Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight Early Access First Impressions
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight is a 2D Action RPG title out of developers Live Wire and adglobe and publisher Binary Haze Interactive. The title is currently slated to release into early access on Steam on January 21, 2021. There are plans for release on other systems later in development. Hold To Reset got sent an early key that I’ve had a chance to put roughly 2 hours into. My impressions can be found below.
What is Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight?
Before diving into my thoughts we should begin by looking at what exactly the game is. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight is a 2D Action RPG title in which the players take on the role of Lily, a young girl, in End’s Kingdom. This mysterious kingdom is experiencing an endless Dying Rain that has turned its inhabitants into blood thirsty corpses. You (as Lily) must uncover the secrets behind the Dying Rain by exploring various enemy filled locations across the kingdom.
Early Thoughts on Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight
When you start playing Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight you awake as the main character Lily inside a room deep in the heart of a cathedral. Lily awakens to a mysterious Umbral Knight standing at her bedside. The knight reveals to Lily that it is a spirit sworn to protect her. This early interaction introduces players to the game’s interesting combat system.
As a young girl Lily is fairly helpless on her own since she possess no attacks herself she can instead command spirits to attack for her. The Umbral Knight for example becomes Lily’s sword attack letting her instantly summon the knight to attack with the press of a button. As you explore the different areas of the kingdom you will encounter various spirits like the Umbral Knight that Lily can defeat and cleanse to have them added to the party. Lily can then equip cleansed spirit’s abilities to use during combat. To avoid becoming overpowered Lily can only have two abilities equipped at a time. She can swap to an additional two at the press of a button when needed.
While using the spirit system in combat you will face a wide range of enemies from simple slug like creatures to more complex bosses. These different enemies are area specific and offer varying degrees of challenge. I’ve fought 4 bosses and found them to be challenging fights. Like other games in the genre you will need to learn enemy patterns and phases to bring them down.
Overall combat feels familiar with a nice gradual systems learning curve. Much of the learning curve is from the spirit system and creating combos that work well together. This system is very intriguing to me and is one I could see putting a decent amount of time into creating interesting combos.
Exploration
While fighting the bloodthirsty beasts across End’s Kingdom players will be exploring desolate locations. As of writing there are three of eight areas available in the early access version of the game. These areas are a mix of medieval and fantasy stylings that feature a number of individual rooms to explore. Design wise I found the areas to be interesting and distinct from each other while retaining an overall cohesiveness within the kingdom.
Like other games of the genre exploring plays a major gameplay role. There are a number of reasons to explore each area of the game from finding useful items to gathering lore entries. True to the genre you will encounter sections that can be accessed after acquiring abilities like double-jump, swimming, and so on.
I found much of the exploration to be standard fare from the genre, which is a good thing since it works. What I did want to highlight about exploring is the mapping and progress tracking systems. Many times games of this style make 100% completion fairly hard to do without guides and walkthrough. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight up ends some of the frustration by tracking you completion on the map. Rooms with items in them are marked blue and rooms that are 100% completed turn to gold. This allows you to focus your attention on specific rooms instead of wandering around the map looking for missed items.
Performance
Before closing things out I just want to touch on one last important piece of an early access title, performance. My experience with Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight has been stable on my PC. There have been zero issues across my playthrough with it appearing to be a stable product.
Closing Thoughts
The first 2 hours of Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knight I played I really enjoyed. The game stays safely within the confines of the genre, but spices things up with the interesting spirit based combat system and tools to help with exploration. These additions plus an intriguing story make the game feel unique and has me wanting to player more. Once the game hits full release we will provide a more comprehensive review of the title.
Copy provided by Binary Haze Interactive
