Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist

[rynling]

I really love Ender Lilies, a 2021 Soulslike Metroidvania about a small girl making her way through a rainy and fungus-infested postapocalyptic kingdom with the help of her monstrously mutated zombie companions. The art design is spectacular, the writing and translation are both fantastic, and the game is a lot of fun to play but doesn't drag on for too long.

The sequel, Ender Magnolia, was released in January, and I don't like it.

The aesthetic of Ender Magnolia seems to be aiming for "Final Fantasy VI meets Transistor," and the story is something along those lines as well. Unfortunately, the colors are very muddy, and everything looks the same. The plot never develops. A villain is introduced at the tail end of the game, but his actions have no context. The text is bland. The game mechanics are limited and don't do anything interesting.

Ender Magnolia isn't fun to play. It suffers from Blasphemous II's disease, wherein every enemy has 40% too much health. You can use the game's difficulty sliders to squeeze out the HP sponges a bit, but then you don't get trophies... and also the enemy HP is still too high. You can't upgrade most of your attacks until the end of the game, so you're always doing chip damage.

What Ender Magnolia seems to expect the player to do is level grind. This is unfortunate, as enemies don't drop much EXP. You can buy a few minor upgrades, but then you're going to have to grind for money. It's tedious beyond belief.

I don't want to say that Ender Magnolia isn't worth playing. Still, it feels uncomfortably bloated, and the artificial linearity of its progression doesn't have any benefits for its nonexistent story. Maybe I'm not upset that Ender Magnolia is "bad," necessarily; but rather, I'm disappointed that it doesn't meet its potential.

Comments

[lassarina]

Oh, that's really disappointing, I remember how much you loved the first one.

[rynling]

I think it might be a case of "sometimes games that are longer and more complicated... are worse."

At the same time, it might also be a case of "I'm too tired for this game right now."

I didn't like FFVII Remake (my beloved) when I first tried to play it, but now I realize that I was just exhausted and not in the right headspace to take on a new gaming project. The same goes for Echoes of Wisdom, which I now adore after giving myself adequate time to learn how to play it.

I guess video games are unique as a medium in the amount of attention and participation they require, and it's not always going to be "relaxing" to play a game, especially not for the first time.

[lassarina]

I had that experience with Kingdom Hearts, too, where I came back to it later and it was better (I was in a better mood.)

[shinon]

Soulslike Metroidvania ... rainy and fungus-infested postapocalyptic kingdom

So hypothetically, if a person had limited experience with Metroidvanias at large, and only the vaguest idea what a Soulslike is, but this person had for some reason developed a serious Hollow Knight problem... is the original Ender Lilies a thing you would recommend to such a hypothetical person? For that "jumping around a decaying environment and getting into fights" impulse?

[rynling]

Yes!!!!!!! Absolutely.

I'm thrilled that you get to experience Ender Lilies for the first time. It's a jewel of a game, and it works well in conversation with Hollow Knight.

The difficulty of Ender Lilies is on par with Hollow Knight, but there are numerous quality-of-life concessions that help mitigate the worst of it. Your map is actually quite useful, for one, and being able to gain levels will help encourage you to explore before returning to a boss that previously gave you trouble. The Neoseeker walkthrough guide for Ender Lilies is also very good.

When the game was first released, it picked up a surprising amount of negative press from reviewers who (a) didn't like the mild JRPG elements and (b) didn't like that you play as a girl. I'm guessing that neither of those concerns is going to be an issue for you, though.

Also, even though the story of Ender Lilies isn't a masterpiece of game writing, it's got intriguing Final Fantasy Tactics vibes that I appreciate, and you probably will as well.

Although please don't feel pressured to try it or like it for my sake. I could just be a strange outlier in this case. Ender Lilies Gorg. 😅

[shinon]

Ooh, this all sounds extremely up my alley, thank you very much for the rec! I'm reaching a critical point in my current HK file where I'll have to either commit to going super tryhard on optional content (Trial of the Fool my beloathed!!) or actually just beat the game and walk away, and I'm definitely putting this in the queue for my next action-y game. A level-up mechanic sounds like it'd be a lifesaver for tough boss fights; it'd be great to have an alternative to running at brick walls over and over and hoping to eventually git gud!

[shinon]

Following up on this rec: Ender Lilies actually went on sale in the Switch eShop late last week, so I picked it up! It didn't click for me right away, but I'm now in the Twin Spires/snowy fortress area getting my clock cleaned by gargoyles and I think I'm hooked now. I see what you mean about it working in conversation with Hollow Knight... The general vibe I get so far is that some of these dead people actually had good intentions, vs. the general amoral vainglory of Hallownest's elite. I wonder when I'm gonna piece together enough lore to find out that somebody in this fallen kingdom was doing Soul Master bullshit, lol.

Also, thank you for pointing out the Neoseeker guide! It's helped me around a couple of roadblocks already.

(Also, the Umbral Knight's aesthetic is endlessly appealing to me. Faceless ancient sword ghost. Aspirational...)

ETA: found the Stockade! My hopes for evil wizard science are being exceeded!

[rynling]

I'm really impressed by the progress you're making! Even after finishing Hollow Knight, it took me more than a month to figure out this game and get anywhere. (Professional game reviewers apparently had trouble with it as well.)

There are a lot of gaps in the lore, especially in terms of the timeline. It seems that everything happened in perhaps three decades or so, which is horrifically quick. I assume that the refugee king who authorized the forbidden wizard science hermit-crabbed his way into a pre-existing structure, only to be immediately confronted with a pre-existing crisis.

Everyone had good intentions, but they were also human and flawed, and all the odds were against them. I feel like Ender Lilies is just an appetizer compared to the full-course meal provided by FF Tactics, but I'm always happy for more food with this particular flavor.

But something I love about Ender Lilies is that you can finish the game after the Stockade. If the goal is to travel from the left end of the map to the right end of the map, you can do that and then just leave! The "Ending A" is very sweet...

...but then if you go back and keep going deeper, there's more wizard science. The best sort of wizard science! by which I mean wizard science gone horribly wrong.

Anyway I also aspire to become an ancient magical sword ghost.