Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist - PC(Steam) review

Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist by developers Adglobe and Live Wire and publisher Binary Haze Interactive—PC(Steam) review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.  

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

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Well folks, here we are!! Have you been waiting in anticipation like I have? Well lucky for you, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist finally has its full release! Did you try out the early access? Are you coming here after playing Ender Lillies? Perhaps you’re just looking for a neat new game to play and don’t know about it yet? Either way, it’s time to delve into the world of Ender Magnolia!

Ender Magnolia is set in the Land of Fumes, a land of magical might where artificial beings known as Homunculi have been created to help advance the land’s prosperity. Everything did not go well however, as toxic fumes from beneath the Earth have risen up and driven the homunculi mad. You awaken as Lilac, a young girl with the power of an “attuner”, one who can purify the taint of the fumes from the homunculi. So you set off on an adventure to help the homunculi driven mad, to explore the layers of the city from the lower district upwards, all in search of a way to make life better for the inhabitants.

Unlike in Ender Lillies, Ender Magnolia takes a bit of a different approach, having characters you can actually converse with, both human and homunculi, as not everyone is dead in this land, at least not yet. As you explore you will interact with the inhabitants and learn more about the world you are in.

Ender Magnolia, like its predecessor, is a 2D side-scrolling metroidvania. With a somewhat revamped battle system, Mili returning for the musical composition, and beautiful artwork, Ender Magnolia certainly hasn’t been slacking off after Ender Lillies. For those new to the games, and genre as a whole, no worries! While there are parallels and aspects that either make more sense or are more understandable if you’ve played Ender Lillies, it isn’t necessary to do so to enjoy Ender Magnolia. So let’s jump in and take a look at things!

Your basic gameplay in Ender Magnolia involves exploring the world and defeating the enemies in your way, both in relatively equal measure. As you explore the Land of Fumes, you will encounter various homunculi and humans in need of help, whether by assisting them or purifying the homunculi of their madness. As you do so, various homunculi will join you on your adventure, giving you access to more attack types and movement and exploration tools. When you start out you may not be able to do too much, as there will be items on ledges too far away, weird walls you cannot get through, and other obstacles you may not be able to deal with. By finding new homunculi friends, these obstacles can be overcome.

A few notes on some improvements Ender Lillies here, but the exploration tools tend to be a lot smoother to use than in Ender Lillies. There’s also a run button, which is really nice to have! Also, the map has some enhanced functionality, which I will get to a bit later, but it’s really nice.

In terms of combat, you have a wide variety of options available to you. No really, there’s a lot more than it seems. Every homunculi that you recruit that has an attack can be equipped to one of four usage options, and they all have three different attack types. You can mix and match different homunculi attacks and different options within a homunculi’s available options. For example, your first homunculi is a basic attack you’ll likely be using the entire game. The three available options are: sword, axe, and scythe. You can only “equip” a homunculus once, so you can’t equip a sword and axe from the same homunculi, but you are free to switch at any rest stop.

As you explore the world you may find parts you can use to upgrade the homunculi or to unlock the different attack forms. You may be able to buy these from the store as well, so keep an eye out when the store expands its wares. Improving an attack will increase the damage output, stagger amount, and usually includes some third improvement specific to the attack.

Now that you’ve prepared your line of attack, it’s time to tackle the enemies standing against you! Attacking enemies will deplete their health, and they usually have a guard gauge as well. Reducing this will stagger the enemy, letting you get in some good damage while they are unable to react. The general goal is to beat the enemies, dodge their attacks with your dash or counter, and use a healing bottle if you need it while trying not to get hit. New from Ender Lillies, you also unlock a sort of super move later in the game, which can be used by building SP from attacking enemies. It’s actually pretty neat and adds a bit of an extra layer to combat. Beating an enemy will award you a number of things, including experience and potentially scrap, if you beat them in a certain manner or have an item equipped. As you earn experience you will level up, granting you more health and improving your stats, making fights maybe a little bit easier.

Now that you can defend yourself, let’s look at some of the equipable options. Making a return are relics, providing specific unique effects, but you will also be able to equip bracelets to improve your stats, as well as a carapace and totem. Carapaces and totems have their own different effects, such as replacing your dash/dodge with a block/counter type move or restoring health once between rests when low. There are different options, so find something that works well for you!

Speaking of equipment, you can only swap out abilities or equipment, as well as upgrading, while at a rest station, which are handy benches, or bench like objects, liberally strewn throughout the Land of Fumes. Also lucky for you, Ender Magnolia functions like a sort of souls-lite experience. What I mean by that is enemies respawn on resting, but if you die you are just returned to your last rest location without loss. Additionally, very early on you acquire the ability to fast travel between respites, or to return to a respite via the pause menu.

Now, relics, those unique effect equipables, are a little different. See, you have a certain capacity, both in terms of slots and “slots”. What this means is you can equip up to ten different relics, provided the total number of “slots” they consume is less than or equal to your maximum amount. Additionally, relics can be upgraded with scrap, a resource that’s moderately frustrating to figure out initially. Other than equipping a certain relic that has a chance to reward scrap on defeating an enemy, if you hit an enemy with a FULLY CHARGED exploration move that can also deal damage, you will get scrap. The game doesn’t really explain this properly when you first unlock scrap, so be aware of this if once you get to that point. Upgrading relics can reduce their cost or improve their effects, and are generally worth the improvements.

I have some excellent news for you folks: Ender Magnolia is really beautiful, both aesthetically and musically. The wonderful folks of Mili are back to grace our ears with their haunting melodies and thematic tunes, while the artwork is beautiful 2D drawings, both as backgrounds, as enemy and character designs, and during cutscenes. Ender Magnolia is artistically beautiful, and I really hope you share my opinion on this.

You know what else is beautiful? Some of the quality of life implementations. Let’s look at your map for starters. As you explore the world, a map is created for you as you enter new “rooms”, which the game is divided into. A partially explored room will appear in grayscale, in the actual shape of the room on your map, and indicate anything you’ve seen in the room. A wall you can’t pass yet, or an item on a ledge you can’t yet reach? As long as you can see it on-screen, it’ll show up on the map with an icon. Once you’ve fully cleared a room, it’ll color it in blue on the map, meaning you’ve done everything you can there. Furthermore, there is an icon that’ll appear on the map screen stating the name of the area, and a symbol if you’ve 100% completed the area, which is super useful. If you want, you can even make your own markers to place on the map, which I did a few times, to indicate areas that you need to investigate or return to. In addition to the handy map functionality, the gameplay difficulty is extremely customizable. While there are default levels of difficulty, you can actually manually adjust aspects such as enemy health, damage, and attack frequency in order to make the game more appropriate for how you want to play.

Overall, I have to say that Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist is an absolutely stellar metroidvanian title that I highly recommend to anybody interested in the genre. The combat is smooth and well set out, the exploration is fun, and there are a lot of hidden techniques to find, the world is expressive and beautifully drawn, and the soundtrack is as gorgeous as the visuals. I sincerely doubt you’ll be disappointed in the experience.

Score: 10 / 10