Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights from developers AdGlobe and Live Wire and publisher Binary Haze Interactive mixes so many classic genres and styles that it’s honestly irritating to mention how it resembles the Souls series, “Metroidvanias”, Salt & Sanctuary, Child of Light, and so many other well-known games. That’s not a bad thing, make no mistake. The problem lies in comparing a game to all the potential influences that may or may not have affected the design direction rather than judging the game on its own merit. So instead of constantly comparing mechanics and design choices, let’s just skip that entirely. Instead, let’s take a look at Ender Lilies on its own merits. What is it? Is it good? Why?
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is a side scrolling action and exploration game where you control a young girl named Lily in a forsaken, crumbling, Blighted place called Land’s End. The Blight has corrupted everything in Land’s End, transforming the land into a vicious, unforgiving place packed with monstrous enemies and former humans who have been befouled and turned to evil. As Lily, the descendant of the last White Priestess, you have the singular ability to purge the Blight and a solemn duty to do so. A tainted knight accompanies you on your journey to save Land’s End from it’s terrible curse and… wait. You get the idea. Play the game, you’ll get the story and there’s plenty of story here, almost too much, honestly. The world-building is fantastic in Ender Lilies and the story is compelling, if a bit slow. But this isn’t a visual novel or even a Metal Gear-style narrative. This is primarily an action game, and most of the time, the plot is irrelevant as you wander the halls, forests, and caverns of Land’s End, beset by hordes of twisted enemies.
As you play through the game, you’ll find that Lily has a variety of abilities, many of which are linked to the spirits that accompany her. In fact, you have no attack of your own whatsoever, but instead, the tainted knight mows down enemies at your behest, almost riding your body like a parasite. You can also jump and dodge to start off, but unlike most games that incorporate a dodge function, the dodge here is absolutely essential to master and the game cannot realistically be played without it! Also unique to Ender Lilies is the healing ability. Lily can say a prayer and heal a portion of her health three times before her faith is expended and she has to rest at a save point called a Respite. Resting automatically replenishes health and prayers and you’ll definitely need that! Eventually, you’ll discover a wide variety of ability-boosting relics and new spirits to accompany you but we’ll get to that later.
You’ll wander from room to room in Land’s End, slowly exploring the absolutely massive map. At first, you can’t access certain areas or artfully teased items that require later powerups. Eventually, you’ll find relic after relic that allow you to maximize Lily’s abilities and explore the map more fully. Each room starts out blue on the map and turns golden if everything has been discovered within it, visibly showing you that you have missed something in that room. The map also shows Respites and revealed exits to rooms that you have discovered but not ventured through. The relics you find are leftover vestiges of the people of Land’s End, imbuing Lily with added defense, spirit attacks, and a variety of handy extra skills. There are tons of them, and to use them, you’ll have to also hunt down Chains of Sorcery that expand your relic slots one by one. You might as well also find the shards of the White Priestess’ amulet while you’re at it too, as each shard you find boosts your HP by another five points and the cumulative effect is quite substantial.
Quite quickly, Lily stumbles across her first corrupted spirit. These are the bosses in the game. There are a wide variety of spirits to defeat strewn about Land’s End and they’re suitably creepy with shredded, malformed bodies and vicious attacks. The first one is deceptively easy but as you progress through Ender Lilies, you’ll find the boss difficulty scales up rapidly, forcing you to learn patterns and experiment with spirits. Defeat a boss or miniboss and Lily purifies them, releasing their spirits form the Blight and absorbing their power. From a practical standpoint, this means that when you rest at a save point, you can adjust which spirits accompany Lily on her journey, changing your attack abilities depending on your selections. These vary from things like poison clouds to a bird that attacks distant enemies for you and even a huge Viking warrior that swings a wicked mace for crippling damage. That’s just the start too. There are tons of spirits available and major bosses like the Dark Witch imbue Lily with extra abilities like swimming, allowing you to venture deeper into Land’s End than ever before.
Mechanically, Ender Lilies is solid, responsive, and well-designed. Spirits are mappable and you have two slates of three spirits you can switch between on the fly. You’re also able to dodge directly through enemies and enemy attacks if you time it just right, a key mechanic throughout the game. Often, there’s no reason to fight through a whole level you’ve explored and dodging through enemies is the quickest way to move from place to place outside of the thoughtfully included Fast Travel option available from the save menu, allowing you to skip from save point to save point. In addition, Lily can simply return to the Respites at any time from a menu option, instantly allowing you to exit an area to go somewhere else. The entire interface for Ender Lilies is quite user friendly, easy to learn, and hard to master. But it’s that smooth background design that really makes this an approachable game even though the difficulty level is fairly high, primarily due to somewhat unforgiving timing in combat. Spamming dodge solves a fair amount of difficulty, but attacks cause a bit of a delay, especially when using spirits and healing takes just a bit longer than is handy, forcing you to pay attention even with the dodge mechanic.
All of those mechanics often take a backseat to the absolutely stunning visuals of Ender Lilies though. This is a simply gorgeous game and the environments are breathtaking as well as disturbing, with Lily making her way across snowy wasteland, dark dungeons, piles of human remains in the thousands, and a host of other disturbing imagery, interspersed with stunning scenery covered in moss, waterfalls, and assorted other details. It’s a montage of beauty and death that would please even the most jaded of goths and every new area brings new visual delights. The accompanying soundtrack is soft and disarming, with peaceful piano music to start and a pleasant variety of instrumentals that shift from area to area and boss to boss to suit the game’s flow. The soundtrack is easily up to the standards set by gameplay and graphics here, and it’s a shame that there’s no in-game jukebox to chill out with. The entire 50 track soundtrack is currently available on Apple Music, but it would honestly be great to grab a physical CD of or see on Bandcamp.
Eventually, playing through the gradual difficulty ramps of Ender Lilies, the novelty of the environments slowly fades and you end up just hunting through levels for items or Blight that you may have missed to upgrade your spirits or that last relic you might need. The later sections of the game just get harder and harder, with bosses becoming frustrating and even regular enemies doing significant damage if you make the slightest error. There are no penalties for death here, you simply start at the Respite, but unless you’re quite skilled at this style of platforming, chances are good that by the time you get around a third of the way through Ender Lilies, you’ll be starting to get a bit frustrated on occasion and by the last quarter of the game, you’ll end up in a bit of a skill grind, trying to make it from one Respite to the next. This is a game that definitely requires a degree of patience to proceed, not a quick fix title and the entirely of the design is for prolonged play and enjoyment, even if you have to fight some of the bosses repeatedly. In fact, sometimes you can manage to get to areas that are too powerful for you, forcing you to search high and low to power up a bit more before fighting that next corrupted Guardian. But, overall, the balance of Ender Lilies manages to even out the gameplay experience as a whole and if you’re diligent, you won’t get too lost.
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is a stunning game in terms of visuals, gameplay, and even audio. While it isn’t perfect, and it’s definitely more than a bit reminiscent of a wide variety of similar titles and art styles, the game manages to carve out its own unique personality and emerge as a powerful release that’s both fun and challenging. The simple fact is that Ender Lilies is a delight to explore, with difficult but rewarding gameplay that stays varied for much of the game and an increasing difficulty curve that requires you to truly master the controls. Gameplay is noticeably designed to make things tougher on you with the timing of attacks and blocks, and this is a title that may turn off more casual players. However, Ender Lilies succeeds at standing out in an absolute dearth of digital content as a gorgeous, fun, and satisfying game that’s unquestionably worth the $25 that it costs on the Nintendo eShop and absolutely deserves a physical release as well. Let’s cross our fingers for that one. If you’re on the fence here, don’t be. Just go out and buy Ender Lilies, cancel your plans for the weekend, and settle in to purify Land’s End.
This review was based on a digital copy of Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played perfectly in both. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is also available on PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X, and PC on Steam.