YMMV / Phoenotopia

• Awesome Music: Honorable mention goes to the ending music, but the entire soundtrack qualifies. You can listen to it here.
• Breather Boss: The more powerful Big Robot in the Hidden Village. Its only improvement over the first is that it drops a line of bombs when it charges. This makes it harder to push onto a trapdoor before it reactivates, but by the time you reach it, you have the Javelin and Rocket Boots, both of which make dodging all of its attacks trivial.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The skeletal golems, especially the red ones. They all hit hard and fast and can take a ton of punishment, but the red ones are immortal (unless dropped into a pit, which is only provided when you have to kill them to progress) and much faster than Gale.
  • Harpies. They fly well out of your reach and have a divebomb attack that hurts (though it brings them within smashing range), and the slingshot only makes them flinch. There are a few ways to hit them, but they're all difficult. You can:
    • Wait for one to grab a bomb, then shoot the bomb with the slingshot before it's dropped (rarely doable because your aim is usually just too slow to go to the right place in time, but there's an achievement for killing one this way).
    • Wait for the divebomb attack, then hit it on its way back up (difficult because of Gale's slow swings and harpies' erratic movement).
    • Climb some nearby platforms and hit it before it gets back out of reach (easier, but not always possible).
  • Plantdogs, if only because they're fast, hard to hit, and very durable. Fortunately, like other ground-bound enemies, they're easy to trap with steps they can't jump... if any are around.
• Fan Nickname: No names are provided in-game for any of the bosses except Bubbles (and, if the Newgrounds medals are included, the Big Robot). The "official" walkthrough (not written by the creator, but promoted by him shortly after it was written) names two others: Armored King Toad and Kobold Mercenary General.
• Goddamned Boss: The Big Robot. Its laser attacks are easy enough to dodge once you're used to them, but how long you can last before letting them pin you against the wall and force you to get hit is entirely dependent on the A.I. Roulette. (This isn't an issue with the version in the Hidden Village, as you have the Jet Boots by then, and can jump over multiple laser attacks at once.) It used to be worse in this department, but an Anti-Frustration Feature was added to let players figure out its weakness before continuing the fight after the first barrage.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Dread Lands. Also, the skeletonized corpses seen in the background in several areas.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The melee attack. The attack animation is long enough to give almost any enemy enough time to interrupt the attack or move out of the way.
• That One Achievement: "Speed Runner!" requires you to beat the game in under 64 minutes. This cannot be done without memorizing every last button you have to press (à la Metroid), as well as using an Ascended Glitch that the game never tells you about.
• That One Boss: The Kobold boss. Even after you figure out how you're supposed to fight it (when its shield is open, a Javelin thrown into the gap will stun it), it starts dropping Action Bomb enemies when it's low on health; these make it all but impossible to stun the boss at the right time without tanking the explosion, and if you don't stun it, well...
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Gale. It's straightened out by NPC dialogue fairly early, but her Retraux sprite leaves her gender ambiguous until then.
  • Happens again with Unit 66, who looks feminine, but has been referred to by the creator as "he".