Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: Phoenotopia: Awakening
Developer: Cape Cosmic
Publisher: Cape Cosmic
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG, Platformer
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: August 20, 2020
Price: $19.99
Everybody loves Zelda. Well, almost all of the games… probably except the second one, Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. I personally have not played it yet, but from what I heard, it is almost not worth the Zelda name, since its gameplay is drastically different from the other games. So different, that Shigeru Miyamoto made sure that the next game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, will be a back-to-basics Zelda game, but much better. And Miyamoto-san and the rest of his team delivered and A Link to the Past is now considered as one of the best Zelda games ever. Zelda II, almost forgotten.
Zelda II may have not been a very good game, but some of its game elements made it to modern indie games, such as Shovel Knight (on town scenes and combat) and much more overtly in Elliott Quest, which is like a Zelda II clone with a coating of metroidvania. I have both games on the 3DS, and played hours out of them and I liked them a lot. Past forward to now, on Switch, another game takes the core gameplay elements of Zelda II, put it on a spin, and made great use of them. The game is Phoenotopia: Awakening, which, for the time being, is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch.
Like Zelda II, it is an action adventure game with some RPG elements and platforming. The game has amazing visuals, with colorful cutesy pixel art aesthetics that really makes everything pop out. It is complemented very well by its even more amazing soundtrack that evokes that ambience of the environment and emotions being conveyed by the game. This may be indie, but the production value of the game really screams AAA quality.
In this game, you play as Gail, whose town gets visited by an alien ship that abducted all of the adults, forcing her and the other kids to stand on their own and govern the town, although they are scared and feeling hopeless. Being the eldest of the kids, she is tasked to go through an epic adventure outside their quiet little town to the world at large, where she has to traverse different kinds of terrain, visit other towns, and explore dungeons filled with tough enemies.
Like any other game, you start out as pretty weak, armed with only a bat and a slingshot, plus basic clothing. During the opening section of the game, you get to learn how to perform basic attacks and other movements, manage inventory, and cook food. Aside from your HP, you have a stamina bar that gets depleted when you attack or run. Yep, like a souls-like game, for some reason. As you progress into the game, you get to upgrade your equipment, learn new skills, and be more effective with your attacks.
The world in this game is very much fleshed out, with lots of NPCs to interact with, which provide information through subtly humorous dialogue at times. The game is laid out on a big world map, with different towns and other areas of interest throughout. When you enter a town, you switch to a 2D side-scrolling view. There are no enemies here, so you can relax and visit shops, talk to NPCs, pass through doors to enter establishments, etc. Here is where you can stock up on provisions, upgrade your equipment, play mini-games, and most importantly, get info on what to do and where to go next. While you are on the overworld (i.e. when you are outside towns), you look even smaller. Here, some enemies will appear that will either ignore you or actively seek you out. If and when you engage them, you switch again to a 2D side-scrolling area where you can either fight the enemies or just ignore them. Once you get to either end of the area, you exit again to the overworld. Yeah, straight out of Zelda II from top to bottom, albeit with much needed improvements, like better enemy AI, better attack moves, and better visuals.
Outside of towns, the main meat and potatoes of the game is dungeon exploration. Within dungeon areas, you get to solve puzzles, engage or avoid enemies, and in the end, fight tough bosses. Boss fights are tough, and as given with its souls-like aspirations, tougher than what one would expect from a Zelda-like game. They are enjoyable, though, and if you already have good hand-and-eye coordination and cat-like reflexes, you will find delight in these battles.
Enemies still do telegraph their attacks, but the real challenge lies with how Gail fights. Her normal attacks don't hit, but she can charge it up for extra damage. The charging time takes about 1-2 seconds to execute, though, so you have to wait for the enemy to be completely still, otherwise you get hit back, and the enemies in this do pack a punch. You can heal by eating food, but eating food could take a few seconds, depending on the amount of HP that it would give. This is also nicked out of Dark Souls, but unlike that game, this game is 2D, so you have a very limited window of opportunity to heal up when you are in battle.
It is quite embarrassing how many times I died in this game, and add to that the annoying frustration of having to restart all the way back to the last point where you saved your game. There is no auto-saving in this game, and when you restart, you lose all the items and coins that you have acquired. Plus you restart with the amount of HP that you save with. It would have been cooler if the HP refills to take away the sting a bit, but no, this game goes old school quite hard, and there is really no way around it.
If you are low in health and there is no save point near in sight, you should be prepared to have food in your inventory. Food can be obtained from the environment, or from meat dropped by fallen enemies. To make food more effective (i.e. give out more HP) or make the amount of time eating them much shorter, you can cook them. When you see a fire source, either from stoves or bonfires, you can equip a piece of raw food that you have and cook it. But there is a catch: you will have to go through a short mini-game where you have to quickly press the button that the game will prompt you to do. Miss a couple of button presses and you'll end up with burned "food", which actually docks five HP out of you if you are foolish enough to eat it. I think that the developers thought that this would be fun, but I think it ended up as another addition to the list of unnecessary annoyances that this game gives. I wish that this mechanic could be turned off. I think that this is just a waste of time.
Speaking of waste of time, this game will make you grind. A lot. Not for experience, because you don't earn XP for defeating enemies, but for money. Earning money is very tedious in this game. Defeating enemies don't guarantee monetary loot, and if they do drop some, you only get a few coins, usually with the value of 1, occasionally 3, and 5 being quite rare. You can seek out optional caves for treasure chests, but expect a barrage of enemies and traps to make it worth your while. Hope you have the lamp when you do, because it will be very dark, and killing enemies or avoiding traps in the dark is not fun.
The lamp is one of the items that you should buy in order to progress further into the game. Aside from this, you can also buy weapon and armor upgrades. They are quite expensive, though, so you have to grin some more. This game is supposed to have a total play time of about 25 hours, but with all the grinding and flawed combat mechanics and souls-like shenanigans, it can be double that time. So, good luck.
Overall, Phoenotopia: Awakening is one surprisingly good game. It is pretty much Zelda II done right. The game doesn't really shy away from its very obvious main inspiration, and really made very good use of the gameplay from the aforementioned game and improved upon it in almost every way, This game is far from perfect, though. There are some mechanics that I wish could have been executed better, like the combat mechanics, the stamina depletion, etc. These flaws make the game quite frustrating and hard to play during the early hours of the game. If you have the patience and dedication, it does pay well as you progress further into the game, but that steep difficulty curve at the beginning can be rage-inducing at times. But I must say, this game really does exude high quality through and through, and I really liked it a lot, despite the flaws. From its visuals to its music and gameplay elements, this is a game that is worthy of your hard-earned cash. So if you are a brave adventurer at heart, give Phoenotopia: Awakening a chance and go through an epic quest, wherever and whenever, on your Nintendo Switch.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS
- Amazing visuals with colorful cutesy pixel art style
- Amazing soundtrack
- Excellent story
- Subtly humorous dialogue
- There is no leveling up in the game, but equipment can be upgraded
- Cool cooking mechanic
- The flute, used in opening paths and solving some area puzzles by playing musical notes, is straight out of Ocarina of Time and is presented and executed well
- Deceivingly challenging but in a good way, most of the time
- Solid controls and performance, running in 60fps most of the time
- Ideal for handheld gaming
CONS
- Entering rooms through doors requires two button inputs: one of opening the door and another for passing through it
- Buttons cannot be remapped
- Switch screen capture function is not enabled
- No detailed game journal to track quests and other story elements
- Some save points are far from one another, resulting to some mildly annoying frustration upon death
- Earning money is very tedious
- Items are expensive, which will make you grind a lot just to save up
RATING: 4/5 phoeno-awesomeness
