As I talked about in my early impressions/preview of the game, Ender Lilies is a surprisingly deep 2D Metroidvania action RPG with cel-shaded visuals that had me coming back to it even after it bestowed countless unnecessary deaths upon me.
Ender Lilies’ inspiration lies somewhere in between the genre-bending games like Dark Souls and the Hollow Knight, and while it doesn’t reach the heights of either of the two behemoths, it makes enough of an impression for it to linger in your mind for some time.
In Ender Lilies, you play as Lily, one of the last remaining priestesses in a land ravished by a Blight called the Land’s End. As you would expect from a Souls-like game, this once lively castle and the flourishing flora around it now reside in the desolated shadow of its past. You explore all these unique, often breathtaking locales that range from gothic castle interiors to rain-drenched woods to obnoxious catacombs and more.
The game’s narrative is pieced together by finding various notes scattered around the world, defeating bosses, and having arbitrary conversations with the Umbral Knight, one of the many spirit weapons that you’ll acquire throughout the game.
The story in Ender Lilies progresses in a more linear fashion than most souls-like games. Lily wakes up as a blank slate with absolutely no memory of her past. Killing main bosses trigger cutscenes that reveal the backstory of these important figures and the events that foreshadowed this blight. The story progression feels decent in the early hours of the game, which makes reading these little bits of notes a fresh and rewarding experience. However, the pace at which you discover these key story junctions is uneven in the second half of the game. There are often too many expositions dumps for players to swallow at times. By the end, it’s hard to keep tabs on what’s actually going on in the story, which results in a muddled overall experience.
Ender Lilies is a profoundly atmospheric game. The constant dribbling of the rain even in the main menu serves as the perfect white noise companion as you explore the depths of its labyrinth world. And what a breathtaking world it is. From dense blue forests brimming with witches to dark and obnoxious dungeons littered with creepy spiders. These areas are vastly different too, in terms of complexity and enemies. Every area is accompanied by a unique background score as well, which gives these areas even more of a distinct flavor.
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Despite the challenges and sorrows that lie ahead, the aesthetics and tone of Ender Lilies make it endearing. It is as if the game tells you to deal with the disturbances of this world by being hopeful rather than being hopeless. This is in stark contrast to the souls-like games where its aesthetics are in sync with the themes it tries to portray. The player characters in those games are usually low-life degenerates shunned by society, whereas in Ender Lilies, you play as a white priestess: a symbol of hope and life. It is interesting how optimistically it portrays the theme of death and destruction from the games it takes inspiration and is something that future souls-like or Souls games should experiment with.
The gameplay in Ender Lilies starts as a simple affair though you get access to a variety of unique weapons quite soon in the game. The weapons are spirits of the main and optional bosses Lily defeats and “purifies” throughout the game. These consist of a quick and light sword called Umbral Knight, a slow-swing heavy hammer called Gerrod, The Elder Warrior, a bow called fallen archer, and many other unique weapons that you can mix and match throughout the game.
Lily can have three weapons equipped at a time with two different loadout sets in hand. Mixing and matching different spirits leads to a fun and engaging combat that mostly relies on player reflexes and learning enemy attack patterns. Some weapons can be used only a limited number of times until you rest at a checkpoint. Speaking of checkpoints, it works identical to any of the souls or souls-like games. You can rest at locations called Respite, where you can also equip and upgrade the various spirits that you have acquired so far. Upgrade resources can be acquired by exploring the game’s world and by killing different enemies. Being a Metroidvania game, there is plenty of backtracking to be done to traverse the once-locked or unavailable pathways. Some of the areas can only be unlocked by a certain weapon for which you have to beat that specific boss.
Although Dark Souls inspirations are obvious, Ender Lilies does certain things in a different way that should also make their way to future Souls or souls-like games. For instance, dying in Ender Lilies doesn’t rob you of the XP gained. It makes traversing older paths relatively smooth as you have the freedom to either avoid the respawned enemies or take them down again to level up. In short, In Ender Lilies, you never lose progress.
Ender Lilies offer plenty of unique and challenging enemies for players to overcome though it has severe balancing issues, especially in the latter half of the game. It starts off fairly simple with most enemies proving to be a breeze. However, after a couple of hours, the game drastically becomes difficult, offering more challenging platforming sections and relentless enemies that could kill you in just a few hits. The problem is that the game never really prepares you for such daunting encounters.
Since the beginning, Ender Lilies paints a picture of an incredibly chill and welcoming souls-like experience that you could breeze through with a little focus and precision. However, things start to escalate quickly in the second half, as the game not only becomes unforgivingly cheap but downright hideous at times. The time to reach the next checkpoint also seemingly increases in some of the later sections of the game, which results in a lot of tedious backtracking, ultimately hindering the overall lo-fi charm of the game.
There is a thin line that separates a challenging game and a downright cheap one, something that souls-like titles often struggle with. Ender Lilies does a fine job of offering a fun yet challenging experience in the first half, though its second half feels like a completely different game, resulting in an experience that not only feels incoherent but also offputting, which is a shame because Ender Lilies is a difficult game to put down once you have sunk so many hours into it.
Ender Lilies is an immersive souls-like Metroidvania platformer with a gorgeous art style, a soothing lullaby of a score, and a simple yet fun engaging combat, bogged down only by its severe balancing issues in the second half of the game. While it doesn’t revolutionize the SoulsBorne genre, it’s a decent example of why such a genre is thriving in the first place.
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights launches June 22, 2021, on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and, Xbox Series X/S.
