LifeisXbox’s Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights review | Today, you will all get the pleasure of experiencing a soul-like game for the first time! Well, at least you get to read about my first experience playing one. The first game to be on that list for me is Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights! It’s a lovely 2D action Metroidvania made by the people over at Live Wire and Adglobe! So, buckle up, gather your souls, and let’s get to it, shall we?
ℹ️ | Xendacine played Ender Lilies for 4 hours on PC. This game is also available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation.
What we liked!
- Gameplay feeling | What surprised me the most is that when you seem to play this soul-like game, you sync up with your character without putting much effort into it. With that, I mean that you have a limited health bar. And you really have to focus where you stand and in which pattern you move your character to dodge attacks. Due to all this focus, you really feel like you eventually become Lily (the main character in the game)
- Story | I will keep this short as to not spoil too much of the experience. The story itself is excellent! It has elements that make you sympathize with the main character and the ghost (well, that’s how I call him). It’s the little shadow that comes out when you attack enemies! Later on, you will find more characters that will become an essential aspect of your mob-to-mob combat experience!
- Music/atmosphere | Ender Lilies is just straight up filled with music that will make you gasp your ears off your head. And if that isn’t enough, you will be allowed to let your eyes feast on some of the most visually pleasing, half horror and demonic art which I have seen in the past games! It really shows that you are playing a game that has a price tag. And it makes it all worth it!
- Boss fights | When I fought my first few bosses, my heart was rushing! I had one health crystal left, so very little room to mess up. But after observing the boss, I decided to battle it head-on! And to my surprise, I have beaten it! But, it turned out not to be dead anyway… A more powerful, more scary monster emerged! You might think that this is a one-off? But actually, it feels like every boss is fundamentally different and brings something unique to the table. And so do more minor dungeon/level bosses! Worth kicking back for with your controller and just enjoying the whole battle scene!
- Checkpoints/Fast Travel | I don’t know if this is unique to soul-like games or if this is just something that Ender Lilies has in place. Still, at least I could enjoy a rather enjoyable saving experience. At specific points in the game, you come across a bench where you can take a rest. Here you can upgrade abilities and save the game. Of course, you will also respawn here if you die! But imagine that you have fought your way through a big dungeon, and you realize you have to go another way, then you can just fast travel back to your last checkpoint. And if you are sitting on a bench, you have the freedom to instantly travel to other benches you sat on. This had proven useful when I decided to first take the big room that showed me a downward path, and I couldn’t be bothered to fight my way back up for half an hour.
Somewhere between
- Default keybindings | The way the keyboard was mapped out for AZERTY players was horrible without skipping a beat. Moving with arrows, not even the equivalent of WASD. But all the skills were mapped around your left hand. It’s okay if you consider having one hand on the arrows to move and one on the buttons to use skills. But it just didn’t click in my mind. After some rebinding and mapping the abilities around my movement keys, everything felt great. But I also decided to give the controller a go. And to my surprise controller felt just perfect. Like overly perfect! It’s almost as if it’s a game that should be played with steam remote-play on your TV. (Which is an ABSOLUTE recommendation here! )
- Ultrawide scaling | In and by itself, the game does scale automatically with an ultrawide display. So you get the enjoyment of having your HUD elements moved to the side without a fuss! But the gameplay is cropped to your normal 16:9. It is actually barely noticeable, and I didn’t pay much attention to it. But as a matter of fact, I am tasked with taking pretty screenshots that look good on the site. And the black bars did bother me in the after view of it. So if you are looking for great screenshots, limit it to a 16:9 game. Otherwise, just enjoy the game to its fullest. It truly is made to do just that!
- Platforming | Somehow, I was hoping that this game would feel like a true platformer, mixed with some fighting. But it kind of did not. Instead, it felt like a particular sort of fighting game. Later explained to me as soul-like (Dark Souls). Which honestly feels fantastic. But to give the game dimension, they just added some platforms. So again, that is my impression of it. The jumps are simple throughout the whole game. There isn’t a complex puzzle where you have to think about how to jump. It is just there as a way to move around. It doesn’t feel bad. It just could have been a bit better.
What we disliked
- Feeling stuck / difficulty for beginners | Throughout Ender Lilies, I died quite a lot. And this turns out to be part of the learning experience. But I play games as a casual. So I don’t spend a lot of time perfecting my skills in games. So when I die 4 times to a boss, which I could beat, but don’t have the health to do so. Especially if you have to replay from your last checkpoint and beat all these mobs again. It is part of the experience but still induced a bit of rage. It made me play a certain level in 2 sittings because I dislike being proven a “nub” by a game. That being said, well done by the developers to get me mad about a single-player game and being bad at preserving health. I will continue to practice this until I beat the entire game.
How long to beat the story | 14 hours
How long to achieve all achievements| 23 hours
Similar with | Hollow Knight, Dark Souls, Nioh, Unworthy…
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