Intro: A waking Nightmare Fear filled blight, a never-ending curse, and a young replica that has amnesia of a past that is probably better left untouched. Ender Lilies is a Metroidvenia style game that creates an eerie beautiful atmosphere, engaging puzzles and a rich story that has roots in psychology. Walking into this new decrepit world filled with monsters that cause mental strife Lilly’s aim is to purify the madness that spreads the rot further.
An Experience Worth Having In a strange world visited by many of her kind this kingdom in ruin needs continuous help and culling of the madness that resides in it. This game is stunning visually, and even more immersive when it comes to the story. Ender Lilies creates an immersive world and bosses that are tough so you have to really work to experience more of the world surrounding you. And I know what you’re going to say, “Arielle, is it like Dark Souls if you’re saying it’s a tough game?” False. Just because a game is difficult doesn’t mean its “souls-like”. I know that term gets tossed around A LOT, and if someone has seen only the memes, heard the jokes and seen playthroughs of a Dark Souls game I can see where they are coming from. But when you play Dark Souls, you know there can never be anything else like it. When entering into the world of Ender Lilies, I made the choice of doing a comparative review. I played the game on the switch, and on PC and let me tell you the difference of playing Ender Lilies on the Switch versus the PC, is night and day. Let’s put aside the story for a moment and focus on the experience of the mechanics because that is the first thing you will notice when entering into this game, besides the beautiful graphics. When you play it on the switch, the controls are very intuitive, and easy to comprehend right off the bat. The developers made it very smooth and user friendly. Now, the PC on the other hand needs some work. The pc version has weird controls, and while you can get used to them they aren't that intuitive or ideal. The controls are as follows: -Up, down, left and right to move -Z to jump -X to attack -C to dodge -A to heal. I feel as if this game is optimized more for the switch, it just feels more natural control wise on that console which is unfortunate because it could do so well on PC.
The Mind of Lily: In the Lands End Liliy, a young girl who has amnesia must save the world from blight. The more it rains, the more blight and corruption there is. This could be an homage to Death Standings’ concept of Timefall. Either way, when it rains death occurs and the clones of Fretia were created to control the spread, which didn’t work. One fretia is now left to cleanse the blight. Where the psychology comes in is in lily’s collapse after taking in so much blight from the start of the game. At the end having a break down of sorts and psychologically implicates the taking on of a lot of too much at once mentally, leaving the person (Lily) drained and used. Continuing in the lens of psychology, the concept of purifying is a fascinating one. When you go through the game you can purify different enemies/beings in the game affected with blight. Adding more purified, used to be blighted will create an arsenal that you can use in your defense. But purifying has a psychological undertone to it that begs the question, is lily purifying an outside source or the mental strife that plagues her own mind? As you progress in the game purifying its inhabitants each blighted had an impact/was of high importance in the life of fretia.
Not just any Metroidvenia: This isn’t just a typical metroidvenia style game, this is a post apocalyptic experience that brings to life all the goodness of a metriodvenia and the smoothness of a AAA game. It’s a unique, fun and immersive journey that will suck you in and create a beautifully morbid world for you to play in.
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