Mika and The Witch’s Mountain

Mika and the Witch's Mountain is such a cute game. I had a smile on my face the whole time I was playing it, and I finished it in a day because I just couldn't stop playing. It has 2 missable achievements and takes around 8 hours to complete.
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 8 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, I used this guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, for getting only green stamps and handing out your witch items to the locals
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
What a lovely adventure game! A game inspired by Kiki's delivery service while still being so wholesome and so freaking cute. You play as Mika, who is ready to get her Witch training. She is a bit overconfident, and when she shows up at the Witch's house, she gets a rude awakening.
During the starting cutscene, your broom will break, and you need it repaired. You end up helping out the locals by delivering packages to and from them. However, delivering packages is a delicate thing ( I wish the real-life postal services would take that into account a bit more), so some packages have breakable things in them while others can't get wet, and a small amount of them are time-sensitive. You can see the package's status, and I highly recommend checking that before handing them over. If it got damaged in some way, you can delete it and try again. I highly recommend doing that if you want to unlock all the achievements, as this is one of the missable achievements.
What I find a very bold move that totally makes sense story-wise is that your first broom is hard to handle. It just doesn't work and feels janky. But this is on purpose. After just a few deliveries, you'll get an upgraded version, and another after more deliveries. The last broom will feel so good, but by getting a horrible broom at first, they really hammer home that feeling of how good the later brooms feel, not just faster but less janky as well.
The achievements in Mika and The Witch's Mountain are great. I wish there weren't missable achievements ( getting all green stamps + giving away your Witch items) but I can see story-related how it makes sense that way and not adding an option to change the outcome. All the other achievements are for exploring the island and doing all possible things. That just feels so great! It rewards you for exploring the world while also being able to tell you what you have missed when later on checking which achievements you're missing. The only achievement that was less clear to me is for the races. You not only need to finish them all but receive a gold cup in them as well.
I give Mika and The Witch's Mountain 4,5 out of 5 stars.
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Missi the Achievement Huntress: Reviews & guides

Very strong Kiki's Delivery Service vibes right out the gate with a beautiful animated sequence. The Ghibli magic is, however, short-lived. Mika and the Witch's Mountain puts a bit *too* much emphasis on deliveries without adding enough supplementary content. This makes gameplay feel repetitive and the charm fizzle. Chibig needs to create interest with more mini games and further encourage exploration. For instance, more secret areas (behind waterfall *cough*) and doors that are accessible like Zelda games, which sometimes let you snoop on NPC diaries and find extra currency as a reward for that effort. The Churro Express races were a fabulous addition and are a nice throwback to Mail Mole without any of the fiendish difficulty. Mika and the Witch's Mountain doesn't reach its full potential, but that ending was a lovely twist indeed.
PS - Unless you are a completionist or enjoy very cerebral puzzles (think OOT Water temple) please avoid the dungeons! Extremely convoluted and huge difficulty spike. Need to be more balanced (wind dungeon is perfect) and included as main quest prerequisites (better game direction) to reach Mount Gaun.

I was initially very intrigued by this game because I am a huge Legend of Zelda fan (especially of Wind Waker, which this game reminds me of!), so I decided to give it a go, and I was not disappointed!
Normally I am someone who does not like to back track, and this game definitely does include back tracking, but it handles it in such a good way that I was barely even cognizant of the fact that I was having to back track quite a few times. I wish more games did this so back tracking wasn't a chore. There were plenty of things to do that the back tracking felt like a true exploration of the island itself.
The music was fantastically done and fits each area very well. Additionally, the Churro mini-game, in particular, added a bit of difficulty that I think balances very well with the fact that the deliveries themselves are not difficult to complete. The writing is definitely more on the "kiddie" side style of writing, but I will admit that some of the dialogue from characters definitely got me to laugh due to how real it was from such a character.
Also, as a side note, I am a huge fan of the achievement names! (I think my favorite was Leap of Faith or Cho, Co, Bo as a Final Fantasy fan). It is a good nod toward other well-known games/franchises.
Reading through other reviews, there were some that noted a crashing issue. I had no crashes the entire time I played. So if that is something that might be holding you back from getting this game, don't let it!
If you are a fan of cozy games or trying to find a game for a cozy game enjoyer, get this game!
If you are a fan of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, get this game!
If you are looking for a low-stress game, get this game!
If you are just looking for a new game to play, get this game!

This game is really good. Though I can understand the mixed reviews.
The Pros:
Gameplay - The platforming and flying mechanics are peak. I see a lot of complaints about bugs but I must've played after they got patched because I experienced none. They do a great job of slowly introducing you to more and more of the island and there are plenty to do. The main game play of flying around trying not to break your packages are very fun, but that gameplay is surprisingly short lived.
Exploration - After the main story there are still plenty to do
- Various delivery jobs that weren't apart of the main quest.
- Various collectibles such as red and blue statues to can be traded for different outfits
- 3 entire Zelda-like dungeons that have their own gameplay mechanics not found during the main story.
The Con:
Story - The story is quite frankly too short and is paced very, very fast. There is virtually no build up to any of the big story events that happen. Your hired for 1 and a half days as a delivery witch before being fired after one scripted failure. You then proceed to solve the entire islands problem the next day and then finally reach the top of the mountain the day after that. Like it's hard for me to suspend my disbelief that so much could happen in 3 days. I think working for the post office should've been at least 3 days and during that time you get shown how much the town is suffering from the factory by making the smog come crawling in. Then you can set out on a quest to fix the windmill leading to a raid on the factory because you suspect they stole it.
Mixed:
Gameplay evolution - Again, I think the flying controls are amazing and so are the delivery system. But you will be doing the same thing repeatedly. Any unique gameplay interactions are saved for the optional 3 dungeons and I really feel like they shouldn't be optional. They were genuinely really fun (with the exception of the water temple because that one is really long and confusing, so some things never change).
Music - It's really good, but they don't loop properly and transitions between area themes aren't seamless.
Overall, if you like a short, fun flying simulator that you can play through in an afternoon, you can't go wrong with this one.

a very cute and chill game where you pull a Kiki and become a delivery girl flying around on your magic broom to help make everyone's day better

Cute game, but can be disorienting at times. The map isn’t super detailed, so you don’t always know where to go. I’m supposed to deliver food to a cat on a beach. I’ve checked all the beaches and found 0 cats. I don’t know. I’d give this a neutral if I could. For now I’ll vote positive, I may change after trying some more.

I quite enjoyed this game, it reminds me of Kiki's Delivery Service. IMO it's one of few games that deserve to be called cozy games. The story is engaging enough, although it's not exactly memorable since it's heavily focused on Mika while most characters have short screen time. I also really enjoyed the exploration, even when I missed something and had to fly half of the island a few times. While some reviews mentioned frequent crashes, I didn't experience any technical issues on my Linux device.
But my enjoyment was dampened due to motion sickness, and the game doesn't offer FOV or other options that may reduce motion sickness. I had to break after playing for about an hour, even with minimizing camera movement whenever possible. Although I expect only minority player would face similar issue with me.
While I can easily recommend this game, consider buying it on sale if you have no intention to play most optional content.