★★★★★ App Store Editors’ Notes
★★★★★ Definitely recommend!!! (Devs pls read)
Fri Jun 05 2020 Mister.SlithersThis game is so fun. Hard to find a hella fun and replay able bullet hell. The ships are always fun to upgrade and amazing to play with. The promotion system is super cool and the community is awesome for me and my friends to compete in. I’ve been playing since the first five months at least, and I only have a few suggestions. I wish, that for the sake of my friends, you could go to a players profile from a leaderboard like normal, except if they were in your community or if you got to the profile from the community mission, you could send your ships to them. Like a gifting system. Just so you could have more interaction and so that new players could get more ships, without the devs losing money, since player one would have spent money or earned credits for upgrades and now it’s just another player getting it from them, if player one gives it up. I’d also love some way to play offline. It would be cool if there was like a story mode so you’d have like a hundred missions available, and once you finished them you would get a few credits, much less than normal presumably, but still. Then they get harder and harder and you could replay them, just so you don’t lose the game offline. these are all things that people I know and people that have the game have agreed would be wonderful, but I am very satisfied as it is. One minor thing would be a way of pawning ships for credits, just if you needed extra. That’s all from me, hope you guys see this, love the game!
★★★★★ MIRVs & Ship Movement
Mon Apr 13 2026 Jeremy221There are so many MIRVs. They’re bad when there are just a few but so often the screen goes from zero MIRVs to a jagged line of 20. Sometimes its many, many more. You can’t get away, avoid or eliminate so many MIRVs. Some medium sized ships with pump out more MIRVs than the ones with the 6x cannon and game will put 8 of those on the screen at once. They each vomit three MIRVs at once and repeat 4 times in a volley for 32 MIRVs spread across the whole screen at irregular intervals. It’s impossible to shoot them all before they fire and they all vomit out MIRVs before they’re even hittable. MIRVs themselves make this game 1-star.
The movement of the ships is really unpredictable. I think I’m making a slight dodge only to get launched into bullets I was fully clear of. Then there are also the ghost bullets that are invisible on screen but appear out of empty space. It can be when the screen is packed or on a completely empty screen. The ship movement is the bigger issue. The game seems to keep reading the direction and velocity wrong. Additionally the tracking of ship movement is significantly worse and the ship movement speed has been reduced something like 40%. Why is everything so laggy? This app should be running faster and cleaner than ever but its worse.
★★★★★ This game is amazing!
Fri May 31 2019 raven2023This game is absolutely perfect as far as gameplay is concerned. I love the 3D Touch interaction, and the wide variety of ships. It’s also hard enough to keep you playing, but not too hard to make you give up instantly. The only thing I would change is the amount of money you can earn. You are limited to a max of 725 a day. That’s if you win everything, which isn’t easy. Please, add more than 50 credits when you activate the warp gate and win the package. Waiting 12 hours for that and only getting 50 credits is very disappointing. Other than that though, this is one of the very best mobile games on the market.
To add onto my review, I would like to add a few suggestions that could make the game even better. It would be amazing if there was an endless mode, where you survive wave by wave and see how far you can get on each difficulty. Also, it would be really great if there was a way to customize ships. For example, after you reach a certain level (or maybe even add a creative mode), you can choose a ship, which weapon you would like it to have, what defenses it can have, and what special abilities it can have. I think those would be some seriously great additions that will make everyone love this amazing game even more! Thank you for ready!
★★★★★ Quick and Fun, love the 1-year update
Mon Jul 31 2017 El Matadurr*****Edit based on other players' feedback: you guys are seriously complaining about the cost of the ultimate upgrades...? They are meant to give you an incentive to focus two to three ships (or more if you're like me who's played from day one, saving up thousands of credits...) to your play style. And plus, the small perks don't suddenly make the game easier. SSSS waves in Act V are just as hair-raising as ever. What they have done, however, is make more ships more versatile. Like the Phoenix ship before was useless for SSSS. Now though, you can actually complete a SSSS laser-heavy mission because its improved EMP can sync up enemy laser firing, and its new personal shield reflects those lasers right back at the enemy ships. So much salt in some of these reviews. Some of you guys really just need to "git gud" before complaining about all this added content.*****
***Edit for 1-year anniversary: Absolutely love what the game has become. Perfect difficulty curves, a bevy of ships to play and unlock, and still perfect for short doses. The added "ultimate upgrades" really let you pick and choose your favorite ships to focus on, as the small perks added to the new abilities can make or break you in the SSSS levels. Kudos Devs. It's been a fun year***
Original review
It's like Phoenix 1, except faster and bite-sized but a lot harder too since you can die in one hit. Only gripe is the paywall. In Phoenix 1 you paid $7 and for everything in the game. For this game, you have to pay significantly more for the 40 ships if you don't want to wait. Ships and upgrades should be much cheaper.
★★★★★ Amazing game, still have a few suggestions
Sat Feb 29 2020 PokemonHUnter200This is an amazing game that lets you truly experience the real definition of bullet hell. It throws you into waves of enemies, and gives you all of three seconds to figure out what’s going on before everything tries to kill you. The barriers at the top and bottom of the screen rarely ever allow for one dimensional screen hugging, however the massive arsenal of ships normally results in complete annihilation of the invaders. The rank progression feels smooth, and the gameplay mechanics are easy for new players to grasp. There are three things I would like to see implemented in the game just to help make it more interesting.
1. Making it easier to get more coins - The current way you can get coins is by completing waves, which refresh every twenty hours or so. This can create a sort of grindy feeling to collect coins in the game. I think it would be a better idea to either decrease the mission refresh time, or add some other way to earn coins
2. Ship and Weapon effects - In Phoenix 2, ships are split into three categories, critical hit dealers, shield busters, and armor busters. Some missions have a combination of different types of enemy armors, and although you can brute force it with one ship, I believe it would be an interesting idea to create dual type ships, such as critical hit/shield breaker
3. Upgrade Prices - Having reaches a point in type at which several of my ships are ready to go apex mode, I have hit a bit of a wall when it comes to apex upgrades. They cost either 10,000 or 20,000 credits, and due to having a set amount of missions in a set amount of time, it gets more and more grindy getting enough coins
Although these 3 ideas above address some issues in the game, the good things far outweigh the bad things in terms of Phoenix 2.
★★★★★ Best mobile bullet hell
Mon Jul 02 2018 legorocketxThis game isn’t perfect, but there isn’t a better game out there to my knowledge. The major flaw that I see is that there is a hard limit on how much money you can earn in one day because the only way to make money is beating waves, completing missions, and getting tiny cash rewards from duplicate ships in the warp gate, all of which are on a timer. Once you beat the daily mission there isn’t another way to make money until it resets. I also think that the minimalist menu clashes with the graphics of the game, which are much more organic, but since they are both beautiful this is not really a problem. I wish that there was an easier way to join communities as well, I did it by spending too much time on the forums and finding an antiquated post about top communities, one of which I joined. All of these complaints aren’t going to stop me from playing the game though, I love trying new ships when I’ve already beat the daily mission, and beating my old times is always an option. Overall I definitely recommend downloading this game if you like bullet hells at all.
★★★★★ The best bullet hell availible on mobile!
Wed Oct 23 2019 sup3r87I’ve played some bullet hell games before. Some on my iPad, some on my console and some on my laptop, but this one is my personal favorite. The best part is definitely the controls. While most bullet hells operate my the player using buttons or a controller, Phoenix II is unique as you control with your finger. It makes playing extremely elegant and swarms of bullets all the less intimidating. Another great thing are the visuals. The game looks amazing, and it’s extremely easy to tell where enemy bullets and you, the player, are. Besides lasers, every projectile is a distinctive red and the player’s “core (where they take damage)” is always a flashing blue. The player’s projectiles, explosions and other effects are tucked under the bullets at all time making the projectiles extremely easy to point out amongst the chaos. The music is composed of three different tracks and I actually listen to it playing o5er games because it’s so good. It’s a shame there aren’t more tracks because more variation would make missions all the more exciting. And the progress, you get a great sense of pride when you blow up the last ship, the swarm of bullets deplete from the screen after your eighth try and you blast into space, where it congratulates you on your performance and you get a rank, or a shiny new badge. The bullets and lasers on screen can be overwhelming, but your ship also has activatable abilities that are extremely easy to use and turn the tide in battle. I’ve faced enemies with bizarre attack patterns that force me to make fast and daring movements which make the game all the more exciting. My only two complaints are that the game needs internet and there’s not really a campaign. But the good greatly outweighs the bad, so I feel like this is a very worthy 5 stars I usually never give. Awesome job, firi games!!
★★★★★ Loved it before, not so much now.
Mon May 25 2020 thecardsmanI played this game a lot a couple years ago and stumbled across it on the App Store this past week. I don’t exactly remember but the game seams to have changed quite a bit since the last time I played.
1. The transmission system where you have characters messaging you personally frustrates me. It slows the game to a crawl, and often repeats instructions over and over. sometimes even slowing the game down and forcing you to preform an action to continue. The transmissions pop up every time I do something. Open the shop, a transmission pops up. Use the warp gate, transmission pops up. Goes to the library for the hundredth time to see the ship you got. Transmission pops up. This wouldn’t be a problem if you could turn them off in the settings, but I couldn’t find a way to do so.
2. The currency is pretty hard to get wich makes it harder to find a ship that fits your play style and ability preferences. This isn't to much of a problem, it just personally bugs me. A side note that fits into this missions are few and far between as they have a cool down I believe. This space between the quests causes the currency to be harder to get. Without currency you can’t get ships or parts and can’t upgrade the ships you already own.
3. Difficulty, I’m not sure if it’s just the fact I haven’t gotten that far but the game seams a bit too easy. I remember it being quite difficult as it is a bullet hell. However the bullets felt slow and the ships just fired at random. If a ship could lock onto a target and fire in the general direction I feel it would make the game much more like a bullet hell.
These where just my personal thoughts, it could be the fact my cynical nature mixed with nostalgia but the game felt dumbed down and hollow.
