Ender Lilies proving, once again, that the summoner class of any fantasy setting is overpowered.
Here we have another Metroidvania, which will certainly be a turn on or turn off for you right of the bat. You like map completion? Finding every secret to make yourself stronger? Obtaining major abilities to revisit previously inaccessible areas for more power-ups? Utilizing that power to fight tough bosses? Then this, among many others, are for you.
Of course that's the absolute basics of the genre, so what does this game do to itself differentiate from others? It's primarily related to spirits. You play as a young girl who by herself can't do much, but by purifying bosses and mini-bosses she can have those souls as equippable attacks. They range from sword slashes, to ground slams, throwing knives, homing fireballs, claw swipes, poison gases, spear lunges, parries and counters, volley of arrows, autumonous minions that shoot nearby targets and so forth. You can equip up to six. Most spirits have limted uses and short cooldowns, but few have infinite usage. Honestly I could count the amount of times I ran out of a specific spirit attack on one hand. Breakable objects and red lilies replenish their usage, which are plenty common to come across. As long as you integrate one or two unlimited spirits in your roster you should be good... at least in terms of spirit management.
You kind of need as many variety of attacks as possible since this game ain't easy. I wouldn't call it brutal (with one or two exceptions) but everything here hits like a dump truck. If you're use to more easy-going Metroidvanias, do not tank hits in this game. You do that and you'll be wasting your healing prayers very quickly. This game is at it's best when you crafted a specific move list of spirits to more comfortably clear a area or boss that have been giving you shit. There's at least two or three spirits well suited for each enemy. Some enemies fly overhead, but by depleting their stun bar they will be knocked out of the sky and splat when they hit the ground. Shield enemies need to be dodged behind them during their attacks, or you could use a poison gas spirit that ignores shields, or use a spirit that leaps over their shield and hits them from behind. This game does encourage a lot of cheesing strats. Can't count the amount of times I killed a enemy through a wall by using a long-ranged attack to chip at them from safety, though thankfully the reverse doesn't happen. It's also important to note what spirits keep you in place and what ones you can use while keeping your mobility up. That's the major downside of the unlimited spirits, they require you to stop in place and attack, whereas the limited use ones (mostly) allow you to set them up and keep on the move while they do their thing. In fact, you can summon multiple spirits at once under most circumstances, perfect for when a boss is stunned and vulnerable. Even with these capabilities of your main character, I still feel one or two enemy deals a smidge too much damage. If you aren't finding enough health upgrades then some of these will just two shot you. The ones that come to mind are these enormous mounds of flesh that swipe with a tentacle slam, which I swear that hitbox is way bigger then the animation. And it doesn't help how fast and large that attack is on top of its power. Though in fairness it isn't rare for any hard game to have at least a few of those enemies that are a pain in the ass to deal with. Some might even argue that we need those obstacles that are obnoxious as hell, it creates memorable moments and keeps you on your toes. I suppose I won't forget those mounds of flesh, but I also won't ever forget my embarrassing moments from High School and I don't associate them with the best feelings to put it very mildly.
Exploration is pretty solid all around. Though to get a nitpick out of the way, the game tells you want room you're in on the map, but not it's exact location of where in the room. Say in Castlevania, you have a long vertical room about three blocks tall on the map. Castlevania will adjust your player marker on the map depending on which third of the tall room you're in. Ender Lilies doesn't do that and it can make it difficult to remember where in that specific location you have, and have not been to. Thankfully the map is otherwise very generous. It will change color depending on if there's a item there that you haven't found yet, and it will also show how many doors are in a room even when entering it the first time. It makes it pretty easy to look over your map to find places that you missed or haven't explored in full yet. Makes using a guide less of a requirement, and the few times I did use it was for last minute cleanups by the end.
In fact it was such a smooth ride that I got all 38 achievements in 15 hours. Bearing in mind I knew very little about the game going into it, I bought it on a whim during a sale, so I feel that speaks volumes of it's solid design.
That all said, I believe the visuals and setting of this game are easily it's strongest quality. It's a dark, lonely world. Everything you meet is either a hostile blight, corrupted corpses angry at past trangressions, and sorrowful souls whose regrets chain them to living world. Well "living" ain't the right word here. Every spirit you obtain has a small story of who they were in life, and the major ones even have cutscenes to show more of what the world once was before it all went down hill. Notes that litter the world go into further detail on what has happened, most of it amounting to "We done goofed, yes we sure did". In fairness, when the rain itself carries a infectious blight things are kind of fucked from the get-go. The beautiful 2D visuals really nails the tone. The designs of your spirits range from cool but damaged knights in armor, horrifying creatures with a subtle amount of cuteness, and mutated corpses hanging on by a thread of humanity. The areas you comb are big yet hostile. Corpses contain valuable items for upgrades, but they'll also mutter their last words as you approach them. Mostly their final regrets. Yet like any sorrowful-filled story, it has just enough hope for it to not be too overbearing. Also helped by the short length, since anything that you experience too often lessens the affect they have on you emotionally in time (this is not a life lesson fyi). Even in the most dire of circumstances, hope is always there, even if it takes a lot to realize it.
I enjoyed my time with this game. Maybe not enough for a replay, but I'm plenty satisfied with what I did play. With a few exceptions, I think the difficulty is a good high that requires effort but rarely crosses over to annoying. And while the tone is not something I'm interested in usually, it's no less engaging wandering around a diseased, desolate kingdom as a small defenseless girl... who would actually be defenseless if it weren't for her army of ghost friends.
Now give this game a try before another one of my agonizing High School memories comes out of nowhere to cause psychic dama- AH OH GOD!! WHY?!?
Here we have another Metroidvania, which will certainly be a turn on or turn off for you right of the bat. You like map completion? Finding every secret to make yourself stronger? Obtaining major abilities to revisit previously inaccessible areas for more power-ups? Utilizing that power to fight tough bosses? Then this, among many others, are for you.
Of course that's the absolute basics of the genre, so what does this game do to itself differentiate from others? It's primarily related to spirits. You play as a young girl who by herself can't do much, but by purifying bosses and mini-bosses she can have those souls as equippable attacks. They range from sword slashes, to ground slams, throwing knives, homing fireballs, claw swipes, poison gases, spear lunges, parries and counters, volley of arrows, autumonous minions that shoot nearby targets and so forth. You can equip up to six. Most spirits have limted uses and short cooldowns, but few have infinite usage. Honestly I could count the amount of times I ran out of a specific spirit attack on one hand. Breakable objects and red lilies replenish their usage, which are plenty common to come across. As long as you integrate one or two unlimited spirits in your roster you should be good... at least in terms of spirit management.
You kind of need as many variety of attacks as possible since this game ain't easy. I wouldn't call it brutal (with one or two exceptions) but everything here hits like a dump truck. If you're use to more easy-going Metroidvanias, do not tank hits in this game. You do that and you'll be wasting your healing prayers very quickly. This game is at it's best when you crafted a specific move list of spirits to more comfortably clear a area or boss that have been giving you shit. There's at least two or three spirits well suited for each enemy. Some enemies fly overhead, but by depleting their stun bar they will be knocked out of the sky and splat when they hit the ground. Shield enemies need to be dodged behind them during their attacks, or you could use a poison gas spirit that ignores shields, or use a spirit that leaps over their shield and hits them from behind. This game does encourage a lot of cheesing strats. Can't count the amount of times I killed a enemy through a wall by using a long-ranged attack to chip at them from safety, though thankfully the reverse doesn't happen. It's also important to note what spirits keep you in place and what ones you can use while keeping your mobility up. That's the major downside of the unlimited spirits, they require you to stop in place and attack, whereas the limited use ones (mostly) allow you to set them up and keep on the move while they do their thing. In fact, you can summon multiple spirits at once under most circumstances, perfect for when a boss is stunned and vulnerable. Even with these capabilities of your main character, I still feel one or two enemy deals a smidge too much damage. If you aren't finding enough health upgrades then some of these will just two shot you. The ones that come to mind are these enormous mounds of flesh that swipe with a tentacle slam, which I swear that hitbox is way bigger then the animation. And it doesn't help how fast and large that attack is on top of its power. Though in fairness it isn't rare for any hard game to have at least a few of those enemies that are a pain in the ass to deal with. Some might even argue that we need those obstacles that are obnoxious as hell, it creates memorable moments and keeps you on your toes. I suppose I won't forget those mounds of flesh, but I also won't ever forget my embarrassing moments from High School and I don't associate them with the best feelings to put it very mildly.
Exploration is pretty solid all around. Though to get a nitpick out of the way, the game tells you want room you're in on the map, but not it's exact location of where in the room. Say in Castlevania, you have a long vertical room about three blocks tall on the map. Castlevania will adjust your player marker on the map depending on which third of the tall room you're in. Ender Lilies doesn't do that and it can make it difficult to remember where in that specific location you have, and have not been to. Thankfully the map is otherwise very generous. It will change color depending on if there's a item there that you haven't found yet, and it will also show how many doors are in a room even when entering it the first time. It makes it pretty easy to look over your map to find places that you missed or haven't explored in full yet. Makes using a guide less of a requirement, and the few times I did use it was for last minute cleanups by the end.
In fact it was such a smooth ride that I got all 38 achievements in 15 hours. Bearing in mind I knew very little about the game going into it, I bought it on a whim during a sale, so I feel that speaks volumes of it's solid design.
That all said, I believe the visuals and setting of this game are easily it's strongest quality. It's a dark, lonely world. Everything you meet is either a hostile blight, corrupted corpses angry at past trangressions, and sorrowful souls whose regrets chain them to living world. Well "living" ain't the right word here. Every spirit you obtain has a small story of who they were in life, and the major ones even have cutscenes to show more of what the world once was before it all went down hill. Notes that litter the world go into further detail on what has happened, most of it amounting to "We done goofed, yes we sure did". In fairness, when the rain itself carries a infectious blight things are kind of fucked from the get-go. The beautiful 2D visuals really nails the tone. The designs of your spirits range from cool but damaged knights in armor, horrifying creatures with a subtle amount of cuteness, and mutated corpses hanging on by a thread of humanity. The areas you comb are big yet hostile. Corpses contain valuable items for upgrades, but they'll also mutter their last words as you approach them. Mostly their final regrets. Yet like any sorrowful-filled story, it has just enough hope for it to not be too overbearing. Also helped by the short length, since anything that you experience too often lessens the affect they have on you emotionally in time (this is not a life lesson fyi). Even in the most dire of circumstances, hope is always there, even if it takes a lot to realize it.
I enjoyed my time with this game. Maybe not enough for a replay, but I'm plenty satisfied with what I did play. With a few exceptions, I think the difficulty is a good high that requires effort but rarely crosses over to annoying. And while the tone is not something I'm interested in usually, it's no less engaging wandering around a diseased, desolate kingdom as a small defenseless girl... who would actually be defenseless if it weren't for her army of ghost friends.
Now give this game a try before another one of my agonizing High School memories comes out of nowhere to cause psychic dama- AH OH GOD!! WHY?!?