I love everything about the game except not getting currency unless you beat your previous score. Also all purchases are consumable. In the original Phoenix I quickly spent the $6 for the double coins and all that. I wish they had that in this. With me not earning anything I'm honestly not inclined to purchase anything. I have put the game down and just waited until the timer is up to get another ship. Then try to beat my score with that ship. If I don't then I put it down again. If there was some permanent purchases and I earned some upgrade credits as I play it would be better. But everything else is pretty awesome. I like the large selection of ships. I can't wait to unlock more to see how they play. I love the controls and artwork. They really upped the game on that! I really looked forward to this game. As a massive fan of the first one I hope they tweak things as they go. It is a fun game. Billy
I love the game and doled out some cash to show my support. However, the more I play this game, I wish there were levels where hits can degrade your hull rather than a single one resulting in an instadeath. I'd like to play the game over longer runs but since I suck eggs at this game, it may take a while to be in a position to do that.
Yeah... Sorry about that. When a sequel to a game you geniuinely love turns a different direction (not necessarily bad, but a different one), sometimes the reaction can get a bit ways off.
So really great release, tons of fun. I don't really see it as a true sequel, more as a spinoff, and am not sure Phoenix 2 is the right title, but that's okay, it certainly is good enough to bear the Phoenix name. A few initial thoughts: The IAP. I will buy some because I feel the need to support the developers, that's really the only reason. It won't really be satisfying for me to do so. I wish there was some sort of permant IAP. A doubler would obviously throw off the balance quite a bit and hurt the other IAPs, but maybe a small permanant boost? Like a +10% type of thing? Or maybe something like a ship that could only be bought. It would obviously have to be balanced but perhaps something like the Phoenix itself (or is it already there? I haven't looked that closely) with much reduced weaponry, like a Phoenix prototype? I wish there was some sort of a grazing system. I know this took a very long time to get into Phoenix HD, but maybe a separate grazer's mode with its own leaderboard and some sort of score multiplier per wave for grazing would be cool. Is it just me or is the EMP basically a necessity? I can't come close to doing as well with ships that don't have it. It's possible that this is just because I haven't upgraded my ships much (just one actually and not by much). Maybe with more firepower and the ability to take out turrets and ships faster, the EMP won't seem as necesarry, but currently (particularly in the challenge that ended today), I found I was presented with patterns that were nearly unnavigable. Patterns such as that were of course a complaint in Phoenix HD as well and not much can be done to avoid it when you combine screen filling bullet patterns with directed fire. It just seemed to come awfully fast, but maybe this is just meant to be a game with much shorter sessions. Overall, I really like the general idea of keeping the random maps but locking them in for a universal global challenge, and the tremendous variety of ships.
Upon further play, I'm noticing that grazing appears to build aura, which, if true is a cool feature that was not apparent at first (or possibly I was oblivious to this in the tutorial).
I need this game in my life, but why no love for iOS 8!????????? Wanna play it now, but it's only iOS 9!### I've never deleted Phoenix on any of my devices, so please make it happen guys!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hopefully the developers read this. This game is great but there are some inherent flaws to how it incentivizes winning. As is, it focuses too much on upgrading and collecting the ships. 75% of the ships suck. I've been playing for one day and it's already clear that the ships with a decent weapon and the Bullet EMP special combo are the best (Aurora, Veil, Phoenix), so as is, there's no reason to use any of the other ships. I know that I only ever stand a chance of clearing all the waves / getting the best time with one of the aforementioned ships and the leaderboards reflect this too. I love the ship collecting aspect. I want to have a reason to upgrade and use all those other guys but there's no point when they don't give you a shot at the leaderboard. This is why the game needs some kind of separate endless game like Phoenix HD (a perfect game, IMO): So that your scores (and global leaderboards) can be tracked for each ship/geographic location/etc. That would allow for a richer, more long-standing competitive gameplay experience and also a way to track personal bests for each ship (another component missing from this game but present in the original). This is coming from a longtime fan of this game. I've had Phoenix HD since iPhone 4 and I own all the ships. I even dropped $20 of iap on Phoenix II. Keep the focus on daily leaderboards and have that be the means by which players earn currency, but for the love of god, put back some of the stuff that made the first game so great.
After playing phoenix II almost non stop since it came out, i very much agree. While I enjoy the leaderboard aspect with the daily random generated missions, I found it a bit tedious to go through the same routine again and again for a day only to be crashing into the same skill wall over and over again, having to start from scratch every time. After having failed so many times on wave xy, I would rather have the option to switch to a more relaxed endless mode, call it zen mode, to recharge my batteries for another try on the daily mission. The randomness of the enemies in the first phoenix is probably less suited for pure competition, but it surley allowed for more experimentation with different ships and for some more satisfying runs. Of course I could just go back and play the first one, but I really like the second one for what it is and I think with some more tweaking and expanding, it might become truly great.
Barrier is ok but it pales compared to the full EMP. I find even point defense more useful than barrier because I can use it to make an escape route.
Is Stun EMP bugged? I just upgraded the Mist Star's stun EMP to lv3 which should have 5.5s of stun, but it felt still just like 1 second, maybe to about 1.5 seconds. By the way just threw in $10 coz im really liking this despite the flaws that i think were.
Hmmm, my first impression are kind of mixed. And I'm a huge fan of the first. This game shouldn't be called Phoenix 2, since it doesn't feel like a sequel, it's a completely different beast. The presentation is gorgeous! But what I love about Phoenix 1: those random waves and the fact, that I see me ship becoming immensly powerful within one run. I love the upgrades. Here you'll play with weak ships for quite a long time to eventually upgrade them permanently. It's a grind fest. The old one felt more skill based, every run was kind of equal, although never boring due to the randomization of waves. I'm sure that I will play the hell out of Phoenix 2, but right from the beginning it's not as entertaining as its prequel.
What's that ship that everyone at the top of the leaderboard is using? I can't seem to spot a matching silhouette in the ships page.
