[Recommendation] Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights
What is Ender Lilies and should you play it?
Overview
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is a dark fantasy metroidvania developed Adglobe and Live Wire Inc., and published by Binary Haze Interactive. The game released on June 22, 2021. The development of Ender Lilies was directed by Keisuke Okabe.
The game carries the torch of the ongoing metroidvania development boom into both familiar and new territory. While exploration, progression, and combat will be mostly familiar to longtime fans of the genre, Ender Lilies offers some very unique art direction that helps to set it apart from its peers.
Ender Lilies has a moderately long campaign by indie standards. According to howlongtobeat.com the main story takes an average of 13 hours to complete, but completionists looking to explore all the game world has to offer can expect that number to climb as high as 23 hours depending on experience level. The game has many somewhat challenging boss encounters that can stall the progression of even very experienced metroidvania players, but probably not for long.
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is currently available for the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X.
Story
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights tells a somber story, shrouded in mystery, and delivered in fragments. Much of the exposition lurks in collectible descriptions and scattered lore documents rather than lengthier cinematics or long-winded dialogue trees, but there are a handful of cutscenes in the game. As usual this article will only cover very early exposition and won’t contain any major story spoilers. In Ender Lilies’ plot you take on the role of Lily, a small mysterious child who is awakened from a deep slumber by an incorporeal spirit warrior known as the Umbral Knight. The knight hints at the kingdom of Land’s End having met with a terrible fate, but Lily has no memory of her past or present circumstances.
As you battle your way through the initial tutorial area you’ll find several notes that begin to bring slivers of clarity to the situation. A curse, the Blight, is written to have originated in a snowy land from a people called the Ancients. The Blight is understood to descend the afflicted into madness and warp their bodies into monstrous forms. Undying, the Blighted possess incredible regenerative abilities and their immortal minds fade into a hollow wrath with the passage of time. You also learn of some Blighted whose minds remain intact, but the horrible price of retaining consciousness is that they must endure eternal pain and suffering. The only known remedy for the Blighted’s curse is the miraculous power of a White Priestess.
It is through this miracle power that Lily, a White Priestess herself, is able to purify the Blighted that she encounters. After conducting a purification of any of the game’s major bosses Lily is able to see visions of memories belonging to the Blighted. These cinematic glimpses into the past act as Lily’s window both to further unraveling the mysterious history of Land’s End and her own place in that story. These fragments of memories paint a very hard to decipher image of events at the earlier stages of the game, but over time and when combined with lore information contained within the findings the story begins to crystallize.
The power of purification is also connected to another mysterious ability of the White Priestess. It is her ability to wield the spirits of the purified as guardians and weapons to help her in combat against the Blighted. The Umbral Knight, the first of such spirits, lends you his sword from the outset. He talks to you during the journey sharing valuable insights into the history of Land’s End as well as offering general advice. He is an essential companion with a mysterious backstory of his own that can also be unearthed as you explore the world. The Umbral Knight, and the other spirits of purified Blighted, are all people with history and a connection to the story, though some more significant exposition than others.
You’ll come to learn all of the story’s secrets only through dedicated exploration of the game world, but uncovering every single scattered article of lore isn’t necessary to achieve a basic understanding of the plot. That being said, hunting for all those extra lore fragments can lead you to secrets required to access all of the game’s 3 endings which are worthwhile for anyone who finds themselves invested in the story and the setting. Ending A, B, and C all offer their own implications of lore and unique resolutions to the plot.
Zooming out to a more conceptual analysis, the story contains a lot of overt themes. These themes seem to include longevity and death, sacrifice, the human cost of war, trauma and mental health, and perhaps most noteworthy, hope for a better future. Though there is a lot to unpack and analyze I’d like to focus primarily on less potentially spoilery observations I made regarding the themes of mental health and self-care. Perhaps I am just projecting on to the elements of the game, but I find this perspective dovetails beautifully with the messages of hope that seem to blossom from the otherwise gloomy narrative.
There are a lot of parallels I find between this faint glimmer of hope, the idea of a small but unyielding light in a dark place, and my own experience with mental health issues. Whether it is watching Lily purify the Blight and ease the minds of the sufferers, or just this brilliantly illuminated child fighting her way through a dangerous and unfriendly world. I see my own internal struggles hidden beneath the surface of these depictions. I see the mechanisms of coping which have empowered me to stabilize the worst of my downward spirals and helped rescue me from the deepest emotional lows I’ve experienced. There are a lot of opportunities for reflection and introspection here.
One important thing to mention is that Lily doesn’t just purify the Blight, she uses it to her advantage. Collecting Blight is what increases her level, and it is also the resource used to empower her spirit allies. Blight is the enemy, but it is also the tool used to deliver salvation. I relate to this concept when I think about my relationship to video games and writing. My depression affects the lens with which I see the world, but that perspective can be channeled into art and the process of creating that art can help my healing process and improve my outlook. Despite my adulthood, in the presence of my depression and anxiety I sometimes still feel like a vulnerable child. My passions are part of the abstract construct that is my personal Umbral Knight, and that knight also protects me and gives me the strength to fight back. I can wield my “purified” negative experiences as tools to help overcome future negative experiences. Insert lemons to lemonade cliche here, but it really has brought me solace in times of great distress and decaying self-esteem.
I know there are a lot of games and stories about having hope and not giving up, but something about this particular experience was special for me. No matter the environs, the flower of hope can still bloom. Through the muck, through the Blight, through any obstacle or trauma. No matter how long it has been or how bad things have become, the possibility of relief remains. If you can appreciate what I am saying, and feel a kinship with these words, this may be a story you'd resonate with too. Even if you don’t feel the way I do there is a lot of beauty and thoughtful storytelling to encounter in this tale about a small girl’s perilous adventure through a gloomy and Blighted world.
Gameplay
Okay, story discussion out of the way now let’s get into the meat and bones of the gameplay. As mentioned in the overview, Ender Lilies follows the very traditional metroidvania genre formula very loyally. Map exploration, ability upgrades, and backtracking for new routes and collectibles is a fundamental part of the experience. While it definitely leans heavily on these traditional elements it also integrates a lot of FromSoftware design inspiration in it’s methodical combat which focuses on limited healing, tight dodge and parry windows, and hard-hitting but telegraphed enemy attack patterns.
First I’ll focus on the core systems and math. Your primary stats are HP, SP, Attack, and Prayer Potency. HP is your hit points until death, SP is a resource for using powerful special attacks unlocked later in the game, Attack is a determining factor in your damage output, and Prayer Potency affects the potency of your limited-use healing (more on Prayers later). There is also your level which starts at 1 and can be boosted all the way to 100 by collecting Blight from slain enemies. In addition to these stats there are enhancement collectibles which include Residues, Spirits, and Relics. Residues are resources used to enhance ally Spirits, Spirits are a substitute for a traditional weapon system, and Relics are equipment that boost your attributes. There are only a limited number of equipment slots for relics, but they can be increased by finding and collecting items called Chains of Sorcery. All of these things can be tracked in your menus.
Speaking of something else in the menus, one of the best improvements to the traditional metroidvania formula that I wish more peers would consider adopting is related to the map. The map isn’t perfect and is a bit bland compared to Hollow Knight or the Ori games, but it does do something else that is a great quality of life evolution for the genre. It differentiates incomplete and complete rooms with different colors. Rooms where you have found every collectable will appear different from the standard coloration which helps players focus their exploration efforts. I loved this simple, but impactful change and found it reduced the tedium and guesswork of my treasure hunting without being too handholdy about how to actually find the secret things hidden in each room.
Before we get into combat I’d like to talk about Respites. Respites are something akin to Dark Souls bonfires and Hollow Knight’s benches. Resting at a Respite will restore your health and Prayers to full, but it will also respawn all the enemies you’ve killed. Respites are the safe havens where you will do a lot of loadout management and they also function as the game’s fast travel points. Only at a Respite can the player equip Spirits (there are 2, 2 slot loadouts that can be swapped between), equip Relics, or spend Residues to enhance the combat potential of any Spirits in their collection.
Fast travel is only available while resting at Respites and they are the checkpoints you return to when you die. Seeing fast travel available early and free to use felt good because it reduced the burden of backtracking and made me feel more comfortable exploring side paths without worrying about walking all the way back if I hit a dead end. There is a Return to Last Respite option in the menu that can teleport you back to the last one you visited and this small inclusion saved me from being trapped in a soft lock situation, so bravo on that. These are nice design choices that felt like they respected my time, but also players who don’t want to use them don’t have to.
Alright, it’s time for combat. There are 3 primary defensive mechanics that dictate the way you’ll interact with enemies. The first and most important is dodging. Lily can dive toward or away from enemies granting her invincibility frames which can be exploited to negate the damage of any incoming attack. Dodging works on the ground, in the air, and can be weaved in between attacks. Timing your dodges correctly is vital to not getting hit, but you will eventually get hit so that brings us to mechanic 2, Prayers. You start off with 3 uses of Prayers which restore a large amount of health. These precious heals can only be replenished by resting at Respites, breaking special flowers, or dying. Mechanic 3 is only unlocked slightly later in the game and it is the parry mechanic. Enabled by a 0-slot cost relic, pressing the dodge button without moving will create a defensive field around Lily. Precise timing of this ability will also negate incoming damage.
What about offense? Well, as I mentioned already you use Spirits to fight for you and you unlock them by defeating tough enemies and purifying them. The Spirits system is incredibly expressive and reminiscent of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. The many possible combinations Spirits lends itself to the emergence of many play styles, which is even more expanded by having access to 2 loadouts at once. I only switched my Spirits around a few times during my playthrough, but I could tell I was only scratching the surface of the possible strategies and synergies that could exist in within the full arsenal. Spirits have limited uses between Respites kind of like ammo, but the Umbral Knight has unlimited uses. You’ll have to think about how frequently you utilize each attack, but not too hard, because Respites are not that far apart and there are also some special flowers that restore some spirit uses.
The exploration is so satisfying in this game. Not just because of the loads of secrets and collectibles, but also because of the gorgeous artwork. There are so many amazingly beautiful scenes that made hitting every new area an absolute pleasure. The subareas are fairly diverse in style and the world is filled with lots of interesting and fantastical imagery. I found the art direction absolutely stunning and it definitely helped enhance my experience playing the game. Wanting to see the the design of the next Respite is something that constantly motivated me to push forward past every tough encounter.
As tough as the minibosses and boss encounters in this game can be for inexperienced or less practiced challengers, they won’t pose quite the same threat to veteran metroidvania fans. The difficulty is moderate to high depending on your experience, but even as someone who likes difficult games I didn’t find the lower difficulty to detract from the experience. Not every game needs to reach Pantheon of Hollownest levels of insanity (beating that was beyond exhausting), but it does provide just enough difficulty to keep you on your toes demanding quick dodge reflexes and smart utilization of the combat mechanics. Defeating major bosses will grant new abilities for Lily that unlock new routes and opportunities, and the game also offers branching paths that let you have some say in the order you take the bosses down.
There are many ways to overcome combat encounters, and I never felt frustrated with the controls during fights or platforming. It all comes down to execution, and even then the game doesn’t really demand many inputs. Most enemies and bosses telegraph their intentions and there are very few situations where I felt I had to react within a few frames of seeing the signs of an incoming attack. Just be vigilant and studious of enemy behavior, do a bit of limit testing, and it shouldn’t take long to dispatch any foe that may initially give you trouble. Dedicating a life to just practicing how to dodge attacks can have wondrous results for your subsequent attempts. Deaths to bosses have no consequence as Respites are placed right outside boss encounter rooms so you never have to do painful return trips to try again.
Wishlist
This is the part of the article where I start talking about things I may have done differently, or features I would have liked to see added to the game. This section may make less sense if you haven’t already played the game, but it still may give you insight into aspects of the game that can inform your purchasing decisions.
Residues kind of suck some life out of the Spirits system. Gating enhancements with a steep resource economy inhibits self expression and experimentation. It works against the diversity of possible play styles in the combat. Players may spend their precious resources on spirits they already have before they obtain new spirits they like more, and be unlikely to try out new spirits that are objectively weaker than the ones they already invested upgrades into. Maybe change Residues into crafting materials used for some kind of Relics-like system for the Spirits. That way you could craft upgrades and swap them out freely and not feel like you’ve wasted Residues on a Spirit that you’d rather not keep using.
The fast travel menu can be a chore to navigate. The map and fast travel system could be better organized by subregions to make it less tedious to find your desired destination. I think it would be better if you had 2 menus. First a primary menu used to select a subregion followed by a secondary menu displaying the Respites in that region. It was mildly frustrating to scroll through the list watching the squares on the map light up just to find the places I wanted to go.
So many enemies can be cheesed by attacking them through the floor or safely from below. It can feel kind of lame, but despite this reality there are enough enemies between each checkpoint to still make travel between Respites threatening so it isn’t all that problematic. I just wish the game had forced me to face these enemies head on. Maybe tweak the hitboxes or something to prevent this from happening? Not a big complaint, really, but just something I thought was worth mentioning.
The level system in this game feels trivial to me. Would this game really suffer if the developers had left the level-up mechanics on the cutting room floor? Probably not. You already get upgrades of all kinds through collectibles, Spirit enhancements, and Relics. Why not just ditch the barely consequential level system and incorporate those gains into more collectibles? This would also reward players even more for exploration. I can tell you that the Level 100 trophy was the worst, most grindy part of an otherwise very pleasant Platinum. I’m personally biased against level systems, and I rarely feel they are incorporated in a truly meaningful way.
Accessibility, accessibility, accessibility! Not much to say here other than too many indie games in this genre neglect the value of adding an accessibility menu. If you make your game more accessible, more people will play it. If more people play the game more people will like it and share it with others. I don’t understand not adding accessibility options. It’s easy to do and has loads of benefits for both the players and the developers.
The separated HUD elements are kind of annoying. I wish the bottom left HUD information regarding Spirits uses, loadout, and SP meter would be relocated to the top left and nested beneath the prayer uses. Shrinking or redesigning the icons as necessary, I would rather be able to glance at one spot and get all the information without having to bounce my gaze between the top and bottom of the screen. Another not very big deal, but it would have been preferable. I’d like to see the game offer the option to customize the HUD with a few different preset styles. It was very easy to not notice the state of my SP meter, and so related abilities went underused in my playthrough.
Even if none of these changes get made I still can appreciate the game for what it is. I just think it is important to talk about the things we’d like to see games do differently. To be critical of design elements, even in games we may enjoy, that we feel could have done better in our opinion. Ender Lilies may not adopt any of these ideas, and that is okay, but maybe someone else who reads this will reflect on them when making design choices. Someone who is working on a game now, or will work on a game in the future. Presenting possible ideas and alternative ways of doing things has no downside.
Recommendation
I finished my 100% playthrough of Ender Lilies in roughly 14 hours, and it was 14 hours really well spent. I feel like I got more than my money’s worth both in terms of the story and the gameplay. The art and music were so immersive too, and I could easily see myself replaying this game multiple times in the future. I’m glad I pulled the trigger and gave it a chance, because it has risen to be one of my favorites in the genre over the last few years. Not my personal #1, but it certainly earned a very respectable top 10 ranking for me.
Long time metroidvania fans like me will probably enjoy it even if they find some elements of its design a bit rough around the edges or minimalistic compared to everyone’s favorite insect-themed adventure. Charm is a word I use a lot, one you’ll eventually get tired of reading in my articles, and Ender Lilies is overflowing with it. It’s quirky in the right ways for the most part knowing when to emulate genre design staples and knowing when to just be itself. There was even a small part that made me feel like I was playing something akin to an underwater level of Donkey Kong Country. That was pretty cool.
Even with a moderately high difficulty and no accessibility options, Ender Lilies still may be a good entry point for people who are interested in the genre. Its tough, but not too tough. The design isn’t overly complex and the visuals are fantastic. I’d probably still recommend Ori and the Blind Forest first to genre newcomers, but if you prefer the aesthetic of this game just go for it. If you struggle to progress you could always join the Ender Lilies Discord server or Metroidvania Discord server for lots of helpful tips and cheering to push past any blocks you may encounter. Just make sure you are respectful, post in the appropriate channels, and don’t spoil any story or gameplay for players who haven’t got as far as you yet.
I loved my time with Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights and I will definitely be adding the developers to my watch list to see future releases. This game is a gem, and just another example in the ever growing list that the creative soul of the metroidvania genre is still buzzing with the possibility of new ideas and new stories to tell. Ender Lilies stands out in the the growing field of genre competitors like a brightly illuminated flower in the darkness. Consider giving it a try on a dreary and rainy day.
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