Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights Early Access Review

I’ve got a certain affinity for dark, cold, and horribly unforgiving games. I was going to type out a joke here about it stemming from my childhood, but have decided against it. Instead, I’m just going to go ahead and blame FromSoftware for this weird gaming kink I’ve developed that requires games to kick the crap out of me for me to fully enjoy them.

Because of this, if you give me a game that looks like it’s probably going to have a morally grey story, hard gameplay, and the chance to die a lot, well then I’m all the way in.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is very much that kind of game, and to be honest, what I’ve played of it so far has very much quenched my thirst for this kind of game, while also piquing my interest for what’s going to happen with it in the future.

The mix of dark setting, horribly hard gameplay, and the lore within the game, make for the kind of thing that I’m very much here for. It’s not just going to be me that likes Ender Lilies though, I think it’s pretty special, and I’m certain other people will too.

This is fine

Ender Lilies is, at its core, a Metroidvania game. That means you’ll be getting new abilities as you go and backtracking a fair bit as you get them. It’s a well-done one too, with a map that shows you everything you need to know to make backtracking fairly painless.

You can easily see which areas you’ve not fully completed, which ones have routes you’ve yet to take, and which ones you never need to go to again. Plus, the fast travel system has points you can move to all over the place, so it takes a lot of the frustration out of this genre.

Of course, exploration isn’t all there is in Ender Lilies, and a huge amount of the gameplay is going to be you fighting.

BATTLE

The combat has you equipping three different spirits and using them to fight on your behalf. You can have two sets of these equipped, and you can switch between them with ease. Each spirit will do something different.

To start with, you’ll only have sword attack, but as you progress you’ll get ranged attacks, summons, and a variety of other things to play around with. You get new spirits by beating them up in dramatic boss fights, or by saving the poor souls of those fighting off the curse of the land as you find them.

You see, a horrible Deathly Rain has befallen the kingdom where you live, and you’re one of the few people capable of fighting back against it. The rain’s corrupted everything, and that means people are either dying or turning into horrible monsters who’ll attack everything on sight.

This won’t end well

I’m confident that the ending of this story won’t be a pleasant one, but I am keen to know how it develops as it gets closer to the full release. The Early Access plays well though, and aside from one issue with the text, I didn’t encounter any problems.

Ender Lilies shows a lot of promise, and I’m definitely going to jump back into it when it’s finished to see what other challenges it can offer me. It’s the kind of game I really like, but I also just think it’s a good game for anybody who’s been looking for their next Metroidvania fix.