A Dark Metroidvainia Masterpiece

A Dark Metroidvania Masterpiece

Ender Lilies is a dark metroidvania fairytale from Adglobe, Live Wire, and Binary Haze Interactive. It is also now at the top of my list as best metroidvania of the year! Hell, it may even be my top GAME of the year so far! Why? Let me get into it.

Ender Lilies combines aspects of past classics like Dark Souls, Hollow Knight, and specifically Castlevania: Aria of Sorrows and packages it up in an emotional dark experience that is both satisfyingly difficult and enigmatic in its storytelling. You can sit down with this game and achieve the first ending (which is still a great way to end the story) in just a few hours. But keen observers can see that there is so much more to this world, and if you put in the effort you can sink upwards of 30-40 hours into finding all of the important lore pieces to discover the final endings. I can hear it now, is this game really worth it? Resoundingly YES!

The story of Ender Lilies takes place in the kingdom of Land’s End after a deadly blight has overtaken the populous and twisted all living creatures into grotesque monsters and undead soldiers. Lily is awoken in the deep catacombs of the castle town with no memories of why she is there and greeted by the Umbral Knight: a spirit belonging to an order of elite warriors tasked to protect the White Priestesses. This is all I’ll give you, everything else needs to be found for yourself. This is honestly the most important part of the game loop for me and would hate to ruin it.

Gameplay wise there is a lot of standard metroidvania tropes here, but my favorite is actually the ability system. This seems to be heavily inspired from Aria of Sorrows with Lily collecting blighted spirits of various enemies which will grant her new attacks and movement capabilities. Each one of these can be upgraded using different blighted materials, but with a seemingly finite supply you need to be selective on which ones are more important to you. The actual combat itself feels great, but almost all of the games primary attacks will root Lily in place during the animation. This sets up combat scenarios that play out in a very souls-like fashion. Learn enemy patterns and react accordingly. Rush in and you will die. Later in the game this can also be leveraged to maintain aerial advantage over some of the games many bosses since the attacks will keep you suspended in mid-air during combos.

Graphically this game creates a dark but beautiful world. Each area is littered with little details that tell a story of what happened after the blight fell and each screen (yes, screen, not area) feels unique and previously lived in. This tugs strikingly hard at the heartstrings when you stumble across the remains of some of the game’s characters personal rooms. Most of the time there are accompanied by a note or document belonging to the character, but just the act of entering the different rooms filled me with a sadness or sense of foreboding. The icing on the cake comes in the form of lightly animated “cut scenes” after you defeat certain enemies / bosses that share their memories with Lily. These are absolutely beautiful and most often of times heart wrenching.

For the audio, I will let it speak to itself. The soundtrack is FANTASTIC and please check out these tracks to solidify this opinion: Harmonious Compounding Ender Lilies: Quietis of the Knights lived up to every expectation that I had, and then some. This, to me, is an instant classic metroidvania title and a go-to game for me in the future. If you have yet to experience this I beseech you to do so on any of the major platforms available.