When Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights came out back in 2021, it impressed a lot of gamers as a very competently made metroidvania and gained a solid following selling over 600,000 within its first year and 1.5 million by 2024. While Lilies is a very good metroidvania, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is a masterclass of the genre that stands with the greats like Hollow Knight and Ori.
It’s a refinement of what made it’s predecessor great and while it doesn’t flip the genre on its head, it excels in all the marks that make a great metroidvania and then some.
Taking place decades after Ender Lilies, Ender Magnolia sees you venturing through the land of fumes, a world populated by machines known as homunculi. The homunculi become corrupted and a girl named Lilac who is an Attuner that can purify them sets out with an uncorrupted homunculi named Nola to find the cause of the corruption.
Featuring perhaps my favorite combat system in a metroidvania, beautiful visuals, an improved narrative and a great map to explore, Ender Magnolia is an early must play for 2025 in my opinion.
Pros
I’ll speak on the combat first as I think it’s a contender for the best combat system in a metroidvania. Similar to Lilies, Lilac doesn’t fight herself but summons various homunculi she purifies to battle. While this system was fun in Lilies, there were cases where I didn’t use a specific ability much at all. That’s not the case in Ender Magnolia however as I not only found almost all the abilities fun but useful as well.
You can equip up to 4 different powers at once from 10 different homunculi you’ll find throughout the game, each with 3 different powers of their own that can all be upgraded. These abilities range from standard fare like sword slashes to things such as powerful parry attacks and homunculi that serve as support attacks for you. Lilac herself isn’t completely helpless as she can dodge as well as gets her own parry that while difficult to master, nets you great rewards when you land it.
Eventually you also get various super moves for the homunculi which range from powered up attacks to healing moves which can come in clutch as Lilac only has a limited amount of times she can heal herself similar to Hollow Knight
Powers can be used seamlessly with each other and you’re encouraged to mix and match depending on the area you’re in and bosses you may encounter. The game does a great job of making you feel powerful as certain bosses I had trouble with initially got absolutely shredded once i experimented with a different load out.
Supplementing Lilac’s abilities in combat are various relics that can be acquired and equipped. These range from things such as simple damage increases to others that help in more subtle ways such as making Lilac lighter. Much like her powers, relics can also be upgraded for greater effects.
All of these abilities are necessary when taking on the games many bosses. Bosses are challenging without any of them feeling unfair and are also a highlight of the game. Many of them have great designs and are epic in scope and I hope some sort of boss rush is added in a future update so I can fight against some of them again.
While I think Ender Magnolia’s combat is it’s greatest strength, it’s far from its only strength. The games visuals are stunning for one. The art style reminds me of a painting almost sort of like Pieter Bruegel’s triumph of death as while beautiful, a sense of apocalyptic dread is present throughout the game. Much of the world is dark and features partly destroyed buildings with many inhabitants either dead or barely clinging to life in the background. Those that are still alive will often comment on how uncertain the future is. Yet throughout it, there are also splashes of hope thrown in to show it’s not completely over yet.
This is all accompanied by a great soundtrack composed by Mili as well which features a number of somber melodies playing in the background that’ll ramp up in intensity for certain areas and especially for bosses.
All of this matches it’s strong narrative which in my opinion is a significant step up from Lilies. Lilies narrative wasn’t bad per say but the protagonist in that game, Lily was a silent protagonist and the narrative had somewhat of a from software approach where it focused more on finding lore and visual cues.
Lilac isn’t a silent protagonist and a major highlight of her narrative is the bonds she forms with Nola and the other various homunculi she purifies as the game goes on. At the games rest spots you can have multiple conversations with the various homunculi as well as moments with some of them throughout the game that play a significant impact throughout the story as a whole.
Each time you purify one of the main homunculi you’re given a look into their origin and how they possibly connected with Lilac or Nola in the past, which can be interesting as they may not have always been on the best of terms in a couple cases.
Lastly, it wouldn’t be a good metroidvania if it didn’t have a strong sense of exploration and discovery. A few of the homunculi you purify will be used for traversal abilities but, Ender Magnolia actually takes somewhat of a different approach in that many (though certainly not all) of the secrets in an area can be found before finding traversal abilities and you can actually cover significant parts of a map before you do get certain powers.
This was a good way to keep areas from feeling too locked off like some games in the genre can feel like at times.
Cons
There are very few cons with Ender Magnolia but one small thing was that in a few areas, some of the rest spots felt very sporadic or it took longer than it seemed like it should have to reach them. These weren’t even late game areas at that so if you died, which is likely since enemies can often kill you in 4 hits when you enter a new area it could be cumbersome to backtrack.
Also while the games final act was good, it did perhaps feel like it could drag on a bit at times but that’s a very small complaint overall.
Final thoughts
I had very few complaints about Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist by the time I saw both endings. Adglobe and Live Wire should pat themselves on the back for being a game that helps kick 2025 off in a strong way. To any fans of the metroidvania genre, i’d definitely recommend checking it, as well as it’s predecessor out if you have not.
Reviewed on PC, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist released on January 22nd 2025 on Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
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