In case you are interested in another Metroidvania to keep you occupied this winter, here is another one from The Long Library, Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights.

Story

Ender Lilies is set in a literally “blighted” medieval or renaissance world. Everyone has been taken by the Blight, which is sort of a sickness and a madness that turns people into evil spirits or undead monsters or bestial demons.

Or almost everyone. A young girl dressed all in white is awakened by the spirit of a knight, one of the White Priestesses’ former guardians, who summons her on a quest to stop the Blight and purify the remaining souls who are still savable.

The young girl has no memories of who she is.

The story unfolds out in the world as you pick up journal entries and letters left scattered throughout the various locations. It’s, again, the epistolary form of storytelling that is a convention of the Metroidvania genre. We learn about what happened to the world and its inhabitants, including the White Priestess, a little about the girl’s past, and also individual stories about some of the souls you must battle to purify. For example, you read a letter from a husband to his sick wife about how much he missed her and how he was on his way back to her from travelling to find her a cure. He never made it before being taken by the blight. Then you meet the woman later who has been taken by the Blight also and turned into a monster who you must defeat in order to purify her soul.

These are mostly sad stories.

It’s a sad game, full of pathos. If you’re in the mood for an uplifting, funny game that still plays like this, you should look to other sidescrolling platformers other than Metroidvanias. Such as the Trine series or Shantae series or Indivisiable. Those are basically the same types of games but without the darkness of Metroidvanias.

Personally, I don’t mind the darkness. Most really good stories are about defeating darkness, and usually the greater the darkness the greater the story. This story is actually really good, you feel compelled to keep battling the Blight and saving people from it. It’s the type of game you can sit in the same spot and play for hours without moving. It sucks you in.

The girl doesn’t speak, but her closest companion, the Umbral Knight who awakened her, occasionally offers commentary on things they stumble upon. There is at least one flashback cut-scene that I have seen in the first four and a half hours of gameplay. But mostly it’s epistolary. There’s no voice acting.

The setting tells a big part of the story too, with its various ruins. The types of monsters you encounter also tell part of the story, considering they come from the sections of the game world before it was blighted, so they are distinct from one another.

The character design is top notch. I’ll get into some of it more in the gameplay section, but you basically have a troupe of spirits under your command. These are the souls that you have purified, and they fight along with you. They are animated well and unique. You haven’t seen them exactly before, but they seem archetypical and familiar. So the Umbral Knight is a knight of course, in plate armor, but he doesn’t quite look like other knights you’ve seen. It reinforces the otherworldliness of the setting.

The names of the characters are also really good. That’s not always an easy thing to do. Coming up with good names in storytelling is a skill in its own right.

Gameplay and Controls

With a name like Ender Lilies, you would be forgiven to think the gameplay is a little soft and more focused on the adventure and storytelling.

Nope.

This game is hard as nails. The item description on the Steam store page says “On this sorrowful journey, encounter horrific enemies against whom a moment of inattention could be fatal.”

They’re not lying. You can get killed quickly and easily in this game. Like, really quickly. You will die often.

Part of the reason for this lies in the underlining game mechanic.

Your character that you play as is the girl. She is wearing nothing more than what looks like a nightgown or night shift. If she gets hit by a flaming arrow or sword, she takes significant damage.

She can heal herself a few times by praying, which replenishes her life bar, but it takes a few seconds, and it is easy to be overwhelmed by multiple opponents and if they all get a shot in, she will be dead sooner than she can pray.

She does dodge things like a champ, and you have to learn how to use her dodge command or you aren’t getting very far. But she doesn’t fight. At all.

The spirits fight for her.

This is the underlying game mechanic. The spirits that she collects, the first one being the Umbral Knight, are her weapons. The Umbral Knight (or any of the spirits) actually only manifests when you hit the attack button, and then he appears and hits the enemy with his sword. He is the closest of the girl’s companions, and so he appears almost superimposed on her image, which means he almost plays as her.

But not quite. She remains a distinct character. And it is this dynamic that really makes the combat system interesting.

It’s easier to understand with some other spirit other than the Umbral Knight though. The second spirit you collect is from a nun, Guardian Seigrid, another of the servants of the White Priestess. When you summon her to fight, she appears wherever the girl was standing when you press the controller button (you can assign which button it is, and have to). She then proceeds to stand there and swirl around a giant wrecking ball thing in several rotations which hits any enemies on either side of her who come within its orbit. Then she disappears. She is impervious to attack.

During this time, the girl you are playing as is acting independently of Siegrid, and you have to remember this because the enemies are still attacking her. They’re not attacking the spirit. But the girl is basically defenseless, so all she can do is run away or dodge attacks.

So, you are basically forced to play offense and defense at the exact same time, and keep track of where your various characters are, because you can summon more than one spirit at once and there is also an interval you have to wait between summons (I guess spirits get tired too. Or maybe it’s the girl who needs rest).

So another spirit, for example, The Western Merchant, manifests as a flying bird of prey who rains fire down on your enemies from above. He will fly above your character, following her around the entire map, offering air support from above in the form of fire missiles until his arsenal is depleted or you call him off. He is essential in boss fights. You almost have to have him flying above you to win. But you are still summoning your other spirits all the time.

At this point in the game I can summon three at once, not counting the Umbral Knight who acts as his own type of spirit, or Gerrod: The Elder Warrior, who is the same type of spirit as the Umbral Knight. These two spirits you can summon unlimited number of times, so you are never alone. The other spirits, such as the Cliffside Hamlet Youth, who manifests as sort of slug type thing that shoots out at enemies in an arced attack like a yard of water from a pump, or the Floral Sorceress who creates a tornado around her that hits all enemies, including ones above her, have a limited number of uses.

You will run out, especially during boss fights, which are hard. There have been a number of boss fights which came down to me just have the Umbral Knight with no prayers left and no spirit uses left.

The spirits can only be equipped at what are called “respites”. These can be anything in the game world, but are usually benches. They are this game’s save point genre convention. Every Metroidvania has them. It is here you can upgrade your spirit’s power or equip items, you can save your game and replenish your health and prayers and spirit uses. And you can speed travel to other respites you have visited around the world by having a horse drawn carriage arrive and take you there.

These are Metroidvania genre conventions. It’s kind of an all-in-one example here with the respites.

I do appreciate that the game actually explains what the respites are. I think that’s a nice touch from a storytelling, immersion perspective. So many Metroidvanias just take it for granted that you know what a save point is and what a teleportation room is and how enemies will respawn if you use it. Because they assume you know you’re playing a Metroidvania.

But that’s not the best way to do it. The best way to do is to actually explain it again in the context of the game. Because the girl, for example, doesn’t know she is in a Metroidvania, so it makes more sense for the Umbral Knight to explain how things work.

Anyway, it’s a little touch.

Atmosphere

As previously mentioned, it’s a dark world. The atmosphere is grim.

But it is also beautiful. The backgrounds are illustrated very well and not recycled too much, in almost a storybook sort of aesthetic. That’s kind of what I would describe the entire art style as, storybook, with a little anime influence thrown in.

The soundtrack is a mixture of orchestral music, just ambient sound effects like rain falling or water falling (as in a waterfall), or women singing in sort of sad, wordless, lullaby melodies. It changes depending on the room you’re in or the area of the map.

I actually really like the soundtrack, it can sort of lull you a little into the game world and helps to keep you there. I’ve travelled back to certain areas just to hear the music again.

There is a feeling of sadness that permeates every aspect of the game, but also a little hope. The figure of the girl, drawn almost in a ghostly white, I think is meant to inspire hope, glowing as she does against the backgrounds. You feel a lot of empathy for the characters in the story, or are meant to, but you also feel a lot for the girl, who is the one who has to purify the souls she meets. It’s a tall order for someone who looks like she could be around twelve or thirteen years old. The knights make note of this.

The atmosphere changes to some degree depending on where you are on the map. The broad locations have names of their own, so one area on the surface is the Castle Village and another is called The Coven, which is a place of sorcery far underground. Here, waterfalls can go either direction, up or down, and you ride them either way. So, it creates a sense of wonder here in the setting that other places don’t have.

But I think storybook is probably the one word I would use to describe the atmosphere. Almost fairytale like.

Intangibles

Well, it scores points for the uniqueness of the gameplay mechanic. I haven’t played anything quite like it before. I guess the new Zelda installment where you play as the princess is supposed to be similar in that Zelda summons “echoes” to fight for her. I haven’t played that game yet, but it sounds very similar. In Metroidvanias I haven’t met anything quite like it.

Also, I like playing as the main character. It’s sort of hard to explain why, but it’s the only sort of humorous thing about the game that I get a kick out of.

She moves sort of like a feral cat. Meaning, she can leap like a cat when she is doing her dodge technique, she can scamper up the ledge of a wall she barely catches, and she can double jump in the air. But she’s this saintly little thing who stands with her hands together almost like she is praying when she’s not moving. So, it’s at odds with her athleticism, in a way that’s sort of humorous. It’s like child of nature meets child of God.

And that’s my review of Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights.

I’ll give it a provisional five Pellegrinos, because I haven’t finished it.

Take care and Happy New Year!