Phoenotopia: Awakening Reviews

Incredible game. Little bit clunky at the start, but well worth it when it clicks. ~40h long, metroid elements, zelda elements, lots of very clever puzzles and light, optimistic atmosphere. What Zelda 2 was trying to be.

Generally a great metroidvania. The game and it's world has it's own creativity that makes it a unique experience. Writing is genuinely quirky and charming and I felt the story was interesting for what it was. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and felt it was pretty balanced once you understood the physics or mechanics. My cons with the game primarily involve the amount of hit-stun you experience when getting hit with no invincibility frames. If you are unlucky, you can get hit 3+ times from one enemy launching/attacking you. That said, I still feel the game was mostly balanced on it's hardest difficulty. Gail controls a bit weighted and uses a stamina bar for dashing, dash jumps, and attacks. It felt it was enjoyable to have to keep an eye on the stamina bar due to how devastating damage could be. My other con has to do with how large the world can be. Although it was entertaining to explore it, do the side-quests and hidden areas, I felt traversing back when not having the fast-travel took a lot of time and energy. It is a metroidvania, so its difficult to not want to go back to a previous area with a new item/song to get explore new areas. You do eventually unlock fast travel but at the cost of Moonstones which you find sparingly and at that, still requires more traversal after the fast-travel was performed. I also wished some of the key side-quest items didn't take a slot in your inventory (lunar items, bunny figures, ouroboros scrolls). I always traveled back to an area to continue a side-quest just to get it out of my inventory. Overall, I still felt the world and exploration was enjoyable. I just had to consistently take breaks just due to the amount of time needed on traveling. My biggest pros with the game involves the beautiful OST, art style/pixel design, and puzzles. I was thoroughly impressed with how enjoyable the puzzles were while still providing a small challenge.

This game has a nice soundtrack, a beautiful art style, tons of content and a story line, that kept me engaged. But the controls are rather strict, making some boss battles rather challenging.

I love indie RPGs, so this will be biased. But, the metroidvania aspects are great, the old-school feeling is alive, and the narrative of the game seems good so far. I think everyone complaining about the control scheme needs to stop their bellyaching. It really didn't take me long to get used to. And, I think it makes the game stand out compared to others.

This is a wonderful game, with a great aesthetic and easily understood controls. It is easy to learn but difficult to master. The world is very open with a wide variety of things to see and learn and do. It is absolutely worth the price!

Sometimes I see people passionately recommend a game in a discussion that aligns with my taste. I then add it to my wishlist and dive in blindly, hoping for the best. I’ve had great success with this approach—for example, Hollow Knight and Outer Wilds. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this time. I was initially excited because I had been wanting to play an old-school JRPG for a while. However, this game didn’t fit the bill when it comes to what I usually expect from a JRPG. I’m more used to party-based games with turn-based combat, like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy. That wouldn’t necessarily be an issue, though, since I also enjoy Metroidvanias, which typically feature action combat in a platforming setting. Unfortunately, Phoenotopia: Awakening drops the ball on both fronts. One issue is how quickly stamina drains when wielding a weapon. It depletes in just a few hits, making combat feel clumsy since you’re constantly forced to pause and catch your breath. Thankfully, this can be turned off in the difficulty settings. With that hurdle removed, fights are no longer frustrating—but sadly, they’re still boring. There’s not much variety; you just stand there and hit enemies. Another glaring problem is the dash mechanic. The moment you dash, you completely lose control—you can’t stop mid-dash, not with a jump, not with an attack. As a result, you either avoid dashing altogether or risk smashing into enemies or overshooting platforms and falling to your doom. You never feel in control—it’s just “press the dash button and pray for the best.” Even running is a headache. When you stop holding the run button, the character keeps going for another second or two, making it infuriatingly easy to overshoot your target. I can’t help but compare this game to Nine Sols, where the combat is buttery smooth—you can move with millisecond precision, and every mistake is on you, not a result of clunky controls. Everything else takes a backseat to the frustrating combat. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the graphics. I don’t hate pixel art—I’ve played plenty of games from that era—but these days, I’d take detailed 2D graphics over pixel art any day of the week. Exploration, too, suffers from the clunky controls, making the experience more frustrating than fun. One last, rather small, oversight is the lack of mouse button remapping. I see no good reason for this restriction. Maybe it’s not the most common use case, but why prohibit it at all?

The pixel art and animations are cute. Basically I saw someone recommend this in a video and got it because of the animations. But I can't play this game. It feels like trying to play a NES era platformer. There's no input buffering so it feels like it ignores half my inputs. She's got this bat and it takes a full half a second to even start to swing it. Trying to hit something mid-air is painful. You can't change direction in the air. I just died in the forest and that was it. There are too many other games I could play to bother continuing. Maybe it gets better. You can say skill issue, etc. I don't seem to have a skill issue with any platformer with any amount of modern QoL to the controls. I won't say it's unplayable but it wasn't able to convince me to keep at it so this is my review.