"Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist" Review

Publisher: Binary Haze

Developer: Adglobe, Live Wire

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch

Before she passed on in September of last year, my dog went through two amputations in her lifetime. Having no functionality in the back legs, there were problems aplenty, as I'm sure you can understand. As she recovered from the first amputation, I found myself playing a game that would carry me through that time. That game was Ender Lillies: Quietus of the Knights: a 2D metroidvania with a unique art style and an atmospheric moodiness that struck me. Ender Lillies would go on to snag the #5 spot on my GOTY list that year, and I believe it would've gotten that high up even without it having gotten me through a tough time. Well, needless to say, when I discovered that a sequel had come out without my knowledge, I hopped right on it. And I'm happy to report that this sequel is pretty decisively an improvement in all the ways I would've hoped for!

Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is much like its predecessor from a story perspective...in fact, I think it may truly be the exact same story, just with different names for things. You play as a little girl named Lilac who meets a Homunculus named Nola. The Homunculi are kind of like summoned spirits who protect their "attuners" (the people that "wield" them). So, right off the bat, the similarities are astounding. But after this meeting, Lilac and Nola set out to reach the upper stratum of the gigantic Resonance of Fate-esque mega-city that this game takes place in, making all sorts of new Homunculus friends along the way. In case you haven't yet figured it out, dear reader, story isn't exactly the main focus here. Despite that, there sure is a hell of a lot more of it. Just about every new checkpoint you unlock comes with at least one optional conversation to take part in if you're interested. I wasn't, but I can't exactly fault a developer for giving a player options for how much story they want to engage with. So, that's where the story discussion is going to end.

Remember when I said that this game is an improvement over the original? I actually went back to my Ender Lillies review before starting this to confirm a few things and I realized that there were even more improvements to the formula here than I realized. But let's start with the most important thing: I took a full point off from Ender Lillies for what I consider the cardinal sin of gameplay. This cardinal sin, for the uninitiated, is taking contact damage from enemies who aren't covered in spikes or fire or something. So, if I run into an enemy or boss, take damage from that, and there's nothing on that enemy or boss that would indicate that touching them would hurt, that's the cardinal sin broken. Ender Magnolia does away with the cardinal sin. Halle-lujah! I don't think I've ever seen a developer actively backpedal on something like that in a sequel, so massive credit must be given here. There are a couple of enemies that do inflict contact damage, but they're always visually coated in fire or electricity, so that's totally fine!

But a bit about the gameplay itself before I get too much deeper in the weeds. Because you're a little girl, you naturally don't do much fighting yourself. That's a job for the Homunculus friends you make along your journey. You start off with one that acts as your basic sword slash, and you gradually unlock a variety of other types. Some of these are active, unrestricted talents like that aforementioned sword slash. Some are active special attacks that require a brief cooldown after use. Some are minimal-but-rapid damage skills that persist for as long as you hold the button down. And finally, some are autonomous skills that persist until you turn them off. You have 4 buttons to assign skills to, which on PS5 are square, triangle, circle, and R1. So ultimately, you have your choice of 4 skills you can equip at a time, with your build largely depending on what you want to prioritize. If you're like me, you'll want to keep your build well-rounded with one skill of each type (with the held-button skill mapped to R1 for easy access). But you could just as easily go with a sword slash and three special attacks or a held-button gun attack with three autonomous skills. The world is, as they say, your oyster! This is similar to the Ender Lillies style, but the difference here is that while there isn't as much variety, every skill has unlimited uses. In the previous title, the strongest skills would only have a handful of uses between checkpoints, making strategic use of them crucial to survival. In this sequel, however, it's the cooldowns you need to contend with in those cases. For another example, a held-button attack in Ender Lillies would've had a set amount of "bullets" before it ran out, but in this sequel it seems like they simply toned the damage down a bit in exchange for endless use. Another major difference is the amount of skills you can equip. As I said, you can have four, each mapped to one of four buttons. But there's only one set you can have equipped, and if you want to swap a skill out, you need to return to a checkpoint. In Ender Lillies, you had two loadouts you could switch between at will on the battlefield, made up of three skills each. So, here you can have four skills equipped, but only in one loadout. Fewer total skills, but all easily accessible and without restrictions. Overall, Ender Magnolia trades in the inter-checkpoint resource management focus of its predecessor for a pure skill check with whatever loadout you choose to enter a combat scenario with.

And on that note, combat in the original game could be pretty challenging at times. The same can be said for Ender Magnolia, but it's a much fairer challenge. For one thing, the contact damage is gone, so you take damage only from your own mistakes and not because an enemy moved .01 centimeters to the left. Then, obviously, you aren't running out of skill uses in the middle of a fight. But it also feels like the developers turned up the damage dealt to you by a bit to shake up the balance a tad. All this to say the formula has largely stepped out of its own way. That doesn't mean it won't be difficult, though. Bosses do a lot of damage and attack with alarming frequency, so soulslike rules apply despite this being a metroidvania. 

Of course, if this is all too intimidating or too "casual" for you, the game also offers up a limited suite of difficulty sliders. "Limited" is the key word here. When you sit down at a checkpoint, you can tweak variables like enemy aggression, overall enemy health, enemy damage, etc, in exchange for an increase or decrease in the amount of experience you earn from killing enemies while these changes are applied. You can turn these variables up for a greater challenge and level up faster as a result, or you can turn them down for a breather just to get to the next checkpoint if you're having trouble. By default, these variables are set to "1," and you can increment or decrement by degrees of "0.1". I didn't try out the harder difficulties because I don't think anyone is too interested in hearing how that changes things, but I did take a test run of the final boss at the lowest settings (which are "0.7" in all categories) after I'd earned the platinum trophy. I can report that it didn't make the battle too much easier, but I can imagine the little bit of breathing room being crucial for some people. Of course, anyone will probably struggle without the benefits from 100% completion, but we'll get to that in a bit.

If I had to point out one issue I had with the gameplay as it relates to difficulty, it would be that the developers still didn't quite get the minor bullet hell aspects right. Just like in the last game, there's a bit too much visual clutter that sometimes gets in the way of enemy tells, and I never got a 100% perfect grasp of how many invincibility frames a dodge would actually give me. So a lot of my losses ended up boiling down to "the boss used a bullet hell attack and I couldn't see anything." 

Like with any respectable metroidvania, Ender Magnolia features an expansive map filled with secrets that almost always give you a greater edge in combat. Scattered throughout the map, you'll find crystals that increase your maximum health, relics, armor pieces, and some bits of lore. Relics are the only item out of those that I think needs extra explanation, so here goes: relics are essentially passive buffs. One might give you 1% more experience upon defeating an enemy, one might give you one or two more healing phials between checkpoints, one might let you do extra damage when attacking in midair, etc. You have a set amount of relic "slots" available, and each individual relic has a set amount of slots it takes up. A fairly inconsequential relic might take up 1 slot, while some of the game's best ones can take up as many as 9. You can find slot increases in the map or purchase them from a vendor, so exploration is not just key in getting more relic options, it's also key in getting the ability to actually use them. And like with Ender Lillies, Ender Magnolia makes 100% completion from exploring easier with a color-coded map system. Areas that are gray still have unexplored corners or secrets to find, while you need not spend any more time searching a blue area. In this way, you can easily go from room to room and know exactly where you stand. Like any metroidvania, certain secrets and corners of an area won't be accessible until you unlock a certain ability, but if you're able to blue out all the surrounding areas, you'll instantly be able to tell where that unattainable secret was later on. I'm a simple man. I like to methodically explore everything piece by piece, getting feedback on my success in real time. 

On the technical side of things, I'm happy to report that Ender Magnolia is just as polished as its predecessor! No variability in framerate, no low-quality textures, no animation or sound glitches, no crashes, nothing. The backgrounds and creature designs are all top-notch stuff, and the animations are just about as crisp as a person could hope for. The soundtrack, while not as good as in Ender Lillies, is still immediately memorable. Other than that aforementioned note about visual effects and how they impact gameplay, I can't say I have any complaints around the game's technical fidelity. 

Folks, I'm not under the illusion that Ender Magnolia is going to set steam player records on fire any more than Ender Lillies did. I'm not confident that you've heard of either game, really. But I have a hard time imagining you feeling anything other than joy playing either of them if you're even remotely a fan of metroidvanias. I adored Ender Lillies for its mood and gameplay alongside where it came into my life, and almost everything about this sequel is a sizable improvement. So, naturally, this one gets an even more sizable recommendation!

Let us review:

Same visual effect problems as last time - 0.5

The final score for Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is...

9.5/10 - Near Masterpiece

Bravo, Adglobe/Live Wire, bravo!