It's been an emotional journey playing this game over the past 2 months or so. I approached it with the wrong attitude and initially ended up putting it down and then not coming back to it for weeks, then when I did come back I had the wrong outlook on how the game "should be" rather than embracing what it is.
Potential Spoilers ahead !
Once I did a bit of a search online for some help as to why it is that I suck at this game so much I found a very crucial piece of the overall strategy puzzle and once I learned that, the feel of the game completely changed and in the end, I have damn near 100%'d the game, completed both of the possible endings, and really wish there was some DLC for me to download or even pay for. Alas, this is simply the end of the road I am afraid.
Ender Magnolia is a metroidvania game that is going to appeal a great deal more to older gamers who remember what it was like to play games like Metroid and Castlevania. It will also appeal to modern gamers who enjoy a challenge but also like to have the ability to scale things down a bit to make the game less impossible. I had walked away from this thinking that I was never going to play it again, and it was only the purchase of Silksong that encouraged me to return to it and give it another look.
one of the unique aspects of this game is that you play the character of a little girl that has some sort of abilities to interact with the souls or something along those lines of various entities that exist in the world you find yourself in. You befriend them and they lend you their power and you use this power to defeat the things that are happening around you. You do not actually have ANY attack capabilities on your own and your offense is created entirely by summoning the abilities of your Homunculi in order to fight those around you as well as gain access to new areas based on the skills that these new friends give to you.
Every time you encounter a new enemy or boss of sorts and defeat them there is a moment of excitement because you are most likely going to be given a new ability that is going to either going to grant you access to previously inaccessible areas or you are going to be granted a new method of attack or defense. The skills you obtain are many and therefore there is going to be a large array of loadouts you can equip and by mixing these up, the gameplay can change dramatically.
There are a total of 30 available abilities in the game and you can only equip 3 of them concurrently. You can go for different types of attack that focus on direct damage, status effect, speed, and also defense. Since I am not really a great gamer, I focused on having as many companions as I possibly could so that they could attack on my behalf while i simply focus on not getting hit which, since I am not a terribly gifted gamer, works out wonderfully for me.
While I tend to forget the complicated names of all of these things I tended to enjoy having the owl equipped who would constantly wander around with you attacking anything and everything around you completely without you directing it in any way. While there are instances where it will not be attacking exactly what you would like it to (the AI is decent in recognizing the most valuable threat at the moment) for the most part, it does a pretty good job keeping you safe and constantly attacking while you simply jump around and dodge incoming attacks. There is also a ranged attack that you can summon and from the videos I have seen, this appears to be used by almost anyone.
One of the neatest skills in the game was an addition that is quite different from the first game Ender Lilies and as I mentioned in previous posts, the fact that the game doesn't specifically tell you how important this skill is, that I initially started to get very frustrated at this game and at one point actually bemoaned the game for poor design because of this. These are the variety of parrying skills and abilities that are absolutely crucial to achieving victory in most of the game.
The above is a good example of how important the parry mechanic is. This boss was really tough until you figure out that parrying is so important and in that particular video the player uses almost no offensive tactics in order to showcase how important parrying is. He/she also uses one of the most crazy offensive skills in the game that I call the "magic toilet bowl."
You acquire "Lorna" quite late in the game and that is probably a good thing because this skill can be looked at as a bit OP as far as all battles are concerned. She gets placed on the screen and continually outputs pretty high damage, cannot be hurt by any enemies, and cannot be blocked by shields. Enemies such as the boss fight featured above because extremely easy once you figure out how to place her and also parry the attacks of the enemies.
It's not as easy as the person above makes it seem but at least it isn't one of those videos where the player takes zero damage and makes us all feel like dolts who absolutely suck at the game.
This is all fine and dandy, but how is it that I consider this to be one of the top-10 games ever made on any platform in the entire history of gaming?
That explanation, I will admit, is extremely subjective.
You see, even since I was a kid I have enjoyed metroidvania games and especially the kind that are side scrolling because I am old school.
The overall map is quite large but also very manageable. There are "warp points" located all over this thing and you can decide to fast travel to any of them at any time, even in the heat of battle. Unlike other games, you are never required to travel to a specific place in order to use these warps. The penalty for using this fast travel is that the enemies will all respawn back to full health if you do so.
If there is one thing that I don't like in games, even games that I really like such as Hollow Knight, it would be the rather senseless busywork of walking that you are assigned throughout the entire game. Ender Magnolia eliminated all of that and I think this is likely because this small studio consists of gamers who built the game in a way that they themselves would enjoy playing. "No busywork" seems to have been an overall theme they were going for and by gawd did they ever achieve that.
The overall story is quite compelling and dark as well. It is tragic with a hint of hope that makes you feel compassion towards not just the hero and her pals, but also towards the enemies that you fight who are being used as pawns by the blight and the evil powers that are attempting to take over this world. The powers that you obtain over the course of the game are 90% taken from enemies you defeated, who apologize for their resistance after their downfall. They were unwilling pawns in an evil game that had taken over their bodies and souls and by defeating them, you are releasing them from their bonds.
I am not at all a fan of cutscenes, especially if they interrupt gameplay, but this game uses them sparingly enough that when you do get to see one (and there are only about a dozen of them) you look forward to them to fill you in on the world you are in. They are done perfectly in my mind. In today's gaming environment I feel like many games rely on super-perfect animation in their cinematics but at the same time don't focus on having gameplay that is fun. Ender Magnolia did the precise opposite. These memories are shaky and don't give a lot of information, and in the meantime the gameplay that surrounds them is polished and wonderful.
Another aspect, which is absolutely huge, is that the music and sound overall in this game is just amazing. The soundtrack is so good that I found myself humming along to it throughout the day when I wasn't playing. Yamato Kasai is the composer and no, I don't expect you do know who that is. The music is a total of 58 songs taking a total of 2 hours and 14 minutes of runtime and it is so good that this soundtrack was made available on Spotify and Apple Music. The mood that is created by this music is absolutely perfect: Are you meant to feel sad? Well now you do and the music ensures that. Have we just passed some sort of milestone and have reason to be hopeful and inspired? Well the soundtrack perfectly accompanies that notion. There are not many vocals but when they are put in there, it is absolutely wonderful. The one track they did in English is a bit hokey, but there are also a few tracks that you are going to be struggling to figure out what language it is only you will never figure it out because it is a language that the composer made up just for this game. Amazing!
I think that for most people that once they complete the first ending are going to quickly realize that this ending is not pleasant enough and think that there must be another ending. They would be correct in this notion and the 2nd, or "true" ending is significantly more difficult but certainly obtainable.
I was delighted to discover that I wasn't seeing this potential 2nd ending because of a single room that I hadn't discovered on the map and once I went back to that room there was basically an entire 2nd game that was available to me.
When I accomplished the 2nd ending and the credits were rolling there was almost a sense of relief mixed with sadness, because this whole game was a wonderful experience from start to end except for that brief hiccup I experienced when the game failed to let the player know how crucial parrying is in the game.
seriously, when you get the parry ability pay very special attention to it because if you do not, you will get frustrated and perhaps rage quit just like I did
I haven't actually ever composed a list of my top-10 games of all time and perhaps I should make an attempt to putting that down and making it official. To me, this game is absolutely perfect and it's just a shame that devs Adglobe and Live Wire haven't made any sort of announcement about if and when there is going to be a 3rd installment. I certainly hope so.
You can pick this game up for around $20 on various networks and especially if you are a fan of metroidvanias, I highly suggest you give it a try.