You Have Two More Good Reasons To Play Ender Magnolia After Its Biggest Update Yet
An incredible Metroidvania blooms again in a new update.
One of the best games of the year may have flown under your radar, but there’s never been a better chance than now to check it out. The sequel to 2021’s Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights launched out of Early Access in January to rave reviews. Now, it’s gotten its biggest update yet, which adds two new game modes to keep the game going well after you finish it for the first time.
Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist follows the form of its predecessor closely. Like Ender Lilies, it’s a moody Metroidvania set in a world where scattered human survivors seek refuge against creatures driven mad by a supernatural miasma. Both games star young women who are charged with not just defeating the monsters, but healing as many of them as possible along the way. And in both cases, the enemies freed from their corruption follow you for the rest of your journey, lending their skills along the way.
Even before its new update, Ender Magnolia was a fantastic action platformer.
Where Ender Lilies was dark fantasy, Ender Magnolia is equally dark sci-fi. Artificial beings known as homunculi are rampaging in the ruins of human cities, and only the game’s protagonist, Lilac can set them free. For the most part, it’s a mix of platforming and combat that fans of Metroidvania games expect from the genre. Unlocking new abilities grants you both additional attacks and ways to open new doors throughout its levels. The twist is that rather than attacking herself, Lilac uses defeated enemies, each assigned to a different button, to attack for her. Creating loadouts from different combinations of abilities and using the right set at the right time is an essential part of the game’s strategy.
In most cases, you need to defeat a boss to unlock a new ability, and that’s where Ender Magnolia’s combat shines the brightest. Bosses tend to fall into Souls-like territory, seeming impossibly difficult at first but revealing patterns that can be exploited to defeat them after multiple tries. Ender Magnolia shows off its art here as well, which is uniformly excellent. Bosses exemplify the art style’s mix of grotesque gothic monstrosity and sci-fi sleekness, and they’re a sight to behold even as they’re crushing you again and again.
Ender Magnolia’s bosses are worth fighting again and again.
That’s what makes the addition of Ender Magnolia’s Boss Rush mode so exciting. While it won’t offer the thrill of navigating the game’s environments, the new mode lets you experience its thrilling boss fights again. Boss Rush mode is unlocked by defeating all of the game’s bosses, after which they can be challenged again from any save point. You can choose the difficulty level for a boss each time you face it, and your fastest times will be saved to compete against later.
If bosses alone aren’t enough, you can now also play through a tougher version of the main game in New Game Plus mode. Unlocked after completing Ender Magnolia, New Game Plus makes enemies tougher than they are during a first playthrough, but starts players with all of the upgrades, skills, and items they earned the first time around. Stat-altering Relics will have a higher maximum upgrade level to reach as well.
I’m not much for New Game Plus modes generally, simply because I enjoy upgrading my way through a game starting from scratch. But given how much fun Ender Magnolia’s bosses are, getting the chance to run through a gauntlet of the game’s toughest fights at even high difficulties does sound appealing. Even if neither mode in the update appeals to you, Ender Magnolia is still well worth picking up if you missed its release earlier this year.
