ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist

A joy of a game. Music has a permenant spot in my track list.

Fair warning: This review is partial due to technical issues on lower-end devices preventing me to finish the game. I will update it once I am able to 100% it and properly enjoy the endings. From what I’ve experienced so far, this is an amazing sequel. I love how it expands on the first game's atmosphere and mechanics, utilizing a beautiful 3D-layered art style. The core gameplay loop, the story, and the music are easily just as good as the original if not better than it, especially the soundtrack and the homunculi mechanics. The technical breakdown: Unreal Engine 5 is incredibly demanding on lower-end specs. The game frequently freezes or crashes during room transitions, particularly when entering effects-heavy zones like the Upper Stratum. Because UE5 aggressively dumps a massive amount of asset data into the system memory during these transitions, an 8 GB RAM setup like mine triggers a severe hardware bottleneck. Instead of a progressive background load, the physical RAM gets completely overwhelmed all at once, leading to hard locks and stalls.

Ender Magnolia is the sequel to Ender Lilies, and it basically improves everything. It’s a nice metroidvania where the young protagonist doesn’t attack directly. Instead, you gain allies and equip their abilities to attack for you. They’re homunculi this time, fitting the more steampunk setting. There are fewer allies this time, but each has 3 different abilities to choose from. The world is still in a dire situation, but it’s more alive, with NPC interactions. The story is also easier to follow. If this is better than the first game, it’s subjective, but personally, I preferred the overall setting this time; it has had more work put into it. What’s less subjective are the improvements to gameplay. It feels smoother, with more customization options without being overwhelming. There are also quality-of-life improvements, like giving you the double-jump and dash abilities very early on for better mobility, while still giving you a steady amount of new traversal abilities. This time, I felt that the areas were less interconnected, and most items could be collected the first time, which may be a step back in the overall metroidvania design. But I absolutely loved the map. Rooms now ge…

Finished this after Ender Lilies and boi.... I can see difficulty bros getting through to the developers. The combat, upgrades, UI have significant polish compared to Lilies. It got streamlined into a more linear progression and amazingly done so without losing the style that Lilies has. Map exploration, unlike the predecessor where there are "limit test" platforming area that can be brutal, its much forgiving in Ender Magnolia. As for combat.... boi, this game actually allows cheesing via plethora of range weaponries while making sure all the bosses have arsenals that can deal with you no matter close/long range. Absolute FUN. ---------- Plot tho, its not as rich (and dark) as Ender Lilies because a lot actually covered in Ender Lilies but in exchange it has lighter mood filled with hope and has happy vibe here and there despite the harsh survival environment. It genuinely made the exploration pleasandt. (most of the time)

I liked Ender lilies more, but this wasn't bad at all

Challenging and reminds me of Ender Lillies. Easy to get lost however and I sometimes wish there were a few more checkpoints. That said so far seems like a good entry and sequel to the first game.