Uma experiência solida e fluida de um metroidvania bem redondinho, se destacando com uma belíssima arte e uma trilha sonora muito linda, a gameplay é simples, mas rica em diversidade, através da obtenção de diversos espíritos, tendo como mecânica principal garantir diversas habilidades, proporcionando uma boa variedade no combate e melhorando o processo de exploração, cujo processo é instigante, divertido e movimentado
Admiro por não terem tomado um rumo ''soulslike" para esse aqui, tornando uma experiencia balanceada, tanto para quem busca desafio e para quem deseja algo menos punitivo

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is easily right up there with Hollow Knight and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night as one of the best modern metroidvanias that I've personally played. It's about half the length of those games only clocking in at 21 hours for my 100% run, but even with its relatively short completion time it still hits the mark on everything that makes a metroidvania enjoyable.

Starting with the premise of the story, you play as Lily, the last and youngest White Priestess, your mission is to purify the kingdom of Land's End from the Blight, a rain which corrupts and drives anything it touches (aside from Lily herself) to madness while simultaneously granting immortality. The previous Priestess bound the spirit of her faithful knight companion to Lily for protection seeing as how Lily herself is young and defenseless. The Umbral Knight is your faithful companion who follows Lily on her journey and will occasional speak exposition as you reach new areas. The bulk of the narrative is told in a Dark Souls-like manner by giving the player bits and pieces of lore at a time in the form of diary entries you have to find and read and memories in the form of cut-scenes you witness from felling boss enemies. At the end of the day it's not a very complex plot, but there are a few twists and revelations and some moments that will definitely pull at your heartstrings and I found it compelling all the way through, it gave me a very dark fantasy fairytale vibe which I liked a lot.

Aside from Lily and the Umbral Knight there are many characters you'll meet along the way in the form of main story bosses and mini bosses, to avoid spoilers I won't name any specifics, but in true Souls-like fashion they all have their own tragic histories and stories, the game can be very dark and sad at times, but I feel like that is part of what makes it so memorable and even if you never talk to any of these characters you really feel for them with how well their backstories are written, especially if you take the time to read all the lore entries.

Next I want to mention the OST because it's just simply incredible. It was composed by the Japanese art pop/classical crossover group Mili, I've been a big fan of Mili for a couple years now so as soon as I heard the Cliffside Hamlet theme and heard the ethereal whisper humming of Cassie Wei I recognized it was Mili and knew immediately this OST would be a classic. There's tons of variety with plenty of mystical fairytale like medieval folk music to fit the fairytale vibe of the game, but there's also suspenseful and unsettling atmospheric songs and orchestral bombastic themes as well, I also have to mention that I love how the music slowly builds up during boss fights and as the boss loses more and more health it swells with more bombast. The ending/credits theme is also just gorgeous.

Gameplay as with every metroidvania is evenly divided into two major aspects, combat and exploration.

1) The combat. It starts out basic as you only have the Umbral Knight at your behest in the beginning. Being a frail little girl Lily herself doesn't fight, but summons spirits to attack for her and the game has a great sense of progression as you truly feel Lilly getting stronger the longer you play the game as you level up and collect new spirits to help fight for you. Spirits act as skill attacks and once you have enough you can bind 6 total, 3 to your primary set and 3 to your secondary set. These each correspond to the buttons square, triangle and circle, you can switch between sets with R1, normal spirits have cooldowns and limited uses while boss spirits don't, so it's good to swap between a set of each to chain together combos and do great damage. This is a Souls-like aside from a metroidvania so of course you have a dodge as well and I really want to mention the nice detail of how the animation for Lily's dodge is her throwing her entire body out of the way while landing on the ground, it really shows how weak and defenseless she is and another show of progression is eventually you'll unlock a dash and that changes Lily's default dodge animation to a graceful slide across the ground. Overall there's tons of variety in the combat and many cool spirit attacks to try out and utilize for different types of play-styles and builds.

2) The exploration. The map in Ender Lilies is a very decent size and packed to the brim with secret walls, hidden pathways and items galore to find. These will come in the shape of lore entries, Relics which you equip to increase various stats, Amulet fragments and gems which permanently increase your health and Blight which is used to enhance your spirits. A big portion of these items and secrets you can't reach at first, but as you progress further into the game you'll slowly unlock your metroidvania staple power-ups. Double jump, wall climb, air dash, breathing underwater etc. You name it, it's there, can never go wrong with the classics and these power-ups will make those backtracking trips just as fresh as the first run through the area. Which brings me to my next point...

The level design. Every time I got a new power-up I couldn't wait to backtrack through the map to find new secrets I couldn't reach prior and that's mostly due to the fantastic level design (Well and the fact that there's ample bonfire/fast travel locations to move between) level design is vibrantly colorful with tons of scenic variety, you have everything from a ruined castle to a witch's hamlet that's been flooded and a poisonous fog filled abyss. There were a couple areas that had some poor enemy placement, but they're few and far between and easy to look past, aside from that exploring each level numerous times was a joy.

The art direction and the actual background art itself is simply beautiful, reminds me of Vanillaware's style, especially Odin Sphere and it definitely helps accentuate the whole fairytale vibe the game has going for it. The animations are all high quality as well, everything from simple movements to the attacks look charming and feel very smooth and fluid.

Almost all the bosses were incredibly fun to fight, each boss has multiple phases as their health bar decreases and that changes up their moveset just when you think you've memorized it. The difficulty was perfectly adjusted to be just challenging enough to take a few tries to beat, but not so hard that the difficulty felt artificial, the only exceptions to this were a couple late game bosses which didn't rely on the boss themselves being challenging and just threw infinite mobs of enemies at you while fighting the boss, that felt pretty cheap to me, but once again I love everything else so much that it's easy to look past this.

All in all Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is a masterfully crafted modern classic in the metroidvania genre, managing to tell a compelling narrative with plenty of interesting world-building and well written characters, feature a combat system that is enjoyable and has good depth to it, bosses which are both challenging and fun to fight and a world that is always a joy to explore with an OST that is truly a magical composition which perfectly captures the atmosphere of the beautiful art aesthetics. If you're a fan of games like Hollow Knight, Salt and Sanctuary or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night you certainly don't want to miss out on this gem of a game.

not a poorly crafted experience in any sense and i'm sure theres a lot here i lacked the generosity to find but i felt like i could completely visualize the creators' concept and reference stack with such exact clarity that it became distracting:

femininely morose akihiko yoshida and ayami kojima art/
lilting twinklechoral keichi okabe-wave ost/
vanillaware storybook Spine animations/
folklore character collection combat/
soulstroidvania wielding its genre structure of labyrinthine sparseness to spin a ludically obvious yarn about seeking ~ absolution amidst decay ~

-- and I had to uninstall because the returns are so diminished for me at this point and it was genuinely making me sad that such a clear and passionate labor of love could feel so utterly taxonomizable and consumed by its own clockably interrelated references

at this point idk its just kind of upsetting to play something with such a rigorous and dogmatic commitment to its reference material that doesnt seem to extend very far beyond the world of games themselves, even if said games are all things i find personally beautiful and worth emulating. felt like a very workmanlike and glossy medley of touchstones from works that clearly moved the creators--but executed in a sort of surface way that belies their inability to cogently, personally express how said works resonated beyond mere facsimile. no judgies girl i relate and its why i havent reliably maintained any true semblance of a dedicated art practice for years!!!

tldr; i saw myself in this and i didnt like it

Ender Lilies emphasizes just how good Hollow Knight was.

Combat is a bit more Souls-like in the sense that getting hit by enemy attacks is punishing and by extension, attacking is more of a commitment. However, there are a lot of times where you can exploit angles in order to get free kills and that doesn't necessarily feel rewarding.

The aesthetic of the game is probably its strongest point with its eldritch horror aspects but the plot and the dialogue don't really hold up to the level of intrigue that was promised by the setting.

There's a lot to like in Ender Lilies, and even though it's unfortunately because most of it I liked in other games, I still had a pretty good time getting through it on the whole. The moment-to-moment combat is alright but the spirit system is fun to mess with and develop favorites. The metroidvania progression is a bit rough at first but really opens up halfway through, and that feeling of a world suddenly becoming completely accessible, when done right, is a thrill I can personally never get enough of. Also, as a completionist specifically with these types of games, I always appreciate some user-friendly indicators that rooms are cleared out, especially when they're not just telling me exactly where the items are. This was an incredibly satisfying game for me to get through, even with a few road bumps here and there.

I largely enjoyed the presentation as well, though I was baffled by the way post-boss cutscenes were presented. These animated sequences have, I guess, monologues to fill in backstory of the enemies you've taken down, but they're not voice acted nor is the text advancement controlled by the player. So basically, any small distraction and it feels as though you will just miss entire chunks of story, and you'll have to revisit them at respites where you can view any previously unlocked cutscenes. Could be a me problem, but this absolutely hurt a lot of interest in the story, and while it wasn't doing much for me when I was "getting it" anyway, I became so easily discouraged from it that I stopped reading a lot of the lore collectibles entirely. I would think either voice-acted cutscenes [which is obviously a developmental expense and I don't want to underplay that] or just giving the player control over when text advances would be easier ways to get involved in the story. I guess it's a good thing the story felt pretty derivative anyway, so I didn't feel too walled by that presentation.

Reviews on here have already gone over how familiar elements of Ender Lilies are to those who have played pretty much any game, and, yeah, like most games, Ender Lilies is an accumulation of homages, which isn't inherently a bad thing. But it's comical just how much of an "homage" this is, like to the point where it can feel illegal? Almost every step of the way not only did something remind me of another game, but it did so explicitly. Hollow Knight, Dark Souls, and Castlevania are probably the most overt, but I just had to laugh when I was greeted with an ending screen where a single letter in a few lines of text was colored differently to indicate which ending I got, eerily similar to the likes of Nier Automata. Everything is so familiar that it can get pretty distracting, but I've certainly played worse games in this style and probably will in the future.

this game might be accused of iterating on the genre's titans rather than innovating, but i still really liked it, as the game's strengths are just so great that they outweigh the game's flaws. the combat is the standout feature of the game, featuring a lot of customization for combos. it's the best implementation of "RPG mechanics" in a metroidvania that i can remember. the music and art direction are both great. i like the mood of the game, although i think the story/lore are both a little too esoteric for my taste. outside of combat, the movement is just ok, and i don't think the exploration in this game is also just ok.

Very solid metroidvania, though it doesn't do that much to separate itself from others. The combat was fun and the biggest focus of the gameplay, the platforming in here almost never matters and remains really basic the whole way through. Combat consists of juggling 6 of your spirits around and can get pretty hectic. Enemies are fast and hit really hard, but your character is really agile and your dodge gives you a lot of invulnerability so it's usually very doable. I particularly enjoy the bosses, they all feel impossible the first try but as you start getting the patterns down it becomes very doable and fun to beat their asses and looking cool while doing so. The music has some nice moments, especially when Mili comes in and sings some lyrics, but that's not often. Most of the time it's very generic and honestly boring at this point sad piano. As soon as I finished this game I completely forgot every track that wasn't Mili. Visually this game is a treat, the enemy designs are gross as fuck and interesting to look at, as well as the rest of the world. Everything looks cold and dirty, which makes sense for the setting, which is a ruined kingdom. Speaking of which, I found the story very unengaging. Most of it is told through documents you find and read, but there was something about it that really failed to get my attention. I already don't remember much, and even the cutscenes felt bland. Like I said at the beginning, this game is very well made, but there's not much here that I could really call original. And you know what, that is perfectly fine. I don't regret spending around 22 hours getting everything in this game, some very annoying to get collectibles aside. The map always tells you if a room connects to another, a vague direction where that connection is, and if there is a secret there. Some more detailed room layout might've been useful, but the game tells you just enough so that you don't get too lost and secret finding remains satisfying and not irritating.

If you're a metroidvania fan, I think you owe it to yourself to try out Ender Lilies. Hauntingly beautiful with an exceptional OST and world to explore. The use of choosing spirits you encounter as your attacks is not only fun from a thematic view but allows for a good bit of customizability to account for your specific playstyle.

The story takes similar approach to games like Hollow Knight and Dark Souls where much of it is meant to be pieced together by random bits of information gleamed throughout the world. I personally found it compelling to the point where I was more interested in finding a new note to understand more about what happened to this decrepit world than I was finding an actual new upgrade.

There are some performance issues when playing docked on switch, especially in some of the later large areas, but it still generally runs well for the most part. The only other issues I have with the game are rather small nitpicks in the grand scheme of things.

Personally, the game is a special one, and I really hope it can find success.

Beautiful visuals, spectacular soundtrack, and solid combat...all absolutely ruined by it trying and failing to be the next Hollow Knight, as it tries to be hard but fails to recognise what "hard" actually is, and what made that game tough, but fair. This is neither tough nor fair, it's just a mindless slog.

This is about as much fun as stabbing yourself in the eye, and seems designed more to frustrate than to challenge - bosses are excessive damage sponges, you're pathetically fragile, and if you combine this with predictable and repetitive attack patterns it just turns into you doing the same thing over and over for far longer than should be necessary. It's boring, unbalanced, and very poorly designed. The systems in this game are all pointless: levels don't contribute in any meaningful way to damage you can take or receive, relics are a waste of time that don't enhance your survivability, and most spirits are useless. What's the point in having these there if they don't actually do anything?

This game is like the foulest expired food you can imagine wrapped up in the most beautiful wrapper you can imagine. It looks nice on the surface, but once you get past that...

Ender Lliles é o classico caso, pega tudo que já foi feito antes em metroidvanias, e deixa no seu melhor jeitinho, o jogo não se destaca em nada como um ''criador'', mas porra, que jogo divertido.

Puta exploração interessante, belas e divertidas boss battles, um backtracking foda, um sistema de mapa interessante que ajuda demais o jogador, um visual que é a unica coisa que se destaca bastante dele.

E o sistema de armas e ataques, que é bem unico, usar a alma de inimigos para atacar, sem ser um subitem, mas sim uma arma central mesmo.

Simples, delicia, divertido, bonito, brabo, exatamente o que Ender Lilies é.

Wow, all in all this was an excellent Metroidvania. Combining the staples of the genre with some influences from RPGs and the Dark Souls games, ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights may not be the most innovative search action game, but it is an absolutely phenomenal execution of one.

To start, the combat is just excellent. You start off with a basic sword combo and can build from there as you go throughout the game. What's cool about this is since you're just a little girl, you use spirits to fight for you, including that starting sword combo. You build out your repertoire bit by bit with more main and supporting spirits by exploring the world for mini bosses or beating the main bosses of the game. It's a great system that allows for some great customization of builds (you can have two presets at once that you switch between) based on how you play and what you've found so far.

The bosses also give you a new ability each time you beat one, allowing you to overcome more obstacles. In classic Metroidvania fashion, you use these to both move on to the next level and to backtrack and find further goodies in previous levels. This backtracking is made all the more convenient by the map showing a different color based on whether you've found everything in a room or not. I had fun going back and gathering all the powerups I missed.

It all really boils down to the fact that this game feels really damn good to play. Both the combat and the platforming are tight and responsive, with only a few points where I felt like the game didn't react to an input (and honestly, I was probably just late pressing the button). It's a blast especially to zip through levels that you're now way overleveled for to explore. You'll want to as well to get upgrades to your health, Relics which give you added bonuses and effects, and more slots to equip more relics. There's also a fun side collectible you'll need if you want to get the game's true ending, though I won't spoil more here. I've been a bit repetitive on this point, but I can't emphasize enough how well the game executed this tenant of the search action genre. So much so that I went out of my way to 100% the map and Platinum the game, which I don't normally do.

I've talked a lot about the gameplay, but that's not the only great part to this game. The presentation is stellar as well. The art style is a beautiful gothic anime-inspired look that's drawn to great effect here. For the most part, each level is unique in its look too which gives a sense that you're exploring an entire world and not just one small pocket of it. The only exceptions were a couple of later levels that were incredibly similar, which is even more noticeable if you do them back-to-back like I did. Regardless, you get a great sense of sorrow and almost misery from the world you explore, which matches the interesting and well-written lore.

You'll want to read the notes you find throughout the game, as they further flesh out the world, characters (including bosses), and story. Getting all 3 endings while knowing what's happening is definitely a plus.

The only nitpick presentation-wise I would have is with the sound. The soundtrack for the most part is stellar with some truly awesome tracks, and the sound design is solid. However, there are some weird misses and gaps. Whenever you're in a room between levels, the music just cuts out completely. It's a good way to signal you're about to enter a new area, but it is also jarring. There were a couple times I thought it was a legitimate glitch only to realize what was happening a second later. There are also some dud tracks, especially the BGM for the Stockade level. It's a much more ambient take compared to the rest of the game's melodic style. I understand why they did it for this level, but I still don't like it.

There really isn't much to complain about otherwise. There were maybe a couple other enemy types that had some bullshit hitboxes (and I mean the very few where this was actually true and not just me raging because I was playing poorly lol). Those were so rare though that it's hardly a factor. Overall, this is a phenomenal game from a clearly talented group of people, and I look forward immensely to what they do next!

Great visuals and soundtrack with some fairly emotional post-boss cutscenes and solid metroidvania action. The spirit customization is pretty fun and it's cool having some small context behind all the weapons you get but aside from that the game brings very little novelty to the table. Starting with the catacombs the difficulty really ramps up and aside from a few annoying rooms here and there it's not too bad until the verboten domain takes it to obnoxious territory. I do not enjoy every enemy taking off more than half my HP per hit or being one-shot by a boss if I don't play perfectly. I could've done a lot of grinding to try and balance the damage out but the mobs were annoying to fight so I really didn't want to and it made me wonder why the game even has levels in the first place. But hey, overall nice game.

Playing this without knowing it will be so much 100% Nier-inspired lol. I love the artstyle and intrigued by the game atmosphere. I was expecting to be more Dark Souls vibe but no, it reminds me of Yoko Taro quest event in Terra Battle for some reason and any of his game overall lol. The game is rock solid, control is perfect, no bug whatsoever, all smooth butter without any distracting things. A bit hard but fair so far. Boss move is less variative than I thought. So much attack/skill options to use and obtainable from enemies/boss. Basically no level grind but last 10 level probably need little effort. Story I think quite good for a short game, just following from main story is enough but you need to get and read all item notes to know all details what happen in the world. Overall visual aspect is beautiful, love how Lily gradually changing appearance based on story progression and that simple detail makes me care and wonder what happen to her right now. Very recommended metroidvania game with good story.