Review Phigros: a mobile rhythm game

Hi don’t hurt me, this is only my second ever game review
Ok let’s get this party started. Phigros is a fairly recent rhythm game (I believe it came out within the past year). As with any rhythm game, your goal in Phigros is to hit the notes on time with the song. The main gimmick with this game is the dynamic judgement line (the line where you’re supposed to hit the notes). Unlike many other rhythm games that have stationary judgement lines, the judgement lines in this game can move across the screen, rotate, and disappear. There can also be multiple lines on the screen as well.

Spoiler: Gameplay

Gameplay is fairly simple. There are 4 kinds of notes: tap, hold, slide, and flick. Notes can appear from either above a judgement line or below a judgement line. If 2 or more notes should be hit at the same time, there will be a yellow glow around each note. Notes do not have to be tapped directly on the judgement line. You can tap anywhere above or below the line, as long as you are still lined up with the note.

Spoiler: Levels

Currently there are around 80 songs in Phigros. New songs are added over time. Each song has 3 difficulties: Easy (EZ), Hard (HD), and Insane (IN). There are 4 songs with a much harder difficulty, Another (AT). Each chart is given a number- smaller numbers for easier charts and larger numbers for harder charts- from 1 to 16. Easy is around 1-7, Hard is around 5-12, Insane is around 11-15, and Another is usually 16.

Spoiler: Watch some gameplay!

Here’s me doing the easiest Insane song. Note that I have the tap sound effects on.

Spoiler: Songs

As I mentioned above, there are around 80 songs in the game. I’ll be honest, I haven’t heard of many of the artists whose music is featured in Phigros. However, there were a few songs I recognized from other rhythm games. For example, I recognized “Infinity Heaven”, “Chronostasis”, and “GOODTEK” from Arcaea, and some artists I was familiar with were LeaF, frums, EBIMAYO, and Sound Souler. I guess it’s refreshing to see new artists and not the same songs over and over (*cough Freedom Dive cough*)

Some of my favorites? dB Doll, Dead Soul, CROSS SOUL, GOODRAGE, Electron, Magenta Potion, NO ONE YES MAN, and もぺもぺ. (Sorry I’m not good at narrowing down lol)

Spoiler: Story

The songs are broken up into sections. There are 3 sections that are “story” chapters- Chapter 4, 5, and 6. (I don’t know why there isn’t a Chapter 1, 2 or 3.) To my understanding, there isn’t really a story line. There are little “excerpts” you can sometimes get after clearing levels, but as far as I know, they don’t have much significance. (To be honest, I don’t really read through them anyway...) However, there are 2 hidden songs in the story chapters you can unlock, and the excerpts in Chapter 6 can shed some light on how to unlock one of them.

Spoiler: Shop

In the shop, you can buy new songs, as well backgrounds and avatars for your in-game profile. One huge perk about Phigros is that the game is completely free. The in-game currency, bytes, is earned when completing levels or reading excerpts. Songs usually cost somewhere around 4 and 8 MB. Backgrounds are around 512 KB, and avatars are around 2 MB. I dont recommend buying the backgrounds or avatars unless you really want to, because you can sometimes earn them when playing songs.

Alrighty that about covers the basics. There’s a lot more to explain, but I think this is enough detail already.

Spoiler: Criticisms

I just have a few criticisms for this game. My biggest complaint is that there is no indicator of a perfect score or full combo during the levels. Other rhythm games have a subtle way of showing if the player has a perfect score or full combo. (Cytus II has the combo number yellow for a perfect score and blue for a full combo, for example.) Phigros has nothing, which bothers me when I’m not sure if, in a seemingly perfect run, I may have gotten a good instead of a perfect.
Another problem is that your in-game account is bound to the device and not an email, so if you were to download the game on a new device, you would have to start all over, and that’s not fun.

Final thoughts:
Overall, Phigros is a very fun game. I’ve spent hours playing it, and I’m getting better and better. The crazy judgement lines are a bit daunting at first, but after playing for a while they aren’t as scary. Each level is unique because of the judgement lines, which makes each level fun to play (even if the level is ridiculously hard). I find myself drawn to play the Insane charts because of this. Yes, there are some downsides to the game, but they’re just minor complaints of mine. I definitely recommend to any rhythm game fans, or anyone who wants to try a rhythm game.

EDIT: ok it's been a while so let me just say some things.

• Addressing the story chapters: there were once Chapter 1, 2, and 3. These were all merged into the Legacy Chapters in one of the updates. (I wasn't playing at the time, so I didn't know until looking into the Phigros Wiki.)
• Addressing one of my criticisms: in an update, they added a new feature that serves as the indicator for a full combo or an all perfect. If you the feature on, the judgement line(s) will be gold for all perfect, and will turn blue for a full combo or turn white if you get a Bad or Miss.
• As of the newest update, there are now 107 songs in Phigros! (Also there are 7 songs with an AT level, so that makes it 328 unique charts to play!) They recently had a collab with Muse Dash! (tbh I was surprised they had a collab with another rhythm game since it's a completely free game and I don't know where they get the funds to be collaborating, but hey, I'm not complaining. They added in Cthugha and I love that song.)
• Lastly, one more critique (to replace the one that got fixed lol). This one isn't all that bad though, it's just me being nit picky. If you're playing a chart on a bigger phone, the playing screen doesn't fit all the way across the screen and there are borders in the extra "dead space". Sorry that's hard to put into words, so here's a screenshot from my phone.

Spoiler

(I have a Samsung Galaxy A32 5G, and it's really big for a phone.) The borders are just there so the chart is still the same size (not stretched out to the length of the phone). Idk, I don't like how they look? Something about them just doesn't click with me. Obviously this won't be a problem for smaller phones or tablets. On my old phone, which is smaller than my current phone, it didn't have these borders.