We had the chance to check out Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist shortly before it released and we’re here to talk about it.
Among the Metroidvania type games I’ve played, Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights and now Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, have always stood out to me as something special. When I heard that a sequel to Ender Lilies was on the way from Binary Haze Interactive, I knew it would be worth checking out.
For this review, I played the Nintendo Switch version of the game on Easy Mode.
The Story
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist takes place decades after the events of Ender Lilies in a toxic world dubbed The Land of Fumes. The player finds themselves in the lower levels of a city filled with strange, artificial lifeforms called homunculi. They must make their ways to the upper levels of the city to find out who they are and why they were left abandoned where they were.
As with Ender Lilies, pieces of the story are unlocked the further the player is able to go. This includes getting far enough to encounter other people and also to unlock memory fragments of the main character’s past.
The Gameplay
The gameplay for Ender Magnolia is largely what you would expect for a Metroidvania game. The player, using a series of buttons, jumps and darts through the map while avoiding obstacles and engaging enemies, all while attempting not to die in the process.
After thoroughly exploring the area, a boss fight is eventually reached before the story can continue, and this is where Ender Magnolia really shows its greatness. These fights, from the very beginning, are an exercise in patience. As with Ender Lilies, the boss monsters fight with consistent attack patterns, with the key to victory being to memorize these patterns and slowly deal damage until they are taken down.
But even then, it’s not that easy, as these boss fights also come in multiple stages, as I discovered the hard way during my exploration of the game. This makes the fight even more difficult, as the character only has limited heals available and it can be perilous to use them up too quickly. That being said, while extremely tough, the bosses are beatable, and each victory feels like an enormous accomplishment.
In between fights, there’s certainly plenty to see and explore. The game devs thoughtfully left plenty of rest areas where the character can recover and the game can be saved. One key tip I can offer besides patience with boss fights is this: save every chance you get, even on Easy Mode it doesn’t take too many hits for the character to lose all life and die.
Accessibility
What puts Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist over the top for me is the freedom the player is given to change the difficulty settings of the game. This is a feature that is not present in Ender Lilies, to my lasting regret as I really felt the extreme difficulty of that game held me back. And for a while, I thought the something similar would play out in Ender Magnolia, until I looked closer at the difficulty settings.
Ender Magnolia doesn’t just let you set the game to a generic “Easy” mode if you wish to do so, it also allows the player to tweak how much damage the enemy deals at any given time, including how much damage a boss monster can deal. Granted, there is a limit to how low the damage can be set and the trade off is that the lower the damage is set, the fewer material rewards the player will receive after combat. That being said, these settings can be adjusted at any time and there is otherwise no penalty for changing them.
I know there are some who decry features like this in a video game, but for gamers like me who struggle with Metroidvanias while still deeply loving them, including features like this gives us a fighting chance to actually experience the story. And, speaking from experience, the boss fights remain a challenge.
A Worthy Sequel
In conclusion, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is a more than worthy sequel to Ender Lilies. The derelict world of the Land of Fumes comes to life with a twisted story that builds with every new level explored. This is what every video game sequel should aspire to be: it grew out of what came before in Ender Lilies but made it even better. This is absolutely a game worth checking out, fans of Metroidvania games will love it.
