Phoenix Point Review

The world has had its fair share of viruses, especially over the past two years, and while playing a game where the main plot revolves around one seems like it may lack immersion, Phoenix Point does have its moments where it's worth it.

The Pandoravirus - a once dormant, alien virus that waited in the permafrost of polar ice caps has now enveloped the Earth, annihilating most of the population, infecting the oceans and later turning into an airborne microbial virus that mutates anything it comes into contact with. A mutagenic vector called the Mist helps spread the virus over entire cities, turning its populations into mindless drones connected through a hive mind. It all seems hopeless at first, but some are still determined to try to save the rest of humanity and eradicate the Pandoravirus.

Phoenix Point is a turn-based tactical strategy game, and for those new to the world of turn-based gaming, there are options to change the difficulty. However, even on the lowest difficulty, the game wasn’t very “first time” friendly. In addition to that, the game has some bugs that make it hard to even start the game. On the PlayStation 4, when attempting to even start the game, there was an error stating that it could not load the game level. This happened a few times, and I couldn’t start the game for a few days. When I finally got lucky and started to play, I had trouble with unresponsive buttons on the first level. I couldn’t even restart the level in-game or go back to the main menu and load back in; I had to exit the game and close the application. In many instances, crashing was a problem, either mid-mission or at the end or while saving the game. Many of the bugs happened so frequently, it made playing the game quite frustrating.

There wasn't much of a save with the sound design, but it was made up for in visuals. Attention seems to have been spent making the cutscenes and in-game graphics look superb, but the voice acting was lacklustre. At times, it sounded like the voice actors didn’t have a good microphone when recording. What was probably the most disappointing part was the sounds of your enemies. You would expect these fierce creatures that have wiped out the world you once knew to be… well, intimidating. Unfortunately, the most challenging aliens don’t sound impressive, even for this type of game.

While bugs heavily conquered my experience with Phoenix Point, I enjoyed one redeeming aspect of the game: the story. Exploring is essential when progressing through the game and learning more about this virus-ridden world’s lore. The Pandoravirus has decimated over 99% of the human race. The less than 1% that are still around are separated into three factions: Synedrion, New Jericho, and The Disciples of Anu. The three factions aren’t just trying to “save” the world but remake it in their image. Each faction has its own way of rebuilding the world after getting rid of those infected by the Pandoravirus, and none of them agree with how the others do it.

The Synedrion are most concerned with turning the new world into a utopia state with an emphasis on personal freedom. Their main principles are inspired by the prior society’s mistakes. The Disciples of Anu are one of the most worrying factions as they seek to try to weaponize the Pandoravirus. They’re a religious group that believes in a deity called the Dead God and believes that the Pandoravirus was sent by said deity as punishment for humanity’s crimes. New Jericho could be the most logical choice of the factions at the moment, as they are heavily militarised with an emphasis on eradicating the virus and the Mist. Their use of cybernetics and mutant screening keeps their forces free of being overrun with possible outbreaks.