There are moments in my life where I have lost an obscene amount of time to an addiction to media. When a game or a TV show gets under my skin to the extent that I ruin my sleep routines and forget to drink enough water. I have just been through one of those periods, and I’m still recovering. The reason? ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist.
The sequel to ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights, MAGNOLIA is a 2D Metroidvania developed by Binary Haze Interactive where you play an amnesiac little girl called Lilac. Her task is to recover her memories and discover the source of the dangerous mist causing corruption and mutations throughout the city. On the face of it, that’s a fairly standard setup for a game. You know, corruption blah blah blah, blight blah blah blah, save the city BLAH FREAKING BLAH.
But that doesn’t tell you the whole story. The bags under my eyes should because this is one of the best Metroidvanias I’ve played in years. The addiction got me bad, man.
Think of a city like Piltover in Arcane. There’s an Upper City, a Central City, and a Lower City. Just like in that League of Legends world, the lower and working class inhabit the Lower City, and that’s where the corruption and blight take hold. The blight can mutate people and alter Homunculi (man-made robot-type things) into mean, murderous old b*tches.
Attuners, like the player-character Lilac, are the only ones who can stop the spread of this corruption and soothe the once-loyal and friendly Homunculi. Lilac and a helpful but equally forgetful machine called Nova team up to attempt to save the city, but all is not as it seems.
What caused all of this in the first place, and why has the Upper City forsaken the people for so long? All will be revealed.
ENDER MAGNOLIA is a classic Metroidvania. You work your way through the world, fighting enemies, exploring hidden rooms, and finding treasures to level up and learn new skills. That formula isn’t extremely innovative, but this progression offers very little friction (in a good way). Double jump and dash are handed out in the first few hours, so it becomes quickly satisfying to traverse the screens. Fast travel is also unlocked very early, which is a Godsend!
What sets the ENDER universe apart is its combat choices. As with LILIES’s protagonist, Lilac is a little girl without any real physical prowess. Her attacks manifest from summoning soothed Homunculi souls. For example, Nova has a sick sword melee attack, whereas Yolvan has magical guns. One late-game summon has an area-of-effect attack to just set down and leave. You can assign one attack from one of ten Homunculi you can unlock to each of four controller buttons, and I loved playing around with how they all worked together in a build.
Boss fights are epic, and they’re always rewarding. Either you unlock a new dude (or dudette) you can attack with, a new traversal power to unlock new areas, or maybe even a new relic. Relics work like in Hollow Knight, where you have a set amount of slots you can equip buffs to. Like 15% extra XP or 10% extra damage while attacking in the air. I often don’t care much for this type of finicky stuff, but I became engrossed in trying to become the most powerful version of this tiny girl I could.
And I did. Mwahahahaha!!!!
ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist is a really pretty game. The art style is very anime in its character designs, and the background environments are detailed and rich. Characters, whether they be friend or foe, pop off the screen like they are paper cut-outs, but their movements can be very fluid. Sometimes, their animations look like they are actually cut-outs with drawing-pin hinges, and that adds to the style.
Every use of a weapon or hit taken gives feedback both visually and audibly. At times, this can be overwhelming (especially with how I built my character), but it’s mostly welcome. Numbers on the screen to show the amount of damage dealt to an opponent, as well as the swish of Nova’s sword swiping or Yolvan’s bullets making contact, were deeply satisfying.
Mili provides the catchy yet haunting soundtrack to MAGNOLIA. There are some tunes in this mix that are absolute bops. I had these songs in my head constantly for about a week, but their purpose was to add to the atmosphere, which it does in spades.
So, is MAGNOLIA better than its really solid predecessor? The short answer is yes.
Combat in both games is great, feeling hefty and complex. However, the challenge factor has reduced slightly. In Lilies, most of the combat abilities you unlock have a limit on them. For example, a crow-like companion that passively shoots little fireballs at enemies would have a limit of 99 uses before having to reset it at a save bench. In MAGNOLIA, the gun-toting Yolvan has a similar attack, but its unlimited usage means that you can use it to constantly barrage a target from mid-to-long range. Having that attack to lean on made it easier for me to barrage a target and inflict massive stagger damage, eventually leaving the helpless creature open to heavy damage from melee attacks.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just smoothed some rough edges and encouraged me to swap out abilities more often instead of choosing ones with the highest amount of uses. Like I said, I made Lilac an absolute tank. I found a relic that increased my health with every hit I landed on the enemy, so I gave her high-intensity attacks with relatively low damage per hit and then just spammed those attacks.
In the final boss, I barely had to dodge or melee, and the dude melted. This wouldn’t have worked for a boss that was a little more spry, and if I hadn’t cleared most of the rooms in the game to increase my health an obscene amount, it sure did for this guy. I’ve never messed with builds like this, and this game made me care. It’s amazing.
Other improvements include the map and how it is populated as you traverse the world. In Lilies, every time you entered a new room, the whole block would be visible on the world map, and it would stay the same color until you cleared everything in the room. In MAGNOLIA, it shows you which parts of the room have been left unexplored, and, as an added bonus, it marks items on the map you have seen on screen but have not yet collected, allowing you to keep track of things a lot better.
There are tons of things I could point to as improvements, from the additions of more numerous and interesting NPCS to the REMOVAL OF THE STUPID SWAMP AREA THAT REDUCES YOUR HEALTH CONSTANTLY! YOU SUUUUUCCK! Those types of areas have been reduced to speed challenges and are few and far between, and that is very welcome. Hell, they even improved the trophy list! Gone are the grindy trophies, which means I already have the Platinum Trophy for this game. WHOOP!
ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist is a terrific game, no doubt about it. I loved every second of my time with Lilac, Nova, Yolvan and the crew. This Metroidvania mixes fun exploration, dope traversal skills, challenging combat, and an intriguing story. Moreover, it’s a 2D RPG that actually encourages you to experiment with your builds and abilities. I’ve hardly ever done that before, usually barrelling toward the finish line and stubbornly keeping the same setup as I began with little or no tweaks.
As a sequel, it improves almost universally on its predecessor. It removes all of the friction and slow build of ENDER LILIES, makes you feel like a boss early on, and never lets up. Yeah, maybe the difficulty from the first game has been reduced, and I may have felt like I cheated the final boss because I was so powerful at the end, but that’s all part of it.
This is the first great freaking game of the year. It’s a MUST PLAY!
ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist is out now for literally ALL THE PLATFORMS for around $25. There’s no excuse not to pick this one up.
