talking to townsfolk to find what items they might need and getting them for them, acquiring new craft recipes, making items, and preparing for the night market every Saturday night. Collecting certain items, like stone or wood, involves tools you’ll need to buy like axes and a pickaxe. Making new merchandise is tied to workbenches you’ll buy to add to MIneko’s room. Some actions, like creating an item or getting materials via fishing, involve brief “minigames” where you press a button at the right moments. As you learn more, unlock new areas, and build up relationships, you unlock more recipes, access to different areas, new kinds of crafts, lure more vendors to the night market as it gets more elaborate, and even see visual improvements to houses in town. You even get to the point where additional villagers move in because of you. You can really see the effect of your actions in the game, which is fantastic.

The issue is that everything in Mineko’s Night Market is expensive, and the money you’re bringing in from the weekly market or daily sales doesn’t feel like it’s enough to cover costs. So a drink that restores half of a heart of stamina can be $40. But some of the random fish you’ll catch will be about $20 each. The tools and crafting equipment can cost you at least $600, and an early night market visit might only bring in around $700-900. To get new recipes, you need to give items to people. While about half the folks I encountered wanted things I could create, the others wanted stuff I’d need to purchase which, again, is usually a minimum $40 purchase. As another example, there is eventually an opportunity to pay to fish at a spot that supposedly has “rare” specimens. It’s $50 per shot. I paid to try it five times. I ended up with five empty ramune bottles, which sell for $1 each. So instead of having fun just crafting and gifting, I felt like I needed to run a spreadsheet on my iPad on the side to plot out my purchases to balance workbench and tool purchases for progression with possibly getting a recipe I could actually make with what I’d already acquired.

But also, stamina can get to be a big problem as well. You get a second heart fairly early on, but I can’t help but feel small tasks like picking up flowers and hairballs take up way more energy than they should. Given the costs of stamina items, the “limit” of using only three per day doesn’t matter much when you can’t even afford to buy them. It really isn’t all that fun when it gets to feel like, “Well, I picked about 20 flowers. Better take the bus home and go to bed so I can get 20 more tomorrow.” That may seem like a lot, but when recipes for certain bouquets can use six of each type of flower and there are certain degrees of rarity for them, it can get frustrating.

Especially since on the Switch the Mineko’s Night Market loading times are horrid. A patch did release while I was playing ahead of launch that fixed some issues, but it still takes an incredibly long time for the game to load to the menu, then load a saved game, then load when you’re moving Mineko from her house to the hometown space, then load when you take the bus to a location or walk to the night market, then load again when you go back to your hometown, then again when you load when heading home to go to bed and sleep to start the process again. It ruins any sense of immersion and pads out the time spent going through each day in an unfortunate way. Which feels even worse when you factor in how quickly stamina depletes when gathering materials. This isn’t even counting the odd moments when it can take an oddly long time between crafting an item, particularly the Sewing Craftbench, and getting the message saying, “Hey, you did it!” I’m also experiencing an issue where the outfit vendor, who had different clothes for Mineko to buy in at the Spring markets, hasn’t sold anything since despite my not buying anything.

It’s made all the more tragic because Mineko’s Night Market is great in so many other ways. The writing is quite clever! I like how there’s an immediate reward for any gift given to anyone, which in turn gives you a chance to make more. The character designs are fantastic. The agent challenges to save cats, while not especially challenging, are typically diverse enough to be fun. The general ambiance, soundtrack (when it isn’t cracking due to loading), and concept is great. The Night Market portions are so much fun, especially when we see the commentary from Mineko around the “event” that closes out each one. The script is incredible, and there are so many funny moments or goofy quotes that beg to be shared.

There is absolutely a fun and maybe even great experience somewhere in Mineko’s Night Market, but right now it is hidden behind balancing issues and Switch performance problems. I could absolutely see Meowza perhaps patching it and making any criticism I have for the title irrelevant over the coming weeks and months. But at launch, it can end up feeling a little too tedious and costly.

Mineko’s Night Market will come to the Nintendo Switch and PC on September 26, 2023. It will come to the PS4, PS5, and Xbox One on October 26, 2023.