Phoenotopia: Awakening

This is not a Metroidvania. I went into this game thinking it was cause others have said that it was. This is more like a 2D side scrolling Zelda game like Zelda 2. There’s a lot that I like about this game. The art is pretty good with every area being very unique. The characters are great. They are charming and have funny dialogue. The whole game is charming. Even the NPCs walking around town have some personality and designs. You can tell the devs put a lot of work into making each town feel alive. I talked to most of the characters walking around that I normally skip just to see what they have to say. They are by far the best part of this game. COMBAT The combat and movement is a bit jank but not as bad as other reviews are saying. As long as you don’t play on 5/5 stars. Each star is a perk not on so 0/5 stars is all perks. The 3/5 stars I find the best. Food takes time to eat? Turn that star off to eat from the menu. Standard attack taking stamina just sucks so that’s the ot...

Like many 2D indie games: the art is great, but the gameplay and level design is bland. The "puzzles" are tedious. The textboxes are worthless. "Combat" is awful. The menus/items are junk and detract from the core play. It seems like a lot of game devs have no idea what a good game is, but do have excellent artists on staff.

Would absolutely recommend this as a chill weekend game to anyone and everyone

**Spoilers** At the time of writing this I'm about 4 hours in the game. It sucks giving it a thumbs down because I have a soft spot for pixel art games. But my lord, the story took a nose dive. You know what is really interesting? An entire town getting suddenly abducted by aliens, leaving only the children to fend for themselves. You know what is not interesting? All the random crap immideatly after that. Wandering around to find a city. Having way too many random npcs that usually don't say anything important or interesting. Having ONE of them be someone from your past and now you have to pay off a debt of theirs. Having to take down a bandit leader - BUT FIRST you need to do super random things in order to just get to the location. By the time I go there I have totally lost any steam to play the game and lost any interest in the story. It plays and looks fine but the story is just going nowhere. I don't mind side quests but it feels like the entire game has just been a s...

One of my favorite games ever. It's a shame it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves, but if you think you would enjoy it, you owe yourself to give it a try. I'd recommend it to anyone that's a fan of Zelda-like puzzles and exploration. It's not exactly open-world, but there is a fantastic sense of freedom in its progression.