Ender Magnolia

I finished Ender Magnolia! A very welcome reprieve from playing a bunch of text heavy games, and much like Ender Lilies, I had a great time with it! I thought quite highly of the first one and I think the second one was a great follow up, at least in the sense that it still felt like the original while also adding new things.

To get some things I didn’t like out of the way first though, I am unsure how much of this was affected by me playing on hard which is more of a me thing than the game thing, the difficulty sliders I thought were a great idea I’m just stubborn and saw hard and thought “I must play on this”. But, it felt like some enemy attacks were brutally punishing, and not in the expected “oh it did a lot of damage”, but in the way of “oh i didn’t get any i-frames on hit and then instantly died”. There were a couple weird instances I felt where it felt like the damage applied twice right away and just killed me outright.

This one is also more of a personal taste thing, but as much as I thought it was a cool idea to have your Homunculi have multiple abilities, I almost missed the way the first game worked where when you unlocked a new travel ability (like climbing on walls), they were also an additional skill you could use which I thought was neat.

On the flip side though and going for some positive things, I thought that the new way abilities worked was a welcome change. There were no longer limited use skills which I wasn’t a huge fan of in the original, and there were an interesting variety of abilities (though admittedly I usually stuck with a consistent set).

I also really loved the OST and visuals, the story was a generally more uplifting tale and I think the visuals compared to the first game did a great job of showcasing this. The OST was fantastic as always (I’m a Mili fan) and really complimented the mood of the game while playing it. I enjoyed the way the story is told through snippets, which kept the pacing of the game brisk while at the same time not being too vague and uninteresting.

Speaking of pacing, I think the pacing of this game was excellent. The pace at which you unlocked new abilities, going through new areas, the way different areas opened up with new abilities, having such an amazing map (shoutouts to all metroidvanias that have QOL features like marking when an area is done), I played the game for 20 hours, but it didn’t feel like it dragged at all. I really enjoyed the map design for the game and the way areas interconnected or looped back I thought was really well done.

All of this is to say that I’m more than happy with Ender Magnolia. I had fears when I heard about the game since I thought Ender Lilies really didn’t need a sequel, but I’m happy that they kept the core elements of Ender Lilies while at the same time still making it it’s own game. The callbacks (especially with the OST) were welcome and not overdone, and I think it’s absolutely worth the time to play through if you liked Ender Lilies.