Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist Is A Beautiful And Brutal Adventure

By Elijah Gonzalez | January 21, 2025 | 10:00am

Video Games Reviews Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist

Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist Is A Beautiful And Brutal Adventure

While Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is only one of many Metroid-inspired games released in recent years, those who played it probably still remember the pull of its dark fantasy backdrop and the thrill of puppeteering spirits to battle the nastiest monsters this side of Yharnam. Now, more than three years later, Live Wire and Adglobe’s follow-up, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, is finally out of Early Access, and the wait was well worth it; the sequel tightens up every aspect of exploring this ruined world while somehow surpassing its predecessor’s already evocative imagery. It may not break the mold set by other exploration-focused 2D platformers, but it’s so well-executed from top to bottom that you probably won’t care.

The story begins as Lilac wakes up alone in the Lower Stratum, surrounded by a mountain of corpses with nothing but vague memories of being separated from someone important to them. They’ve awakened in the Land of Fumes, a nation undone by a corruption that destroys everything it touches, the Blight. Before things fell apart, humans and artificially created beings called Homunculi lived side-by-side in harmony. Well, at least that’s how the humans in charge frame it because it quickly becomes clear these engineered people were often little more than servants or worse. Wanting to help the Homonculi and find their mentor, Lilac navigates this neo-feudal land of rusting technology and feral creatures in search of what they’ve lost.

And as our protagonist sets out, it’s difficult not to be taken by the haunting ambiance of the places they come across. The game’s background art is simultaneously grim and beautiful, capturing a once-teeming world of scientific achievement reduced to dead bodies and twisted steel. However, while persistently gloomy, Live Wire and Adglobe aren’t afraid of bursts of color or unexpected views, like a field of flowers, crystalline caves, or palaces scraping the sky. While it partially draws on the usual dark fantasy suspects like Berserk and FromSoftware’s work, retrofuturistic Victorian flourishes give the Land of Fumes its own visual identity. And while the writing isn’t nearly as memorable as the striking aesthetics, there are sprinkles of interesting ideas here, like the stratified world you move through and how this place has been crushed under oppressive nobles that used to pull the strings.

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It also helps that these melancholy sights are accompanied by a similarly affecting score from Mili that jumps between ethereal and just plain strange (in a very good way) as the soundtrack deviates from being a prototypically sweeping fantasy score at every turn. Many of the pieces convey an air of tragedy that perfectly accompanies sifting through a broken metropolis, while other tracks are memorably off-kilter, with sudden jarring woodwinds or barely intelligible vocals that sing in otherworldy tones. Even ignoring its other boons, I was eager to explore simply to see new sights and hear new tunes.

However, this audiovisual landscape wasn’t the only reason I was delighted to travel through this foreboding setting; each new region brings unique platforming challenges and fresh freaky monsters, all laid out in a way that avoids common pitfalls for the genre. Namely, while there is plenty of room for poking and prodding, I never hit that unpleasant moment where I got hopelessly lost, only to bang my head against familiar corridors until I found some niche passageway I had previously missed. Much of this clarity comes from what’s the biggest improvement from the previous game: the overworld map is excellent. It tracks every contour of each room, notes barriers you don’t have the means to break yet, and even lets you know if you’ve collected everything available in a specific place. And while the open-world design here may not be quite as tantalizingly labyrinthine as something like Hollow Knight, there is still plenty of room for discoveries and the excitement of finding a hidden item or path. For instance, on top of acquiring mandatory upgrades that offer new traversal abilities, like a grappling hook or double jump, you’ll also come across tons of substantive optional equipment with unique buffs that can be mixed and matched to create different builds, making it always feel worth it to fully engage with this space.

As you sift through these shattered cityscapes, finding stat-boosting baubles, you’ll inevitably run into droves of Mutants, glowing-eyed horrors who would make short work of Lilac (who is a literal child) if our protagonist couldn’t fight alongside Homunculi. The frequency of these encounters isn’t a problem because, on top of its other strengths, Ender Magnolia is also an excellent 2D action game thanks to its rewarding abilities and finely tuned difficulty. Just like in the first game, you recruit allies that can be spectrally summoned in battle, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure-style. Some can be activated at any time, like Nola, a stoic swordswoman who performs slashing combos, while others have abilities that run on cooldowns. Many skills can even be activated simultaneously with others, letting you coordinate your allies to orchestrate flashy combos. Beyond their starting abilities, each of your Homunculi also boasts additional unlockable configurations, giving you lots of customizable options to meet these tricky encounters, like how Nola can switch out her rapier for a massive hammer that quickly builds up stagger pressure to break an opponent’s guard. I switched out these tools frequently because they could make a massive tactical difference and simply because combining these powers in new ways was a blast.

Much of the fun comes from things being so unrestricted: while you’re encouraged to keep Nola on hand so you can perform standard slashes, you don’t have to, and the only restriction is that only four Homonculii can be equipped at a time. There are entirely autonomous units that will fight for you, projectiles that can be activated while moving freely so you never have to worry about getting caught in a wind-up animation, and more. At one point, I combined a devastating short-range electric tornado, a long-range rapid-fire Homonculi, and an item that healed every time an attack triggered, letting me absolutely demolish lighter foes while quickly healing myself in the process. But while specific pairings are strong against certain foes, they will inevitably be weak against others, keeping things fresh as I was forced to mix things up.

What it comes down to is that while these enemies will delete your health bar if you let your guard down, you’re given equally strong tools to circumvent them, like a long-lasting invincible dash and not one, but multiple types of parries. And although this experience is tricky and clearly inspired by elements of the Souls games, it doesn’t blindly copy them, as reflected in its configurable difficulty settings and lack of punishing mechanics around death. Even as someone who loves hard games, it’s great that people can fine-tune their experience to their liking, especially if they’re mostly just here to explore this immaculately crafted nightmare world. For those okay with an occasional beatdown, playing on Normal delivered a well-tuned challenge that always felt reasonable thanks to well-telegraphed attacks and responsive movement options. Ultimately, these trials are brutal enough to match this forlorn backdrop without devolving into full-on sadism.

While Ender Magnolia shares many similarities with its predecessor and doesn’t entirely reinvent this kind of exploration-focused platformer, it executes this style of game so well that it’s more than just another Metroid imitator. Here, an eclectic score accompanies gorgeous post-apocalyptic tableaus, these mournful sights and sounds leaving an impact that makes up for some slightly clunky dialogue. And as you’re rewarded for traversing this dilapidated society with barrages of melancholy, you’ll come across plenty of more classically videogame-y boons, like rad fights where you orchestrate spectral allies in supernatural beatdowns. But perhaps the biggest innovation for this “masocore” type experience is that it allows players to tailor based on their pain tolerance, letting Souls-loving sickos like myself feel the heat while allowing less masochistic individuals to turn things down if they so desire. All in all, Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist doesn’t just take inspiration from the best games in this style; it has its own essential lessons to impart.

Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist was developed by Adglobe and Live Wire and published by Binary Haze Interactive. Our review is based on the PC version. It’s also available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PlayStation 4.

Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11 and on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.