Ender Lilies doesn’t really do anything innovative for the Metroidvania genre but a game doesn’t really need to be innovative to be an entertaining game either.

Ender Lilies have the typical Metroidvania gameplay with connected stages, hidden paths, and room, different powers to use and upgrade, different equipable items, boss to defeat, etc...

Ender Lilies is one of that Metroidvania which entice me to see what the next area looks like, what the new enemies going to be like, and encouraged me to explore. This was also further strengthened by the really gorgeous art style and music the game has.

The game makes sure exploration is not tedious. Backtracking and trying to figure out where a chest you miss out or trying to access an area previously unaccessible was fun. The game also rewards the player appropriately for doing so.

In this game, your character Lilly doesn’t attack the enemy directly. She is just a cute little girl which makes me want to protect her. Instead, Lilly can summon spirits to get the job done. Hits are weighty and combo are satisfying.

Boss fights are easy for Metroidvania standard but still fun to fight nevertheless. The Bosses will still murder you if you let your guard down. You will also have to experiment with different skill loadout to get over a boss comfortably.

Platforming is also on the easier side and the hardest one will be just moderately hard at most. There are places where you can only reach after getting the necessary skill from optional bosses but there is only a couple of those.

Metroidvania

Platformer

Action

The graphic is gorgeous and each and every art, biome and location tell a story. A story that people used to live in these places. Everything in Ender Lilies is now consumed by the blight with buildings crumbling, bodies littered everywhere, landscape overtaken by nature, and hideous blight creatures everywhere.

The sprites are also well made from Lily to hideous blight creatures. They are also decently animated. Since Lily doesn’t speak, her animation shows her personality and emotion instead.

Effects are also well styled. Cloud of blood bust out when an enemy is killed, the water reflection look extraordinary, the purification effect when the mist of blight swirls into Lily to 

At first, I found the lack of background music and voice, in the beginning, to be strange but I begin to understand why it is done as such.

Music is simply beautiful and is very meaningful to the scene or biome you are in. Without the music, Ender Lilies gorgeous loses half of its effect in the atmosphere that graphic gives off. The game masterfully uses silence as a way to convey seriousness too.

The music at the beginning has a really calm tone to it but at the same time with some hint of sadness. The masterful use of human voice but not actual singing (e.g. humming) also adds quite a lot of personality to the music. As you get deeper into the story, the music also changes and becomes heavier. One of the music has a person gasping quite close to my ear that gives me a goosebump when I first hear it.

Usually, if the game has no voice acting, I would be detecting marks for it but the lack of voice in Ender Lilies makes everything natural and amplify Lily’s animation that shows her action and emotion.

The story begins when Lily, a young white priestess awakens with a spirit of an Umbral Knight beside her. With no memories, Lily pushed forward into the world of Lands End to see what is happening for herself.

Couples are separated, people die defending for what is important, experimentation on the human subject, the selflessness of the priestess, and so on. The story and lore of Ender Lilies are actually interesting but lacking emotional punch due to how the story is delivered and the writing.

However, all these stories and lore are only interesting assuming you read the bit and pieces of lore that are left behind for you to pick up. There are cutscenes but they are shown only after the major boss is defeated.

ENDER LILIES Quietus of the Knights Review

Reviewed After : Game Completion after 23 hours.

Played On : PC

Final Score

7.5