Ender Magnolia is the long awaited sequel to Ender Lilies both are co-developed by Adglobe and Live Wire and they are both situated in Japan. The previous title was a well-received title scoring an 86% on Metacritic with reviewers praising its environments, music and compelling story. Ender Magnolia was released on January 22nd and is available on the Switch, PC, Xbox and Playstation.
Gameplay Changes
Indie titles like this usually don’t get major changes to their combat at least not on the surface and it seems Ender Magnolia’s main combat mechanics have not changed from the previous title. Instead of knights we now have homunculi who we can summon to fight for us as we traverse the world.
There is a notable increase in the amount of available abilities for the homunculi than what we had access to in Ender lilies, there are more homunculi available that help in traversing such helping in dashing further horizontally when hanging against a wall, homunculi to help us rise up to a certain height etc.
A notable quality of life change is the overall map now indicates which areas have 100% completed or not, the map shows this feature right down to each room in a certain area so as to indicate to the player where he or she should focus on to reach that 100% completion.
Improved World Design
The world design has been certainly improved upon with more and more treasure hidden away at what may seem like impossible to reach places but one only needs to look at their collection of homunculi to figure out how to reach it.
There is also an increase to the number of biomes available to explore and they even have their own distinct music that plays related to the biome. For example, there is an area of the map that represents the city, which plays a more somber tone compared to when the player enters another more underground area the tone very subtly shifts to a more serious tone.
The majority of the story is done through reading through item descriptions and the reading through the finer details much like a souls game, thus the majority of the world building is also done through this. What is a welcome change is the fact that everytime we obtain a new homunculi we get a short video that portrays their background and how they ended in their final state.
Graphics, Performance And Difficulty
The graphics and overall art style of the game have not changed too much from its predecessor although the color palette is a notable change. Ender Lilies had a slight red tone to each of its environments and on the protagonist herself but here the tone has shifted to a slight blue, indicating an advancement in the story.
Indie titles like these usually don’t have any performance issues to deal with, as such Ender Magnolia runs buttery smooth with no interruptions whatsoever. The game itself has extremely low requirements overall thus there is very little chance of there being performance issues.
What is a worthwhile mention is the difficulty, the damage numbers rise up incredibly fast compared to the progression done. Initial damage numbers might at first fool the player into thinking that a few hits can be tanked but it seems they rise up after consecutive attacks making it difficult to judge whether to heal or not.
Conclusion
No game is perfect and there are some issues that need to be addressed, as with any metroidvania these days there are hidden walls placed all over the map and the inconsistency starts with how the player interacts with them, sometimes they would appear without needing a homunculi and sometimes multiple interactions would be needed.
There also seems there is an issue with the map syncing to the actual state of the game as there would be certain progression blockers such as doors being marked “Locked” on the map but there would no marker if any NPC appears near these progression blockers making it frustrating to notice them after a full map re-run.
However these issues can be fixed with updates making Ender Magnolia a worthwhile purchase for those wanting more of the same of Ender Lilies as it manages to stay consistent with the original in almost all aspects from the music, to the environment, the story and of course the interesting and unique combat.