I have to say that I am seriously disappointed in myself for my early dismissal of this game. It all boiled down to one very major thing that wasn't explained well enough in the game about how parrying is just a huge part of the overall gameplay. I mean it isn't pointed out at all and if they had just done so I think I would have never said the nasty things about this game that I did.
In most metroidvanias there is a certain aspect of basically all of them that if you come in contact with any of the enemies you will take damage. This was true in the two games that spawned the name in both Metroid and Castlevania and it is still in basically all of the others ones including Silksong. So I think it is kind of unreasonable on the makers of Ender Magnolia to expect you to figure that out without pointing out to you.
Yeah yeah, I know that I should have noticed it right away and I probably did but I have been trained over the course of the past 30 years that staying away from enemies is of the utmost importance in 2D sidescrolling platforming games. It's not an easy habit to break!
But once I figured out how to parry and how important / crucial it is to getting past many parts of the game, I look back on those fights that gave me so much trouble and got me so mad with a sense of laughter and a bit of shame.
There are many different kinds of parries and each of them has a different effect afterwards. Some of them are more applicable to close encounters another is fantastic for sending projectiles back to where they came from and one of the, the best one I think, reflects an appropriate amount of the damage dealt back to the person who swung the weapon and this is just so important with bosses that do big damage.
That's just your standard parry though and the cooldown for that is less than 1 second. your truly kickass parries are the ones that are special skills called Chain Whip and when you use that not only does it nullify the damage but it can do a number of things to the enemy that threw the blow such as freeze or push and of course, pretty big damage.
The boss that I am fighting above is from a 2nd playthrough after learning about the parry and while he just whooped my butt when I was fighting him before without parrying, I was able to get past him, quite easily, and while taking almost zero hits myself.
I feel silly for the negative things that I said before but the devs could have avoided my wrath simply by having a pop up at some point to let you know that parrying is an option. Normally, when games use pop ups later in the game, it is helpful because you now realize that you are missing something essential in order to progress. I wonder why they chose not to do that? Probably because we all of the internet and I was just being stubborn by not using it.
Later on you are going to see a bunch of bosses and as is normally the case with games these days, the bosses are designed so that you are going to lose a bunch to them until you figure out their mechanics on their 1st, 2nd, and sometimes 3rd phase.
Later on you are going to encounter bosses whose primary method of striking you is going to be from afar and using your parries that only affect monsters near you isn't going to be ver effective but worry not! you have a parry that fires projectiles back after each successful block.
It starts to be fun to need to discover what your "loadout" needs to be to get past some bosses and even some of the more dangerous regular enemies.
So this is my apology note to Binary Haze. "Perhaps I treated you too harshly"
Ender Magnolia is a fantastic game for Metroidvania fans and I highly recommend it. You know it is good because I am actually putting off playing Silksong at the moment because I am so hooked. Just remember that parry stuff man... haha. Wow, I can be a real dope
images not sourced are from my own gameplay