Recent reviews by Bingals

cool

Let me preface this by saying that this game quickly became my addiction for a week, only stopping until I 100%'d it, including all lore entries and achievements (which took me about 24 hours of actual in-game time).

Ender Lilies' strong suit is it's aesthetic, which is absolutely worth playing for only because the game does not overstay it's welcome in my opinion. The art style, music and games overall vibe is in a way, absolutely gorgeous. If you like the glum, gothic type of setting, with some downright beautiful moments, you will love Ender Lilies' style.

That being said, the gameplay and story feel just alright. Only passable, but lacking.

The combat is fun to an extent. I think they got the difficulty just right, but I personally found the amount of "Spirits" AKA weapons to be too many to bother with. Since some either seemed weak or boring, they never piqued my interest, so I never used them. I found that the game doesn't require you to experiment too hard with your weapons. The relics system (which are essentially just equippable buffs) is very clearly more important than your weapons of choice. The main bosses are difficult, but most of the mini bosses are absolute pushovers.

Watching the main character that you play continue to, in many ways, evolve throughout the game was a nice touch. A single example being that you start out with the ability to dodge. In the beginning it's a pathetic dive that almost seems desperate, but later gets upgraded to be a graceful dash, assisted by the spirits you've saved that goes slightly further than before.

In terms of being a metroidvania, I personally haven't played many if any at all (that I can remember), so I don't really have anything to compare it to. However, I feel like this game does the idea well. The map will tell you when there isn't any more things of interest for you in a floor, where there are unexplored routes, and gives you the option to pause/teleport back to your resting area at any time without repercussion. This contributes to the game not feeling like a slog, and keeps you moving forward. There is a fast travel system that allows you to travel to and from any resting area since there are quite a bit of them and the overall map is rather large. All in all very casual in this regard.

The story is alright but doesn't have a ton of depth. Only ever giving you just a little glimpse into some of the side characters back stories, which are really only there to give a little bit of info that will compliment the setting of the game. There is an over-arching story for your character that does wrap up though, which was good enough for me. Like I mentioned earlier, this game does not overstay it's welcome, and it tries to give you what it can without being obnoxious in its shorter ~30 hour play time.

All that to say, I left Ender Lilies with having a very positive experience. This game is just Comfy.