com.premii.hn was my favorite too; it worked surprisingly well given that it was webview based. But, as you said, it's been taken off the Play store and not getting any more updates.

Re. your feedback:

Replying to comments directly can be done by long pressing the title of the comment you want to reply to, which brings up other options as well.

I'll consider your suggestions for UI tweaks, but is downvoting even possible? Or did you want an option to hide a story/comment only within the app?