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Weapons like the slingshot and the bomb all have “infinite ammo”, drawing from the same stamina pool that you would use to swing your baseball bat.
![phoenotopia awakening phoenotopia awakening](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/107793/large.jpg)
The strategic depth of the combat deepens with each tool you find. Top it all off with the fact that your bat doesn’t do a ton of damage on a single hit, and you’ll quickly learn that positioning and strategy are far more important than brute force. Your aerial options are also severely limited, with the bat’s downward whack requiring too much startup time to be universally useful.
![phoenotopia awakening phoenotopia awakening](https://pressakey.com/gamepix/6877/Phoenotopia-Awakening-243710.jpg)
That baseball bat has a ridiculously short range, and while there’s no automatic contact damage with enemies and you have dodge options available to you, it does require you to get in precariously close to your enemy’s next potential attack. She’s just a young girl with a baseball bat. Gail doesn’t start out as some all powerful being.
![phoenotopia awakening phoenotopia awakening](https://catwithmonocle.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/phoenotopia-awakening-ss-27.png)
Most of the difficulty can be attributed to how combat works. Some save points will mercifully heal you upon reloading the game, but for the most part trekking through a new area is going to be an exercise in survival. Poor preparation had me licking the leftover beans off of ancient cans of food looted from boxes, and I was often squeaking by with just enough HP to take another hit and nothing more. Save points don’t heal you in this game, so you’ll be surviving on food items you’ve collected both inside a dungeon and what you’ve brought from outside. Part of that pre-dungeon preparation is literally preparing your inventory. The game is built for you to use your head above all else. Make the right decisions or diligently do everything possible, and you’ll still be facing a challenge. There are many sidequests and optional purchases you can make that will incrementally give you more HP, stamina, or important attack options. Much like the earlier Zelda games or the latest Breath of the Wild, doing as much as you can before the next major dungeon is going to make a world of difference in how much trouble you are going to have. Past that initial first dungeon, the difficulty ramps up significantly. Thankfully Phoenotopia makes the process of immersing yourself very easy. If you can’t allow yourself to become part of its world, then you’ll likely have a very hard time with this game as the going gets tough. “Slow burn” is a great way to describe Phoenotopia, as you’ll be spending a lot of time just chatting up NPCs and memorizing details as much as you will be getting good at the next boss’ pattern. Because of this, the game is allowed to shift between intense action and slow cerebral puzzle solving without it becoming a jarring juxtaposition. Between the music, the incredible amount of detail in the backgrounds, and the way the story is presented, Phoenotopia feels like a world, not just a video game. One of the reasons “realism” – or believably – is so important even with Phoenotopia’s otherwise campy atmosphere is because immersion is so important to making the game work. Every success makes you feel awesome, and builds on the trust the game’s world gives to Gail as a character. The way the game explains why anyone would trust a teenager with the most dangerous criminals in the region is satirically hilarious. Your next quest involves a lot of talking to NPCs and looking for clues on what to do next, which ultimately leads you to dealing with a local bandit tribe. Many games include youthful protagonists being thrust into unlikely situations, but rarely are all of the details for why they were “chosen” filled out so meticulously as they are in Phoenotopia Awakening. Setting out with Gail feels like a true adventure partially because the situation makes it so real. For the sake of survival, one orphan stays behind to organize and assist the children, while Gail is sent to the nearest city to find others to help. While Gail and the other children are doing everything but hastily returning home for supper, a flying saucer suddenly appears and kidnaps everyone in the village, leaving only the absent children remaining. When she finds the other oldest orphan it would seem that they were investigating a shooting star, and by joining in on that investigation you’re treated to the game’s first dungeon without too much plot getting in the way. These children, apparently, are allowed to play in a nearby forest, so Gail must perform a bit of tutorial infused exploration to find them all. She is asked by the orphanage’s director to gather the children because it’s time for supper. The story begins with our pink-haired protagonist Gail waking up in her room at the local orphanage.