I have a rather large collection of games that likely took inspiration from the highly successful games by From Software, such as Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. Of said collection, there are some that happen to also be 2-dimensional adventure games. While we’re on the subject of the influence of other games, if you add the influence of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Blasphemous, you end up with a game like Ender Lilies. Now, if you have not played any of the games I’ve mentioned already, I still intend to describe the game enough that you wouldn’t need to in order to understand what it’s about and how it’s played. However, if you have played any or all of the games, then you probably have a pretty good idea of what Ender Lilies is like, whether you realize it or not.

The Short of It

What I’ve Played

• 5+ hours

• Endings A, B, and C achieved

• 38/38 Steam Achievements

Pros

• Flexibility in combat and exploration

• Challenging boss battles that force creative adaptation

• An interesting and macabre world

• Solid art design

• Good soundtrack

Cons

• Difficulty has a lot to do with damage dealt to the player and not much else

• Platforming puzzles are sometimes needlessly obtuse

• Certain areas are intentionally unpleasant to navigate, even with numerous resources and levels

• Final boss is a pushover if certain relics and spirits are equipped

The Rest of It

Story

A kingdom has been overcome by a mysterious blight. The blight, which spawns from some flowers and thorns with roots that go deep into the ground, has infected the residents of the kingdom, creating mindless zombies or transforming them into horrible monsters. There was once a white priestess who was able to purify the infected, but she has not been seen for a long time and many of the heroes tasked with her and the kingdom’s protection have long since fallen to the blight. However, a young maiden has awoken within the depths of a destroyed and dilapidated laboratory and she has no memory of who she is. When confronted by the virtuous spirit of an ancient knight who bears the unfortunate news about the kingdom and her abilities, they set out to purify the land and release the unfortunate souls that have been claimed by the blight.

The story and how it plays out reminds me greatly of the lore for Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne. The blight that infects the land is similar to the fog of Demon’s Souls that sweeps across everything. Not to mention, there is a great deal of world-building done around specific heroes of the region who were eventually consumed by the blight, which is very similar to the heroes from Demon’s Souls and their inevitable destinies—especially the character of Maiden Astraea. Where Ender Lilies skirts into the Bloodborne realm in its world-building is in its bloody depictions, the body-horror side of people being turned into horrific monsters that no longer resemble humans, and in the science-fiction of the various laboratories that are studying the blight and its effects.

Ender Lilies is a tragic story about a girl with a destiny but no identity of her own who is forced on a perilous journey in a dead kingdom to find the source of the blight and purify it. Through various notes and the occasional cut scene when encountering some of the fallen heroes or specific rooms in the game, you learn more about how the blight wasn’t the only thing wrong with the kingdom. There was plenty of malicious intent, hubris, and selfishness to go around, which allowed the blight to spread even more easily. The various unfortunate souls you are able to purify throughout your quest are still dead, but their spirits accompany you on your journey to aid however they can, even if they no longer have a human form. Even the happiest ending of the three does not give you the sense that everything will be okay. It’s a melancholic story that, when pieced together, does a great job of building an interesting landscape with some horrific imagery and tragic tales.

Gameplay

Ender Lilies takes a page out of the book of other similar games with its combat and exploration. The map consists of different rooms or arenas that have various enemies for you to attack or avoid. There are different regions of the map, like laboratories, sewers, prisons, etc. with their own sets of bosses and mid-bosses. In each of these rooms, there are secrets to uncover. The secrets can be notes left behind to fill in more details about the world and its lore. There can also be items that range in their usefulness. Relics, in particular, are items that you can equip that have a variety of benefits. By the time the game was over, I had an extensive collection of them, with some that made my build too strong for end-game bosses.

If the particular room you are in still has some secrets to uncover, the map marks it as a different color to let you know. In some instances, you’ll need to defeat a particular boss to gain the ability necessary to reach certain sections of the room that hold the secret. There were a few particular sections that required extremely precise jumps and dashes with the use of additional special abilities that you might not even know existed if you weren’t going through the game with a fine-toothed comb. I was having enough fun with Ender Lilies to be willing to 100% the game, which granted me access to some additional abilities that made the traversal in these obtuse situations a little easier. It’s not a huge negative, but trying to figure out how to clear those last few rooms was definitely a little tedious and perplexing.

When it comes to combat, your attacks consist of the moves of different spirits in your arsenal. The young amnesiac girl does not have any attacks of her own and relies on the spirits she summons to do damage. Pressing a button on the controller summons a spirit to perform their attack. The spirits cannot be hit out of their attack, but if the girl is hit the summoning can be canceled and the girl will likely suffer significant damage. Each spirit has a move they perform on the ground and in the air, and certain types of spirits have attack cooldowns. If you find enough upgrade points while exploring, you can potentially unlock additional attacks and properties for the different spirits you have.

As you progress through the game, you fight and claim the spirits of warriors that have been claimed by the blight, assimilating them and their unique moves into your collection. When you fight the big bosses of the region in the map, they too join your list of spirits and often provide a special passive ability that allows you to traverse the map in some way. For example, one boss allows you to grip vertical surfaces and reach new sections of a room that were previously unattainable. The game allows you to have up to six different spirits equipped at a time, with two sets of three that you can swap between on the fly. I had one set of three that was meant to do a fair amount of damage over time to big slow enemies, while I had another set that had fast attacks with numerous projectiles that I could use to take out the pesky enemies that were out of reach. If a room had both types of enemies, being able to switch between the different builds was the quick press of a single button.

With all the different types of spirits you can acquire and their various abilities, there’s a lot of room to customize and change your build to suit the situation. There were several big boss fights that I tweaked with my equipment to better specialize based on the situation, using particular spirits that I typically kept on the bench when traversing through the rest of the game. With the right relics and spirits equipped, a boss that seemed impossible at first became significantly more doable. The difficulty was always still high, however, as you take a ton of damage with each hit. Seeking out all the little secrets to boost your health and healing abilities is practically a requirement if you are not able to dodge attacks with 100% accuracy. The game never felt unfair, as most of the times that I died from a boss battle was from overextending and trying to do more damage in a moment instead of retreating and being patient. I had plenty of those Soulsborne moments where I got a boss down to less than 10% of their health and I died because I got greedy. Surprisingly, the final boss ended up being extremely easy in comparison to all the others, but that was mainly due to how I had upgraded my spirits and having particularly strong relics equipped that made me a durable battle tank. If you don’t go through the trouble of getting all the relics and the right spirits, it might be a very different story.

Overall, I thought Ender Lilies hit the right middle ground with its combat and traversal. The high damage made things a little harder than they needed to be in some instances, but it also forced me to adapt to the situation with the right equipment and attacks. Finding the secrets often gave significant improvements to my character, so I was eager to explore each room I came across and make sure that it changed color on the map before I left it. The most satisfying thing, however, was adjusting my build and strategies for a boss battle and seeing it pay off. There were several fights in particular that took me a while to complete, but once I found a viable strategy, I knew it was just a matter of time before I won.

Presentation

The presentation of Ender Lilies is impressive for a 2D action game with a relatively small budget. The art design of the enemies is creative and appropriately horrific of a world in which a terrible plague that has transformed people into monsters. They’re flat characters with dynamic shadows that give them depth and highlights of red from their blood and the plant-like pieces growing out of them. Even when the spirits join your cause after being “purified” they still have the same hideous visage they had when they were enemies. The overall aesthetic of the world’s inhabitants fits right in with a black metal music video. The backgrounds, likewise, are bleak, melancholic, dilapidated, and dreary which makes Ender Lilies fit right in with the likes of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls.

The music is also especially well-crafted. The soundtrack is something I would gladly—despite its sad tones—listen to on a regular basis. The songs during boss battles are exciting and dramatic orchestral tunes, while the quiet pings of the piano at a respite bring somber serenity. Aside from the music that reminds me of the Spelunky stage inside the giant worm that plays in the laboratory section of the massive map, I greatly approve of the soundtrack.

TL;DR

Ender Lilies is another solid entry in an already-dense genre of video games. The art style and music add some fantastic polish to a well-rounded product. The flexibility in the combat and the rewards for exploration made Ender Lilies difficult for me to put down. The difficult boss battles forced me to adjust my strategies and think more about how I would approach them, making it that much more satisfying when victory was achieved. While there were some specific areas in the game I didn’t really enjoy navigating, the rest of my experience was overwhelmingly positive.