Game 28: Ender Lilies
- Plays All The Things
- Oct 9
- 14 min read
Updated: Oct 9
Ender Lilies begins with me playing as a much-too-pale girl who wakes up in a ruin somewhere.
I'm able to make an impressive-looking sword attack, except it's not 'me' swinging the sword - it's being swung by the spirit of an 'Umbral Knight' who is normally a red spark floating around.
It isn't long before we reach the first boss. So far I'm digging the art style, this is a beautiful game.
The boss' initial phase isn't too difficult, but then she gets mad. I want to note here that the music, instead of being intense boss-battle music, is actually a rather sedate piano piece - and I'm kind of a sucker for violent scenes set to peaceful music.
Defeating her, I get the chance to absorb her memory and see who she was.
Happily, her soul is now released from the corrupted body, and she joins me in the form of an additional spirit weapon I can use.
I like the setting and both the art (especially the backgrounds) and music are top notch so far. I think I'm going to really enjoy this one.
The only thing that bothers me so far is Lily's dodge. Mechanically, it's great - you travel a reasonable distance and you're invincible while it's happening. Visually however...
The structure of a game is sort of souls-like lite. Combat is relatively easy thus far. There are benches to rest at that respawn the enemies and you can heal yourself three times between rests. I am leveling up as I fight enemies so my damage has been increasing naturally.
I've also been finding several additional spirits to help me, sometimes entailing a battle against a significant enemy.
The spirits all become additional attacks for your arsenal - the Western Merchant is particularly great because you just summon him and he floats around shooting ranged attacks the whole time.
I've encountered and defeats the second boss, Gerrod. After defeating a boss you purify them of the blight, and you get to see one of their memories.
I'm getting the sense that these White Priestesses, of which I am one or was training to be one, were these people's best defense against the Blight. And I wasn't the only one.
After beating Gerrod I get a new main attack option (a Hammer that's way too slow compared with the sword) and a down-attack that opens new areas.
That allows me to reach a forest area where these delightful mushroom wizard people are attacking me.
I've noticed that at rest spots I can access memories, and some of them are 'Purified' memories where I can re-fight the main bosses again, only these fights are significantly tougher than the original battles were. I don't know if the bosses are faster but they are most definitely tougher.
After a bit of use I'm coming around on the hammer, it hits like a truck and I was able to upgrade it whereas my sword is still currently stuck at level 1 - the sword requires 'ancient blight' but the hammer requires 'furious blight' that I have some of. The hammer has better range than the sword and now hits hard enough to justify how slowly it swings.
The game's map is nowhere near as pretty as the rest of Ender Lilies, but it's functional.
It's not long before I encounter the third boss, Dark Witch Elaine. Defeating her gets me a projectile weapon as well as the ability to swim underwater.
I'm not clear on what the long-term goal of this actually is - the world is wrecked, and I can go around purifying the souls of people who have been lost to the Blight, but are we saving the world here or trying to accomplish something beyond that?
I'd like to give credit to this game for having one of the most terrifying versions of a Mimic that I've seen.
Things are looking grim as I venture deeper into the catacombs, enemies are getting a bit tougher and I'm starting to encounter more of a challenge traversing these areas.
You get two 'spirit sets' that you can switch between, so I've changed up my ability sets - one using the Dark Witch's main attack which is a projectile plus other ranged spirits, and then a set more focused on melee. The ranged set has limited use but there's enough 'ammo' to kill lots of enemies before it runs out.
The first boss I'd consider hard that I run into is Guardian Silwa. She takes me several attempts and what eventually works is a little bit of melee at the start followed by using ranged attacks to finish her off.
At the conclusion of the battle, I got an improved dodge so I'm no longer belly-flopping my way to safety. Also, we got some clarity on the main quest - an apparition of an adult White Priestess appeared and told me that there was a spring where the waters still ran clear and I might be able to cure the Blight with it once and for all.
After a look back at prior screenshots I can confirm that yes, I'm purifying these blighted souls by absorbing the Blight into myself to some degree - and I fear it's beginning to corrupt me.
I've beaten a couple of the Purified memories of bosses now, they give you a little bit of material for upgrading your weapons but nothing too crazy.
Ender Lilies bills itself as an 'action RPG' and that's true insofar as I'm leveling up and getting more powerful, but I'm not choosing stats to improve nor do I have a class or intrinsic abilities. My power comes from the different weapons that spirits grant me and from a selection of Relics that can give me bonuses - very similar to Hollow Knight.
By now I've gotten a whole lot of additional movement and door-unlocking abilities, so I think it's time I revisited old areas and scoured them for things I couldn't reach before. My original Sword guy is at level 1 and it's just not keeping pace with the other weapons, I feel like I may have missed something.
Backtracking in Ender Lilies is trivial because you can fast travel from any rest point to any other, and rest areas are frequent, there's one every 3-4 rooms. While backtracking I found an underwater passage filled with mines (which doesn't really feel like it fits in this universe). I think you're supposed to dodge past these mines but I found that the Silva Hammer's charge attack can hurt and kill them.
At the end of that passage is an area I don't think I'm quite ready for, the enemies are absolutely vicious and tough to kill.
Similarly, I don't think I'm ready to take on this thing.
Eventually my backtracking reveals a snowy area that I missed, and I think it may be easier than the Catacombs with the skull piles.
I think it would have been nice if the other spirits would talk more, so far it's just been commentary from the Umbral Knight every so often. This is not a dialogue heavy game. Most of the story comes in from pieces of paper that you find along the way.
The need to finish up a game session quickly prompted me to try a tactic that I've often used in other Souls-type games - simply running past enemies. I haven't been doing that because it's better to kill foes to get the XP and level up here, but it turns out to be a very effective way of getting through a level - the dodge lets you phase through enemies without being hit. I may use it more now that rest spots seem to be getting further apart.
In terms of level design, Ender Lilies has lovingly embraced the unlock lever and used it everywhere - you need to go through a longer section of the level and enemies to reach one, but doing so then unlocks a shorter path for you to use later.
Speaking of dying, there's absolutely no death penalty other than being sent back to a bench - no currency to lose or additional corruption to live with. This is a kinder, gentler soulslike. There aren't even any consumables to manage, all your limited-use spirit attacks fully refill at benches.
Of course, I would have the impeccable timing to write that this is a kinder, gentler game moments before venturing into a field of flowers and meeting Ulv.
Ulv is easily the most difficult boss so far, and I actually made things harder on myself by spending the first several attempts using my usual ranged standoff tactics - he has a couple nasty long-range attacks that are difficult to dodge. Once I switched to nothing but melee I did better, and somewhere around attempt ten I managed to barely pull it off in a nailbiter. In many ways I maintain that Ender Lilies is easier than many of its counterparts, but some of the boss fights like Ulv and Silva are nothing to sneeze at.
Defeating him earns me a wall cling / jump ability, so now I can treat all vertical surfaces as ladders.
If you happen to be curious about my current setup, this has been working well for me:
Set 1 is Guardian Silva's hammer, which lets you use charge attacks (or not) to determine if you need speed or power and range for the situation, and it has the best ultimate attack I've seen so far. Complimenting that are Siegrid who attacks in place and I can just throw out when I'm close to an enemy, and Fallen Sentinel that charges forward if the enemy is a little further away. Set 2 is range-focused, with Dark Witch Elein's homing projectiles as the main firepower, complimented by the amazing Western Merchant who is my favorite spirit in the game since he just floats around and does damage for you without having to think about it. It also has Fallen Archer who shoots a barrage of arrows upward to give us another option to hit the games large amount of flying enemies or just enemies hanging out on platforms above us.
Now that I know what I like I've been focused on upgrading the main spirits that I use instead of upgrading everything.
Having cleared the snowy area / castle, I think I'm ready to try the Stockade again.
But progress we do, and it's a good thing I took the time to figure out how to fight the enemies here because the next boss spawns a lot of guards to help him.
After some fancy jumping that I'm not certain I was intended to be able to make at this point, I ended up making my way outside into the rain, and found the pure spring the knight spoke of earlier.
Beyond lie the flowers - both pure and blighted. I found a note here that talked about the Children of the Ancients - of which we are one (I knew I was too pale!), that's what gives us the ability to absorb the blight.
We're treated to a cutscene where the Priestess takes some degree of responsibility for the blight, and expresses regret that we had to live through it.
The game makes it clear that this is one of multiple endings, so we're going to get back in there and try for something better. And honestly, it irks me that I've beaten the game without having managed to upgrade the starting sword! Where the hell is the Ancient Blight?
Hoenir's defeat keeps the tradition of the bosses by granting us another movement ability, this time we get a grappling hook that can attach to specific points. Between this and the wall-climbing ability I think it's time to again scour the rooms that still indicate they have goodies left in them.
Would you look at that - an Ancient Soul in one of the first rooms I backtracked to.
My wanderings now bring me to a castle on the northern part of the map - Inside is a smorgasbord of enemies from earlier parts of the game as well as some powerful knightly defenders.
I can't run past everything though, some of these rooms trap you in with the enemies and force you into battle.
Interestingly there's a bit of a puzzle getting to the top of the castle where you have to climb the castle from two directions in order to enter a room from two different sides to flip two levers and open the way forward.
Eventually I reach the throne room - I had assumed I might end up fighting the Blighted king, but instead my foe is the Knight Captain Julius.
The last boss was a cakewalk and I'm more powerful than ever, so this shouldn't be too h...
He's up there with Ulv - he's armored so not all of my attacks damage him and that leads to a longer contest of endurance. Similarly to Ulv I end up switching spirits for a close-in melee to take him down. I think you're just dead if you're on the wrong side of him when he whips out the Death Star's primary armament.
Persistence pays off, and he falls, revealing that the King was not a good one - he sought immortality for himself, and ended up making his soldiers drink an elixir to make them undying so that they could stand against the Blight.
I'm still piecing together the story but I don't know where the Blight originally came from - was the King defending his people as best he could or is he perhaps responsible for the Blight in the first place somehow?
Some notes have indicated that various Dark Executioners and other important personnel ventured somewhere called the Verboten Domain, and I've just found it.
The enemies here aren't too bad - the main hazard is environmental as large parts of the area are covered in poisonous gas. I'm having to run through it as fast as possible to preserve my health.
It's touch and go down here, but if any attempt can either obtain some materials or reach a lever to unlock a door before dying, that's a victory.
By the time I reached the bench at the bottom of the area, I was out of prayers, nearly out of spirits, and certainly out of remaining hits I could survive.
At the bottom of this blight-soaked nightmare, I found Miriel the Beloved.
Miriel is unique among the bosses in that she doesn't move so I ended up bringing the Mushroom Wizard spirit out just for this battle - it leaves a poison gas cloud in place that does continuous damage. Between that and the Hammer's charge attacks I brought her low, you need to stay in the air as much as you possibly can for this fight or you'll die to repeated claws emerging from the ground.
Oddly, I didn't purify Miriel - I guess she's a lost cause or maybe she's just a pure blight monster. Instead I purified the King's researcher Faden who was just beyond. Faden's power lets me unlock fancy doors, so there's a lot more exploring to be done - there's one all the way back at the start I've been curious about.
This looks to me like it could be the key to ending the game in a better way than our initial discovery. I don't wonder for long if this is just an interesting note or something we can actually do, because in short order I've found one of the tablet pieces.
Re-exploring the available rooms is something I probably should have done even more frequently, some of these tablets I could have obtained earlier, and some of them have a lot of weapon upgrade materials with them.
Yes, definitely regretting not doing this earlier.
It's a good thing I have the mask now though, my search for the last tablet has exhausted the earlier rooms and I'm now plumbing the depths of the abyss to see if it's down here somewhere.
Lo and behold, it was indeed at the bottom of the nightmare. Returning to the start gives me the chance to repair the tablet and form an amulet that will allow me to absorb tons of blight.
We bring the constructed amulet down to the White Priestess of the Font. Maybe we can save her with it.
Or she could turn into a Blight Lord and try to kill me, that's good too.
Defeating her, we see her memories of the little priestesses taking on her burden of blight unto herself.
And in many ways, it was pointless. The Priestess of the Font couldn't save the kingdom. I couldn't save the kingdom - all I could do was relieve people of their undying torment - but everyone is still dead, everything remains in ruins.
There's only so much one little Priestess can hope to do, and we can't always save the world.
The Blight rain finally stops. The past may be dead, but now a future can be born.
And we did save one person.
I very much enjoyed Ender Lilies, the music and art was wonderful. My sense of difficulty might genuinely be skewed because I'm also currently playing Silksong but I found it to be (overall) easier than other souslike / metroidvania games; the platforming is easy, enemies telegraph their attacks in a blatant and near-universal manner, and you have a pretty ample supply of healing. If you're interested in the genre, you could do worse than choosing this as your introduction to this type of game.