I used to own Castlevania on my DS, which is where my love for Metroidvania comes from. The question is how good is this game and would I recommend it?

Ender Lilies is definitely one of best games released in this genre in recent memory, it features a lot of things I want of a Metroidvania:

• Great Music
  
• Great Atmosphere
  
• Beautiful Artstyle
  
• Smooth Animations
  
• Lot's of different environments
  
• Decent amount of exploring with secrets hidden in in the environment
  
• Lot's of abilities to improve the movement, like double-jumps, dashing, climbing, wall- and ground-smashes
  
• Generous amounts of checkpoints with no death penalty
  
• There is insane amount of lore and backround information hidden over the entire map. It was really fun figuring out what happend in this world peace by peace.

The unique part of this games combat is that you don't actually attack with the character you control. Instead of weapons, you have guardians, which attack for you and all of them have unique movesets, which range from heavy to fast or from ranged to melee. I actually really like it, as it actually makes sense, why some attacks are slow or fast and it is kind of cool to see how they are protecting Lily from the monsters.

Now for the reason, why I called this game a "flawed Masterpiece":

• The Movement is not perfect, I wouldn't call it stiff, but the best way to describe it is that the game sometimes "swallows" your inputs. Lily does not move how I actually wanted her to move which caused me to die more times then it should have been necessary. Some Boss fight really suffered from this issue, which brings me to the next point:
  
• Balancing Issues
  In this game you take insane amount of damage. The problem is not only the bossfights, but also the normal enemies. At the end of the game the HP-bar almost takes up the entirety of the screen, but you will still die from 2-3 hits depending on the enemy. So why does the HP-bar gets so huge, while it has almost no inpact on the gameplay?
  I don't know
  
• Boss Fights
  Some bosses have so much HP, to the point, where it starts to get annoying instead of being fun. With the issue mentioned above, bosses in this game, with some exceptions, are really hard. Not the good kind of hard (Sekiro) but the annoying kind of hard. If you are not careful, the boss can sometimes even one-shot you and them being HP-tanks doesn't help with that fact. Some people enjoy the difficulty, while I enjoy the exploration aspect of Metroidvanias. Making bosses difficult is okay, but at least give us a difficulty-slider, so the rest of the game doesn't suffer from it.
  
• Parry
  This game has one but unfortunately it is not very useful.
  
  It might sound like I was not enjoying the game, as I've mentioned a lot of negative points, but that is not really the case. I just want them to improve those issues for their next game, so that we might actually get a real Masterpiece.
  
  My overall rating would be 8.5/10, big recommendation, if you enjoy Metroidvanias

[h1]A flawed Masterpiece[/h1] I used to own Castlevania on my DS, which is where my love for Metroidvania comes from. The question is how good is this game and would I recommend it? Ender Lilies is definitely one of best games released in this genre in recent memory, it features a lot of things I want of a Metroidvania: [list] [*]Great Music [*]Great Atmosphere [*]Beautiful Artstyle [*]Smooth Animations [*]Lot's of different environments [*]Decent amount of exploring with secrets hidden in in the environment [*]Lot's of abilities to improve the movement, like double-jumps, dashing, climbing, wall- and ground-smashes [*]Generous amounts of checkpoints with no death penalty [*]There is insane amount of lore and backround information hidden over the entire map. It was really fun figuring out what happend in this world peace by peace. [/list] The unique part of this games combat is that you don't actually attack with the character you control. Instead of weapons, you have guardians, which attack for you and all of them have unique movesets, which range from heavy to fast or from ranged to melee. I actually really like it, as it actually makes sense, why some attacks are slow or fast and it is kind of cool to see how they are protecting Lily from the monsters. Now for the reason, why I called this game a "flawed Masterpiece": [list] [*][b]The Movement[/b] is not perfect, I wouldn't call it stiff, but the best way to describe it is that the game sometimes "swallows" your inputs. Lily does not move how I actually wanted her to move which caused me to die more times then it should have been necessary. Some Boss fight really suffered from this issue, which brings me to the next point: [*][b]Balancing Issues[/b] In this game you take insane amount of damage. The problem is not only the bossfights, but also the normal enemies. At the end of the game the HP-bar almost takes up the entirety of the screen, but you will still die from 2-3 hits depending on the enemy. So why does the HP-bar gets so huge, while it has almost no inpact on the gameplay? I don't know [*][b]Boss Fights[/b] Some bosses have so much HP, to the point, where it starts to get annoying instead of being fun. With the issue mentioned above, bosses in this game, with some exceptions, are really hard. Not the good kind of hard (Sekiro) but the annoying kind of hard. If you are not careful, the boss can sometimes even one-shot you and them being HP-tanks doesn't help with that fact. Some people enjoy the difficulty, while I enjoy the exploration aspect of Metroidvanias. Making bosses difficult is okay, but at least give us a difficulty-slider, so the rest of the game doesn't suffer from it. [*][b]Parry[/b] This game has one but unfortunately it is not very useful. It might sound like I was not enjoying the game, as I've mentioned a lot of negative points, but that is not really the case. I just want them to improve those issues for their next game, so that we might actually get a real Masterpiece. My overall rating would be 8.5/10, big recommendation, if you enjoy Metroidvanias