It doesn’t happen that much that an exclusive game is launched in the digital store without some decent advertising. Bandai Namco didn’t really care about A.W.: Phoenix Festa and silently released it in the PlayStation Vita’ digital market. Was there a reason to ignore this launch or is this game one of those hidden gems you certainly have to try out? Let’s find out in this review.
What is Phoenix Festa?
A.W.: Phoenix Festa is a popular manga/anime in Japan that’s based on The Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water novel. It’s about combining fighting with dating and that’s exactly what you’ll be doing in the Vita exclusive.
In the game, you’re the new kid on the block and arrive at your new school. As you arrive at your new school, you do things every teenager would do. You check around for friends, chat with the girls and find a decent job to earn some money. Nothing special, until you hear about the Phoenix Festa. This is a big event where students from all over the world come together to fight each other. Quickly after you learn about this event, you’re determined to play a role in it and perhaps even win the thing. The only thing you need to enter, is a decent partner, let the dating begin!
Two campaigns, one goal
Before you can start the main campaign, you’ll have to decide which character you’ll control. Will you go for the series protagonist Ayato Amagiri or will you create your own character from scratch? Deciding the character has a slight impact on the campaign. The Amagiri campaign is a little shorter but focuses on the main story while the campaign of a new character is longer filled with practices and doesn’t focus on the story. It’s up for you to decided but we liked the Amagiri campaign a little more. There isn’t really that much time needed to practice since the combat is rather simple and having an actual story instead of reading the same conversation over and over again definitely works in benefit of Amagiri.
Nothing special
If you select a new character, you’ll always end your day in your room where a girl is waiting on your bed, wondering how you’ve been. At first, these conversations offer some variation to the gameplay but the fun disappears when you notice that the girls are telling the same story over and over again. Nobody benefits from this and it’s clearly just a waste of your time.
How will you spend your day?
One of the best things about the game is how it handles the training of your character. Besides boosting up your regular combat skills, you can also go shopping, fight with some other characters or date some of the girls. The day is divided into two big parts and it’s entirely up to you how you would like to spend that day. But be warned, everything you do costs energy. If you’re low on energy and another character challenges you for combat, you won’t make it out alive. Balancing the energy and tasks you can achieve in a day is a great way of spending your time with the game.
This system goes a little deeper thanks to the emotions of your character. If you’re not happy (because you lost a battle or a date didn’t go as planned) it won’t really matter if you train since you won’t gain any experience. If you want to train, you better keep your character happy. It’s a great mechanism but just as speaking to the girls, it gets killed due to repetition. You’ll see the same screens over and over again and the animations of the training sessions don’t differ that much. It’s a shame really since this mechanism has a lot of potential.
The actual combat
Training and dating aren’t the only elements the game has to offer, there’s combat as well, of course. Too bad it’s really shallow and doesn’t really add something to the game. You can defeat all enemies by just using your standard combos, which are three or four punches, resulting in the enemy falling to the ground. Before the enemy can get back up, you can start your combo again and continue this pattern until he/she is down for good. It’s too bad the developers didn’t invest more in this combat since it’s supposed to be one of the big selling points. As it is now, the combat doesn’t add something fun to the game at all and can best be forgotten about as fast as possible.
The other game mode ‘Battle Mode’ doesn’t feel like a mode somebody was waiting for. In this mode, there’s no story or whatsoever, just plain old fighting with other characters and their partner. Since the combat is rather boring, this mode isn’t worth playing, to be honest.
Conclusion:
A.W.: Phoenix Festa has a lot of potential and even some great ideas. Training and dating sound fun on paper and could even be enjoyable if there weren’t as many copied and pasted scenes. That being said, the combat feels shallow and there’s nothing challenging about it. It’s a unique concept, combining a fighter with an RPG and dating simulator and for that, it’s worth a shot for sure, just don’t expect a hidden gem here.
