UPDATED REVIEW on patch 1.0.3
ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights is a 2D action RPG, with atmospheric scenery and great music by Mili (I know Mili from famous rhythm games such as Cytus dan Deemo). You go on a journey with your knights and challenge various fallen and corrupted enemies.

The reason I bought it is that it looks like Hollow Knight, and it did feel like HK, gameplay-wise, and the settings (the story so far and the dark theme, etc). Yet, it has the differences that make it stand on its own and become a solid game with authentic experience and not just become a knock-off based on other games.



You play as Lily, a young girl who can’t remember any of the previous events. Alongside the spirit of a knight, you travel into various ruined places that are filled with the Blighted, a living thing that cursed into a hostile monster by the rains. As the only one who immune to the curse, you can absorb the Blight and save them from misery. Along the journey, you will find many notes left behind by people explaining what happens to them before disaster fall upon them. Occasionally you will find the the Blighted that still have some of their memories, and when you defeat them and absorb their Blight, you got the reminiscence of their memory.
The grand purpose of your journey is to purify the place and stop the rain, and find the truth behind the Blighted. It has multiple ending, but don't worry, you can still continue after the ending from the last save.

The base component of the game is Action-RPG, in which you have a level that starts with level 1, and progress through it as you defeat enemies and absorb their exp Blight. Each level-up grants you an attack-up that can be shown on the menu.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2403038544

The combat mechanic is, when attacking, Lily is standing still while the one who does the attacking animation is the spirit knight. Once you press the attack command, the attack is committed until the end of the animation and you can’t move or do anything, so it’s important that you time your attack effectively and not spamming it.

When facing an enemy there is an indicator of flashing red light on the enemy that about to do an attack, so it’s easy to predict when to evading. When evading, it gives you an iframe from the start till the end of the animation, so you can use it to go pass through a projectile or even the enemy itself. But if you get attacked by the enemy, you don’t get an iframe, so it’s really dangerous if you face an enemy that does a flurry of attack or gets swarmed by many enemies as you keep taking damage.

You start with 3 charges of Prayers, that you can use to heal a fixed amount of health. While healing, you idle on the spot until you are done healing. To recharge the Prayers you must take a rest at the save spot to restore all the charges and heal your health to full, or hit a white flower you found on the street to refill one of the charges.

While it doesn’t have difficulty choice at the start of the game, the game itself is gradually increasing its difficulty as you keep progressing through the story. What I meant by difficulty here is health and damage of the enemy are increasing.

There’s a minimap that you can toggle to show it or not, placed at the top right corner. You can also see the full map on the menu. While it is a good thing that the map is shown simple and complete with its legend, it currently can’t show the detail on each area. For me personally, I need my complete detail of the map, because I like to explore every corner of it, and sometimes I also got lost, because some of the areas is quite large.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2403038564

You have skills and abilities. Skill is what you can do to an enemy, and ability is what you can do to navigate through the area. You got a new skill every time you beat a boss. There are 2 types of bosses, one is like a mini-boss. They look like a normal enemy, but tougher than the usual. When you defeat it, you get a new skill and can use the move that the enemy use. The others are the main boss, with their unique move and sometimes have more than one phase, so get ready for the real challenge. Once you defeat the boss, you get new skills and abilities, like double jump or swimming and such.

Your basic attack is called main skill with no cooldown use, and the new skill you got is mostly subskill, which has a cooldown of usage and has a limit of how many you can use it. Each of the skills has its mechanic description like can it be used under water, or can it be used together with others skill.

The overall theme of the world in my opinion is grim and tragic, and it is really well displayed in the background with such broken things being left out here and there. The enemy's design is meant to be shown like they are rotten and broken, but it is not to the level of disgusting. On contrary, especially the main boss and the spirits, they are so detailed its tragically beautiful.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2402914728

To be honest, the moment I knew Mili is composing all of the soundtracks, I instantly buy it even it is still in early access and full price. I may be biased, but the soundtracks instead go into the direction of dark or grim or tragedy like the scenery and the setting, the music using a soothing melody that feels like you are bringing hope into the despair land.

The game does not have Voice Actors/Actress, instead, all dialogue only uses subtitles. But the sound effects on another hand are crystal clear. With its setting mostly rain, all the ambience sounds like steps on water, or splashing of water is definitely making it more immersive.


Final Score
9/10


ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights overall i say is quite inspired by Hollow Knight on the story, but with cinematic and music of their own, there's more feeling in it. And with variety of skills to combine, the game play itself have more room to experimenting to overcome the challenge.

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