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
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
