Ender Lilies is a solid game which is sometimes elevated to a very good game by its presentation and especially its superb OST, but stops short of being fantastic due to a lack of polish and an identity that truly sets it apart. Still, a strong and under-appreciated entry into the Metroidvania genre.
7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.
Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.
It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.
A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.
The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.
The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.
At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.
Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.
I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?
I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.
The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.
Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.
With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.
Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.
The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.
The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.
It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.
And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:
What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.
I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.
The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.
I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.
7,5 / 10
7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.
Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.
It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.
A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.
The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.
The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.
At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.
Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.
I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?
I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.
The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.
Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.
With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.
Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.
The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.
The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.
It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.
And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:
What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.
I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.
The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.
I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.
7,5 / 10