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Notes -
I picked up Phoenotopia: Awakening for a healthy discount on GOG the other day, and my impressions a few hours in have been very positive. It's an absolute pity that the game does not seem to be doing well commercially having been out for about 3 years at this point, and the developer already reckoned with it being a dud.
As for its strong points - I feel like it has captured the magic of the golden era of SNES action-adventures in a way that no other game I've seen come out in recent years did. The market default in "indie" right now is just too slick, too optimised, too hyperstimulating, too obviously raised on the same set of dime-a-dozen gamedev talks, and developer resources allocated so rationally that the moment you deviate from the intended path all you get is square tileset-default placeholder rooms and uninteractable NPCs. This game, on the other hand - colourful but not obnoxiously saccharine, rough without being clunky, combat well-restrained by a stamina system that sabotages button mashing and few flashy effects (reviewers compare it to Secret of Mana, which I think is apt), nicely animated and teeming with detail that feels like it's there because the developers were stuck with the game for long enough that it precipitated out naturally rather than because they needed to meet an "n interactables per area, m side quests of at least 15 minutes" quota. It has cute graphics, a Chrono Trigger overworld, SoM combat, Cave Story physics, Zelda puzzles, and fun and quirky NPCs.
Relevantly for this forum, this manages to be a "quirky" that is not at all the modern kind where the quirkiness is equal parts catechism and political shit-test. More generally, the entire trope palette the story is painted in feels like it's taken straight out of the '90s, as if the last 25 years simply didn't happen. This includes the mundane (I don't know when I've last seen the "on the way back from your insignificant first quest, you see your hometown being destroyed" setup ) and (the absence of) the personal-political (I don't get the sense that any of the characters is conceived as having mental health issues or an "identity" suitable for Xwitter profiles; the closest I've seen to a modern stock character is a male "incel", whose story role is hardly modern in that he is overexcited that a female character takes interest in him and enthusiastically aids/enables what turn out to be her villainous plans).
And it's on sale for eight bucks? I'm sold.
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