I still don't know why this game isn't getting the attention it deserves. I loved V.I.R.T.U.E.S and maybe i'm not a huge fan of a few characters, but Phoenixes overcomes the first one in a lot of aspects and the story doesn't fall behind neither.
Perhaps it's still in its early development, but you can clearly tell when a game is worth playing and when it isn't.
Personally I usually subconsciously ignore any game that has "Others" stated in the engine because in 95% of cases those are the games that wouldn't interest me in terms of gameplay and/or visuals. I usually look for RenPy/Unity games, because most often VN or sandbox-VN type of games I'm looking for are made on those engines, while games on other engines usually include gameplay mechanics I'd like to avoid. I get that VN or sandbox-VN games can be made on other engines, but I haven't seen many good VNs on other engines.
Phoenixes is a welcome exception to that rule, but I only found this game by accident when it was already at patch 0.6 and immediately decided to play it when I realized it's the game by V.I.R.T.U.E.S author and I'm loving it so far. But I didn't find it for the longest time exactly because of the engine reason.
I don't have much negativity towards the Godot engine the game uses specifically, but a downside I see is that it crashes occasionally (more often than Renpy/Unity games I've played) and at the same time doesn't have an autosave function (at least not yet). It's not nearly enough to discourage me from playing the game, I just have to save more often, but still more stability and/or autosave would be welcome.