ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist

was hoping for something more

10/10 An upgrade to Lilies in every aspect imo.

I was not a fan of Ender Lilies. I thought it was an utterly uninteresting game with little to offer beyond it's checklist of poorly hidden collectibles. And in many ways, Ender Magnolia is the same. But I think it offers enough to bother playing. If you liked Ender Lilies, you will like Magnolia. If you didn't, Magnolia makes many improvements over Lilies. Combat feels weightier and abilities more refined. Bosses still lack depth and almost vehemently refuse to overlay attacks, but some of them are good enough for me to actually enjoy fighting. Now, I did need to increase all boss HP by 50% to arrive at decent fight lengths, and in general I think giving players stats sliders as difficulty is the lowest form of balance, but I won't deny that it gives players all the freedom they need to tune their experience. The game still lives in the awkward Dark Souls 1ian middle ground of not being terribly technically difficult, but sorta jank and very punishing in a way that makes it hard for me to find achievement in overcoming challenge. Magnolia remains an exercise in patience above all. Levels still aren't very interesting, but there is an attempt to combine enemies in more interesting combinations (though still not frequently enough for my taste). Often times it is very easy to bait enemies apart, and killing one single mook at a time is not interesting. The map is massively improved, now displaying the exact shape of rooms and even marking blocked paths with an indicator of what ability you'll need to pass through. Whether this is a change for the better or worse is up to the player. I think it works in a series like Ender that (I feel intuitively) doesn't actually care for exploration. Fast travel is expanded to work from anywhere on the map, which is great, because Lilies and Magnolia already include an option to return to your last bench, it is good that fast travel has cut out the middle man. Navigation of the map is now actually possible during fast travel, which is much preferred over scrolling an ordered list twice the length of the screen. (Yep, even in the Magnolia review, Lilies will catch strays). The story isn't good. I'd say it's worse than Lilies', and I don't think Lilies' is very good. There are a lot more characters, but I don't care about any of them, and it's weird that Magnolia thinks I will after a handful of vapid conversations expressing the most basic traits and desires. The lore is also somewhat delirious. The timeline is muddled and only really works if you accept the devs are a) lying about how long after Lilies Magnolia is, or b) the aging process in the Land of Fumes takes a break between ages 20-50, and also every character is a colossal idiot who has never actually bothered checking if the apocalypse is still going on, and the resolution completely drops the inciting villian. Despite all my grievances, Magnolia undeniably rises above Lilies' in enough places for me to recommend it as being worth your time. Not super worth your time, but if you aren't doing anything else and want to turn your brain off for a bit, go ahead, It is a standard, uninteresting, streamlined (I use this word perjoratively) metroidvania experience. It isn't cracking any top 10, top 20, top 50, etc lists any time soon, but at least the final boss is a boss and not an add spawner.