I got to write my dream article for Sidequest about Ender Lilies, one of my favorite games! Here’s the opening paragraph:
In Binary Haze’s 2021 Soulslike Metroidvania Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights, a young girl named Lily navigates a hostile postapocalyptic world with the help of grotesquely mutated undead monsters. As the game progresses, Lily becomes increasingly reliant on her monstrous companions as she becomes more monstrous herself. Ender Lilies functions as an intriguing model of mutual aid, especially in relation to its gradual descent into fungal horror. As the world changes around us, Ender Lilies asks, is it really so horrific to develop radical new relationships with the environment?
This past weekend, I played an early access version of the dark fantasy 2D action-adventure game Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, which includes about three and a half hours of content. So far, I really like what I see.
Ender Magnolia is a sequel to Ender Lilies, a Soulslike Metroidvania published by the Japanese developer Binary Haze Interactive in January 2021. In Ender Lilies, you play as a young girl named Lily who wakes up alone in a ruined kingdom built on the edge of a much older kingdom. The blight that plagued the kingdom of the Ancients spread to Lily’s kingdom untold decades ago. As the last of a line of priestesses, Lily’s job is to purify those affected by the blight by laying them to rest. Since Lily is defenseless on her own, she’s aided by the spirits of the blighted whom she’s purified. Each boss and miniboss the player defeats contributes to Lily’s moveset, which is completely customizable.
Although this isn’t 100% confirmed in the early access version, there’s strong evidence to suggest that Ender Magnolia is a prequel that takes place during the last days of the kingdom of the Ancients. This kingdom has clearly fallen on hard times, but it still boasts a sophisticated fusion of magic and technology that led to the creation of artificial lifeforms called homunculi. Homunculi are able to resist the influence of a magical blight rising from underground, but only to a limited extent.
You play as a young girl named Lilac who is an Attuner, a title that designates someone who possesses the magic necessary to repair homunculi and purge the influence of the blight. Where Lily purified decaying zombies in Ender Lilies, Lilac attunes renegade humanoid robots. While Lily’s purification allowed the blighted to rest by allowing them to die, Lilac’s attunement helps homunculi regain their sanity.
Since they’re still alive after attunement, the defeated robots don’t automatically join Lilac as companions. If I had to guess, I’d say that the relatively limited number of Lilac’s companions in Ender Magnolia is probably Binary Haze’s response to a common criticism of Ender Lilies, namely, that there were too many companion spirits and not enough upgrade resources to experiment or use them all effectively. Thankfully, this excess of choice doesn’t seem to be an issue in Ender Magnolia, in which Lilac’s attacks are still fully customizable but much more focused on a core moveset.
None of the minibosses join Lilac, but they’re still fun to fight, as are the challenging area bosses. Whereas there were major spikes in difficulty in Ender Lilies, Ender Magnolia seems to be more balanced and linear in terms of challenge. According to the developer notes on Steam, the full version of the game will allow the player to customize the difficulty, but the standard setting worked just fine for me. I still died a lot (affectionate) and was grateful for every character stat upgrade.
In Ender Lilies, Lily was the only living person in the entire kingdom, so she didn’t have any need for money. This is not the case in Ender Magnolia, which has a central village hosting a small shop where Lilac can buy bracelets that boost her defense and other upgrades. Money isn’t directly received from defeating enemies, but must be found in the environment or offered as a reward.
The game’s economy is supported by numerous NPCs who can be found in the central hub, as well as scattered across the map. Some of these NPCs are human, and some are homunculi, and some seem to be visitors from the “upper stratum” of the city, like Lilac herself. The player can still find scraps of text with background lore hidden in the environment, but there are also living people directly sharing their experiences. Some of this text is relevant to Lilac, but I appreciate that most of it isn’t. As in Ender Lilies, Ender Magnolia contains a lot of smaller stories that have very little to do with the player. This world is in decline, but the player gets a sense that there’s still something for Lilac to save. She’s a very sweet girl, as is her main companion Nola, a stern but elegant sword lesbian. I’m looking forward to all the tears I’m going to cry as their tragedy unfolds.
Like Ender Lilies, Ender Magnolia is intensely atmospheric. The primary aesthetic of Ender Lilies was ruin and decay, while Ender Magnolia seems to be more rustpunk (or whatever you’d call what’s going on in the city of Midgar in Final Fantasy VII). There’s a beautiful city above, but you begin the game in the slums, which are filthy and decrepit. When the rusty browns of this aesthetic are interrupted, such as in an abandoned castle overgrown with brilliantly scarlet maple trees, it’s a sight to behold. The sound design and music are also marvelous. To me, the way the game designers use the beauty of the environment to inspire the player to overcome challenges is the hallmark of Soulslike games, and Ender Magnolia nails this perfectly.
I keep comparing Ender Magnolia to Ender Lilies, but it’s not necessary to be familiar with Ender Lilies to enjoy and appreciate what’s going on in Ender Magnolia. In fact, I’d say that Ender Magnolia is much more accessible to newcomers, at least based on what I’ve seen so far.
Meanwhile if you, like me, have done multiple playthroughs of Ender Lilies, Ender Magnolia still feels fresh. It’s significantly different from its predecessor in ways that are fun and interesting and not just new for the sake of change.
I’m really excited about Ender Magnolia. If nothing else, not only can you pet the big fluffy robot zombie dog, but he also serves as your method of fast travel. What a good boy!!
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is a fantasy-themed 2D adventure-platformer with moderate elements of horror and a moderately high level of difficulty. Unlike many modern Metroidvania games, there is nothing retro about the graphics. The backgrounds are gorgeous works of HD digital art filled with stunning details, and the characters and enemies are all beautifully animated. Both the combat and exploration are a lot of fun, and it’s a joy to move through this ruined world.
You play as a young unnamed priestess (referred to by the user interface as Lily) who wakes in the catacombs beneath a cathedral filled with monsters. You’re greeted by an adult knight (initially called “the Umbral Knight” but later revealed to be named Ferin) who accompanies Lily outside, where the landscape is dark and dripping with the water of a poisonous rain. Everything touched by the rain becomes “blighted,” or monstrous and undead. Lily has the ability to purify monsters by removing the blight from their bodies, thereby allowing them to die. Although the game has no quest-givers to explain what’s going on, it’s easy enough to make the assumption that Lily’s job is to find the source of the blight and purify it.
Lily is a small child who is physically fragile, and she cannot defend herself on her own. Your attacks are therefore performed by the Umbral Knight, who is gradually joined by other spirits. The Umbral Knight performs a basic sword attack, but Lily meets spirits who can perform heavy attacks, ranged attacks, area-of-effect attacks, and so on. You can equip two sets of three spirits at a time and map them onto whatever buttons you wish in order to create different combos and skill sets appropriate to different bosses and exploration challenges. This is much less complicated that it sounds, and the Umbral Knight is strong and versatile enough to carry you through the game.
You can upgrade these spirits using different types of limited resources that you find through exploration. Aside from Lily, everyone in the world of the game is either dead or undead, and there is no “economy” to speak of – only the relics and resources that Lily can scavenge from corpses. Spirits are acquired by defeating boss monsters, many of which are optional and must also be found by exploration. I really love this system of fighting a powered-up version of a regular monster in order to acquire its abilities, especially since the player should already be familiar with these abilities from having faced a number of such creatures in combat.
The optional minibosses are tricky but fun, but the mandatory zone bosses are legitimately challenging. This challenge is mitigated by the game’s leveling system, in which defeating enemies gives Lily experience points that allow her to gain levels. Health and attack upgrades must be acquired elsewhere, but each new level grants Lily ever-so-slightly better defense and a tiny boost to the power of the Umbral Knight. There is always a save point right before a zone boss fight, as well as an enemy-dense screen on the other side of the save point that provides a good opportunity to level up if needed. The only real way to defeat these bosses is to learn their attack patterns while optimizing your own set of attacks, but the zone leading to each boss does a good job of teaching you the skills you need to survive.
You can also find various relics in the world that grant enhanced abilities, such as giving you more healing charges, increasing the amount healed with each charge, increasing your defense, strengthening certain types of attacks, and so on. In addition, you’ll find items that allow you to equip more relics, as well as items that permanently increase your health bar. Some of these items are hidden behind illusory walls, but these “secrets” are never unmarked, and the game teaches you how to read the environment fairly early on. If you pay attention and don’t mind an occasional bit of backtracking – which you’ll need to do anyway to find a path forward through the interconnected zones – you should be able to strengthen Lily just enough to keep going without having to grind for levels.
Ender Lilies is clearly inspired by Dark Souls and Hollow Knight. It’s not easy, but I would say it’s more “challenging” than “punishing.” The combat is a lot of fun, but the true emphasis is on exploration and paying close attention to the environment. Each screen of the game has its own unique design and artwork, meaning that you’ll be inspired to explore just to see what’s around the next corner. In addition, each relic and spirit and upgrade material you find is valuable, as is every zone boss spirit, all of which grant you an additional exploration ability. I found the gameplay loop of Ender Lilies to be extremely satisfying.
Given that everyone in the world of the game is dead, careful exploration also allows you to find bits and pieces of the story in the form of Fallout-style journals and missives that have been left lying around. Like the gameplay, the story is inspired by Dark Souls and Hollow Knight, and the overarching plot is similar – a morally ambiguous king has made a difficult choice involving arcane forces that were poorly understood by hubristic scientist-wizards. Ender Lilies adds a few interesting twists to this formula, especially towards the end, and the abject tragedy of what happened in this kingdom feels earned, narratively speaking.
What I love about the story is that every textual object you find has a distinct narrative voice. It goes without saying that the presentation of information is not linear, and it’s always a fun surprise to find something written by a blighted monster you encountered much earlier in the game. Some of these characters are much more important than others, but the gradual accumulation of their stories leads the player to the dawning realization that, despite the horror of the situation, the kingdom was filled with flawed but deeply human people who were doing the best they could.
It’s easy to dismiss Ender Lilies as “2D anime Dark Souls for casuals” at a glance, but I ended up being genuinely moved by the story and characters. The horror themes are expressed with creativity and style, and Ender Lilies is nothing if not atmospheric. In terms of gameplay, I think Ender Lilies may be a perfect Metroidvania, and the game features various ease-of-life concessions that help make it more accessible without diminishing the thrill or challenge of the gameplay.
And finally, I appreciate how the spirits Lily has purified hang out with you at save points. There’s nothing I love more than the image of a cute girl sitting amongst weathered ruins surrounded by grotesque monsters as rain falls in the background. That’s the good stuff right there.
Digital Fantasy Diary 