I think making the barrels break in a single hit won't address the core of the issue. Getting to them first time tests the player in some way and the coins are the reward. But once the player finds the barrels and knows they are there, it is just a time sink - no skill is tested, no effort or curiosity is required, just a ritual that "yup, i need to get those barrels first, otherwise i'm playing suboptimal". At least that's how I think about that and I believe making those barrels persistant would be a better solution (once collected barrels don't respawn in subsequent runs, they remain destroyed forever on that save file - player was revarded for their exploration, and cannot abuse "reexploring" the same part over and over again). But again, this is only my opinion and I'm sharing it only because you asked :D
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Thanks! I'll think about it. I've just started implementing checkpoints. Making it so barrels and collectables don't respawn after loading a checkpoint makes sense. I think I'll try it out and see how it feels. On the other hand, they are kind of meant to feel like coin blocks in super mario. You can collect coins if you want to, or you can just run past. If you die before getting to the end of a level, you rarely go through it slowly to collect everything, you usually just run to the end, to get back to where you were. I'll have to experiment with it a bit and see which feels right.