Video Game Review: Phoenotopia: Awakening

Developer: Cape Cosmic

Publisher: Flyhigh Works

Genre: Metroidvania

Nintendo Switch

Are you ever playing a game, dear reader, and find yourself thinking “I mean yeah this is pretty close to being my jam but there’s just one or two things putting me off about it”? That’s largely how I feel about Phoenotopia: Awakening, an expanded-upon remake of a 2014 Flash Game known simply as Phoenotopia.

The gameplay of Phoenotopia: Awakening is, for the most part, that of a side-scrolling metroidvania. The player character Gail has some satisfying movement, including sprints, rolls, and maneuvers that let you cancel or negate certain things like landing hard from a fall or getting knocked around by a strong enemy. The controls are tight and all in all the platforming aspects feel very satisfying, especially once you start to really get a handle on the more advanced techniques. Combat, on the other hand, is a good deal weaker. Enemies are very strong and can reduce your limited healthpool to critical or empty levels in no time at all, especially since dodging them can be arbitrarily challenging at times. In particular there were many times during boss fights where I had the sense that avoiding certain attacks required pixel-perfect precision on jumping or whatever else.

Additionally, the game features a stamina system tied mostly to combat but which also has the side-effect of slowing down other parts of the game, such as the many times when you might want to smash up some crates or pots. When performing your regular (or “quick”) attack, not only does it consume your energy bar, it also does less damage with each successive attack. Now, there are difficulty options for turning off both of these things (as well as for making energy start recharging faster, allowing food to be eaten instantly from menu rather than consumed over time mid-combat, and having longer invincibility after taking damage) but it seems as though the default/how the game wants you to play is to have all difficulty adjustments set to off. Though this is an interesting addition to a metroidvania title I just don’t feel like it works very well, especially since it can make busting up a group of breakable objects take much longer than it needs to.

Speaking of interesting additions to the metroidvania formula, Phoenotopia: Awakening has a overworld map. I mentioned earlier that the gameplay is mostly side-scrolling, and I said that because when you leave any given area you’re taken to a top down-view from which you access other areas and can get into random encounters. This feature I actually really liked, in particular because it did an amazing job highlighting the game’s attention to detail (by way of random encounter backgrounds changing depending on your location in the world map down to your proximity to sub-areas) and the game’s sound mixing. When you enter a battle from the world map the score – which absolutely slaps, by the way – shifts into a more intense version in an organic way. Though these encounters still suffer from the same issues I laid out about combat earlier, you can at least just run from them without actually engaging any enemies, and I can see how it would be fun if you do like the combat.

To be honest it almost feels like the issues with combat largely stem from the game’s slow start. In the first ten or so hours it felt like I wasn’t making many improvements to my character – I’d only unlocked two traversal abilities and just a couple of negligible health increases. In turn, this highlights the other big issue I have: Phoenotopia: Awakening is a long game, upwards of thirty hours on a first playthrough. I know preferences for game length very much come down to personal taste, but I also know that I’m not alone in wishing more games were shorter these days. If a metroidvania is longer than Hollow Knight it just feels excessive.

A few final notes: Phoenotopia: Awakening is a gorgeous game. The environments are gorgeous and vibrant even in the desert areas, not to mention meticulously detailed. There’s a fishing minigame and a cooking minigame, both of which are fun and rewarding. Finally, the story is interesting, because it feels as though anything is fair game to be introduced as a new element of the setting, but not in a way that feels cheap and makes it seem like the writing is just pulling random nonsense out of thin air, with the cherry on top being an off-beat sense of humor that only occasionally feels like it’s being a bit too mean to its characters.

From what I have read, Phoenotopia: Awakening not only refines graphics and gameplay mechanics as a remake of the original Phoenotopia but also adds some new systems entirely, and I can definitely see how the project was a labor of love. The result of that labor is a game which is enjoyable but imperfect. I’d recommend this game to those who can stomach some frustrating and at times artificially difficult combat if it means getting to enjoy strong platforming and a great aesthetic.