YMMV / Mother Russia Bleeds

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Vlad really a pacifist? He doesn't seem very averse to his supporters being violent, he almost encourages it. One can argue that he can see the necessity of violence for the situation, but he should at least seem a little bummed about it.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack, done by Fixions, and is full of 1980's inspired Dark Synth similar to Hotline Miami. Here are a few examples.
• Broken Base: The game's difficulty. Some think it is perfectly in line with the Nintendo Hard Beat 'em Up's it was inspired by, others accuse the game of leaning on Fake Difficulty elements, such as stage hazards that are often more of a threat than the enemies are.
• Catharsis Factor: As Woolie puts it, the developers of the game clearly subscribe to the correct usage of screen shaking to make hard hits become incredibly satisfying.
• Complete Monster: The Premier of the Soviet Union is the linchpin of Russia's corruption. Funding a laboratory where Nekro is tested on many subjects, including animals, the Premier orders the abduction of numerous people, including the player character(s), from a Romani camp to serve as lab rats for the odious drug he allows to spread through the country, which results in an unhealthy and potentially lethal addiction to the substance. As the citizenry starts to revolt against his regime, the Premier sends his army to violently crush their protests, instructing troops to march on the capital and massacre all dissenters on such a scale that it is referred to as "genocide". When confronted, the Premier tries to pin blame on the Bratva he facilitated, while showing a cavalier lack of remorse toward the damage done to his people, merely using the conversation to buy time so his security team can kill the player(s) before trying to escape any responsibility or consequence for his venality.
• Fridge Brilliance: More than a few people have pointed out that the reason that getting the good ending is so immensely difficult is because kicking a drug addiction is incredibly difficult in real life.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Hotline Miami fans, due to both of these games having Retraux graphics, Dark Synth soundtracks and ultra-violence, with some fans even thinking that they take place in the same universe due to their similar Russian mafia state settings.
• Goddamned Bats: Attack dogs. They go down in a couple of hits, but they are fast and their attack knocks down their target. Before the game was patched to allow them to be hit by light attacks, they were outright Demonic Spiders who could only be hit with sliding tackles and firearms.
  • The female skinheads who constantly spam jump kicks are more than a little aggravating as well. By themselves, you can counter them with an aerial grab, but when they're hiding in a mob of enemies it's significantly harder and even if you pull it off you're likely to get punished afterwards.
• Heartwarming Moments: The player characters congratulating the child messenger for his bravery in Chapter 6.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: It's an over-the-top beat'em up about walking around The Theme Park Version of USSR and brawling with stereotypical Russian criminals and corrupt government officials, all while fueling yourself with a fictional krokodil-inspired drug. Both Russian critics and players fell in love with it, with a big chunk of positive reviews on Steam being written in Russian language.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • There's no indicator of what player is what character and where they are on the screen. Considering the game loves to throw up to a dozen or more enemies at once during bigger fights, it becomes very easy to lose track of your character.
  • The lack of online coop is one of the largest complaints critics and players alike have leveled at the game, as anyone without friends and/or spare controllers on hand has to make due with AI bots of questionable competence.
• Squick:
  • Nekro is harvested directly from the half-dead, twitching bodies of fallen foes. And Boris injects it straight to his head.
  • How characters revive each other if they don't have any Nekro: They draw it from their own veins before injecting it into the fallen character, vomiting in the process.
  • One common Mook found in the game is a sickly addict woman whose main attack is throwing used syringes that poison the target. Where does she carry her syringes? Inside her skirt.
  • The ENTIRETY of Chapter 5, better hope you're hardened or have some brain bleach nearby because you are going to need it.
• That One Achievement: Angel Keeper, which requires you to escort the friendly prisoner in level 2 without letting him take a single hit. With multiple players it might be simple, but alone it's an absolute nightmare, as the escort segment takes a really long time to complete and even the slightest slip-up forces you right back to the beginning.
• That One Boss:
  • The level 3 boss, the gang leader, has a massive grinder in pursuit of you at all times. Just touching said grinder is enough to do massive amounts of damage if not kill you outright, and the boss does not hesitate to knock you back into it whenever possible. She's also backed up by a number of mooks who love to use flying kicks and baseball bats that often send you flying back into the grinder. To make matters worse, the boss is effectively invincible to attacks, and has to be knocked into the grinder multiple times in order to be defeated.
  • The final boss, Nekro, is absolutely insane, even for a game that was already Nintendo Hard. The fight comes in four phases, each of which has to be cleared in a single life; die once, and you go all the way back to phase one. The first phase is an Advancing Boss of Doom that requires you to throw randomly spawning projectiles and clones of your player characters to damage the boss enough before it crushes you. The second phase is a Stationary Boss with a single attack, but this attack is massively damaging and constantly spawns hordes of mini "syringe spiders" that just love to rush you. The third phase is against Nekro himself, and the boss is an absurdly powerful Lightning Bruiser whose attacks have no discernible pattern and will make mincemeat of you if you haven't mastered the dodge mechanic. Finally, the fourth and final phase pits you against two Nekros, each of which have the same health, strength and speed as the original one! And the kicker? If you want the good ending, you have to clear all this without healing or using berserk mode for the entire fight.

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