"Lily... That must be your name."
ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights is a dark fantasy Metroidvania action-adventure Souls-like RPG from Binary Haze Interactive, developed by Adglobe and Live Wire, released on June 22, 2021. In it, you play as Lily, the last surviving priestess in Land's End, a kingdom devastated by an endless and oppressive Rain of Death that transforms living things into undead. Awakening in a church with no recollection of recent events, Lily turns to exploring beyond the safety of the sanctuary to find the source of the rain. Along the way, Lily can summon the spirits of purified undead to protect her.
A sequel was announced on February 21, 2024 called ENDER MAGNOLIA: Bloom in the Mist, set decades after the events of the game and following a new protagonist.
This game provides examples of:
- 100% Completion: Doing everything requires beating the True Final Boss and seeing the Golden Ending, as it's the only way that the final room will be considered "complete" in the game's map screen. You also need to find every relic, note, Sorcery Chain, and HP upgrade.
- Abandoned Laboratory: The Verboten Domain is this. All kind of unholy experiments were conducted in the Domain in order to try and find a way to stop the Blight. The White Priestess of the Fount was used as a test subject, and Faden the Heretic lost his sanity trying to find a cure for his beloved Miriel.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: The level cap is 100, with a game that can be beaten at around level 70. Even then, finding Amulet fragments and Chains of Sorcery will do more to increase your stats than leveling up will, and upgrading spirits with Blight is more of a boost than XP is. Gaining levels is far from a bad thing, but the items and relics you find for Lily provide more of a boost.
- Action Survivor: Lily is a young girl, and it shows with her flailing evasive maneuver and lack of attack. She relies entirely on spirits she can summon to defend herself.
- After the End: The game begins after the Blight has destroyed the entire kingdom of Land's End and turned all of its inhabitants into the Blighted. Lily wakes up in the middle of this devastation, with only the Umbral Knight to let her know what's going on.
- And I Must Scream: In general, this is the fate of many of those consumed by the Blight, becoming immortal shells who perpetually suffer but are unable to die without being purified. The bosses and minibosses make this more explicit, as defeating them has the boss lament whatever abomination they've become.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Obtaining Ending B will earn you the Blighted Phantom, a zero-cost relic that makes Lily look overwhelmed by Blight and covered in sickening growths. Obtaining Ending C will earn you the Lost Heirloom, another zero-cost relic that restores Lily's appearance to one that's untouched by the Blight.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Once everything has been found in a room, it will change color on the map from blue to gold. Also, unexplored doors in any room appear as red dots in the general area of the room where they can be found, letting you know that you've still got more paths to explore.
- At any time, you can pause the game to return to the last Save Point that you visited. Doing this also keeps anything you've found or accomplished since your last save.
- You regularly get new attacks to use as you defeat and purify the bosses across the game. Skills earned from later bosses will come pre-upgraded so you can experiment with them right out of the box instead of needing to save your upgrade materials ahead of time. It also gives you an idea of the level of upgrade the game expects you to have at that point.
- Accidentally using a Prayer while at full health does not consume the charge. Additionally, destroying a white flower while at full Prayer charges simply heals you directly rather than giving you an extra Prayer.
- Apocalyptic Log: The notes and diaries the player can unearth throughout the game will give more insight on what exactly happened to the Land's End. Most of them are about people undergoing various states of Sanity Slippage, including several people who realize that they're going to die or lose their minds, and making a vow to do one more thing while their mind is their own.
- Arrange Mode: After getting the Golden Ending, you'll unlock Blightborn Modes, which allow you to fine-tune aspects of the game to make it harder. These include altering level caps, enemy damage and HP, the number of Prayers you can use, and even turning Lily into a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
- Artificial Stupidity: Non-aquatic enemies die instantly on contact with water. This does not stop flying enemies from following you into it.
- Badass and Child Duo: The game starts with the Umbral Knight escorting the helpless Lily around as her main attack. Even as you gain more Spirits, the Umbral Knight appears to initiate most of the dialogue throughout the game.
- Big Bad: The Blighted Lord is the source of the Blight and Rain of Death that is turning the people of Land's End into undead monsters, and is White Priestess Fretia having been corrupted after defeating the original Blighted Lord.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- Ending C, despite being the Golden Ending. The kingdom of Land's End is no more, and with the king and all important figures dead, there is virtually zero chance of restoring it to what it once was. Many people have died or become corrupted, including noble warriors and innocent civilians. However, the soul of the White Priestess is freed, the Rain of Death stops, ending the Blight once and for all, and Lily is able to leave the kingdom for a new life with the spirits watching over her.
- Ending A also qualifies. Lily is completely purified, leaves the kingdom behind and is free to live a new life without worrying about the horrors of the Blight nor her duty to purify it, but not only does she have to leave the Umbral Knight behind, the Blight in Land's End will presumably never end, along with Fretia's suffering.
- Body Horror: The Blight transforms people into vicious monsters, horribly mutating and rotting their flesh and sometimes even merging multiple bodies together into monstrosities. Not even the White Priestesses themselves are immune to this - as the player purifies more of the Blighted heroes, Lily also starts to grow tentacle-like things on her body, and the same goes for the White Priestess of the Fount when you find her. You can also equip the Blighted Phantom after clearing Ending B, which makes Lily's form as corrupted as possible.
- Boss Rush: Maligned Memories are unlocked with the Blightborn Modes, where you'll have to battle every major boss in the game back-to-back while only recovering one Prayer and a handful of Spirit uses between fights.
- Break Meter: All enemies have a stamina meter which, when depleted, causes them to be knocked down and helpless to attacks for a few seconds. Some skills such as Floral Sorceress and Siegrid are designed for this purpose.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Lily's Experience Points are called "Blight".
- Church Militant: The Guardians, a group of weapon-wielding nuns who are tasked with protecting the White Priestesses. Siegrid and Silva, the two plot relevant Guardians, wield a flail and a hammer, respectively. The generic Guardians, as well as the optional Chief Guardian spirit, wield chakrams.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: In the True Final Boss' second form, not only will it periodically stop to cough or sob, once it has been brought to low enough HP, its body will break apart and it will collapse in tears, unable to harm Lily at all for the rest of the fight.
- Collision Damage: Lily takes damage upon making contact with most enemies.
- Counter-Attack: Equipping the 0-cost Fretia's Ring will make Lily shield herself instead of dashing if she is not inputting a direction, which can completely negate an incoming attack if the player parries it at just the right time. The Headless Defender spirit is a more conventional version, blocking an incoming attack and then retaliating with a powerful slash. Although their short active time makes them hard to use, using them well (or even in tandem) allows the player to completely nullify some of the most dangerous attacks in the game.
- Cue the Sun: Ending C has the sun finally shine down after the Blight is finally purged once and for all, signaling that the Rain of Death has stopped for good.
- Deadly Gas:
- Most of Verboten Domain is covered by Blight in the form of a red mist that drains your life at a very fast pace. This can be mitigated by equipping a protective mask, which reduces it to Scratch Damage. The mist in the Abyss drains your life at a fast rate even with the mask and will usually cause instant death without it, forcing you to navigate through it on a time limit before your prayers and HP run out.
- Several enemies can also make clouds of damaging gas to attack you. Notably, the aforementioned gas mask does nothing to protect against them. On the flip side, some of your secondary Spirits can do the same to them.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You have unlimited lives, so there is no game over, and dying sends you back to the last respite, while respawning the enemies you defeated previously.
- Defeat Means Friendship: For a majority of the spirits, you need to defeat them as bosses or mini-bosses before they join you.
- Disc-One Nuke: Dark Witch Eleine. She's fought and purified early in the game, and her ranged attack with plentiful amount of uses allows you to take out enemies and bosses in relative safety without getting close to them. However, she starts to fall off as enemies start becoming able to threaten you even from range.
- Dismantled Macguffin: The Stone Tablet, which is split into seven Tablet Fragments spread over the map. After completing the Tablet and returning to the start of the map, Lily can create the Aegis Curio, an amulet which protects her from the strain of purifying the Blight, and must be equipped to unlock the Golden Ending.
- Double Jump: Lily gets the Guardian's Leap ability from Siegrid, which allows her to perform an extra jump in midair. The Verboten Champion, found near the end of the game, imparts an uppercut skill that can be used mid-air as a triple jump.
- Epic Flail: Siegrid's weapon is a combination of mace and chain that she twirls around for multiple hits.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: The Blighted ones will immediately try to harm Lily the moment they set their sights on her.
- Fallen Hero: Many bosses and enemies Lily faces in the game were once noble knights and warriors who fought to protect their kingdom until the Blight drove them to madness.
- Falling Damage: Uniquely inverted compared to most games. Lily can fall however far she pleases and won't even take a single point of fall damage, but enemies sent falling will take massive damage depending on how fast they were moving on impact. This is especially evident with flying enemies, as staggering them out of the air will usually make them fall to their deaths, especially if you used something with knockback to outright swat them into the ground. Even grounded bosses can be subject to this if you break their guard in the middle of a jumping attack, something speedrunners take full advantage of.
- Flavor Text: Relics and Spirits have additional lore in their descriptions aside from their gameplay mechanics.
- Flunky Boss:
- Hoenir, Keeper of the Abyss, who engages you with a respawning squad of Dark Executioners.
- The Final Boss summons Blighted abyss creatures to assist them.
- Fusion Dance: The Blight can cause people to be fused with other animals as shown by Cliffside Hamlet Elder (a bovine) and Castle Town Maiden (a dog).
- Gray Rain of Depression: Fitting as that rain doubles as the medium through which the Blight spread itself throughout the Land's End, but it always seems to be raining in Land's End throughout the game. Should you get the Golden Ending, the rain finally stops.
- Gratuitous German: The Verboten Domain is this, the word meaning "Forbidden" in German.
- Guide Dang It!: Marking several maps as "complete" can come across as this, as quite a number of discoverable objects are hidden in most unlikely places and need precise jumps and airdashes to find. One of the most notable examples is the Bottom of the Well Respite, in which one of the discoverable objects requires almost every single mobility option available to you to reach — you'll likely see that map stay blue until you're near the end of the game.
- Harmful to Minors: The Blight spared no one, not even children, as Cliffside Hamlet Youth shows. And then there is what the kingdom did with the little clones of Fretia.
- Hate Plague: An effect of the Blight is that it makes anyone it touches insanely violent. And since it spreads through a constant Rain of Death that covers the entire country, no one in Land's End managed to avoid it.
- Healing Checkpoint: Rest stops act as save points, refilling Lily's HP and restoration charges when she sleeps on a nearby bench or bed.
- Heart Container: Each Amulet Fragment and Amulet Gem increases Lily's max HP by 5 and 20 points respectively.
- Heroic Mime: Lily says nothing at all throughout the game, only expressing herself through motions at certain key points; her Steam trading card implies that she's outright unable to speak. The Umbral Knight provides brief commentaries on the places they visit and the memories Lily recovers from those whom she purifies. The Apocalyptic Log notes left behind by former inhabitants of Land's End give much of the backstory.
- Hit Stop: The game briefly slows down for a dramatic effect whenever Lily's HP is depleted.
- Immortality Seeker: The king of the Land's End tried to find a way to become immortal using the Blight, which is one of the key factors in the kingdom getting overrun by the Blight due to him purposely allowing his subjects to become infected in order to further their research.
- Inescapable Ambush: Some rooms are locked down with steel doors as soon as you step inside, forcing you to defeat all enemies before you can properly exit and progress.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Treasure Chests are mostly found in areas that can only be reached after acquiring a specific movement ability. Some are found in the corners of platforms, while others are found underwater, and so on. You clearly need to exert some effort before you can obtain the useful items inside these.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The backstory is spread throughout collectible texts (which are also called "Findings"), and Flavor Text from Relics and Spirits. Most of the crucial dialogue lines and plot points are also shown to you only after you defeat bosses or reach certain parts of the environment. The Umbral Knight regularly encourages Lily (and the player) to do this; you'll discover more of the world only when you explore and move forward.
- King Mook: The secondary spirits are all souped up versions of regular enemies found in the respective area. Cliffside Hamlet Youth is a stronger version of the leaping slugs, Fungal Sorcerer is a stronger wizard enemy, and so on.
- Lady and Knight: Lily and the Umbral Knight form this dynamic.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Lily wakes up with no memory of how she came to be in a ruined church. Given what her origins are, she likely has no past to recover in the first place, as a clone of the White Priestess of the Fount.
- Limit Break: After defeating Silva, the player will unlock Last Rites, which will allow primary spirits to unleash a single powerful attack after the SP gauge is completely filled by dealing damage. One of the unlockable Relics will give you a second SP bar, letting you use two at once.
- Locked into Strangeness: As Lily purifies more people and takes more of the Blight into herself, her Mystical White Hair begins to turn brown. By the final boss fight, her white hair has been completely turned brown, though the Golden Ending has her recover some of her white hair.
- Multiple Endings: Three in total:
- Ending A / Benevolence - Truth Remains in the Abyssnote : Lily collapsed after taking in so much Blight before the spirit of the White Priestess of the Fount appears before her and takes in all of the Blight within Lily in her stead, pleading with Lily to leave and live a normal life. With the Blight gone from her body, Lily is relieved from her duties and the Umbral Knight encourages her to go beyond the Kingdom's borders and follow Fretia's advice, but they themself cannot leave the land due to their Deathless Pact, which Lily reluctantly accepts after giving the Umbral Knight a farewell hug. Despite this, the truth of what actually happened to the Kingdom remained unknown, and the Blight remains in full force along with Fretia's suffering.
- Ending B / Journey's End - Bound as One, We Shall Never Be Apartnote : Lily attempts to purify the White Priestess/Blight Lord despite her protests that it is not her burden, with the two merging and never to be parted once more. The implication being that they are both bound as the new Blight Lord but it is ambiguous as to whether or not they both could contain it all within their new form.
- Ending C / Dawn Prayer - Amidst a Collapsed World, her words echo out, "Thank you for finding your way to me." note : Lily, with the Aegis Curio, manages to successfully purify the Blight Lord without it overwhelming her, allowing her to end the Blight and Rain of Death once and for all. The White Priestess thanks her for it and fades away in peace, stating that Lily is her own person, and the Spirits will protect her as she can now leave the ruined kingdom in search of a new life.
- Mystical Plague: The Blight, which is a primordial force that swept over the land. The Ancients used Priestesses to keep it contained but the First King's war ended up killing the majority, and so with no means of keeping it in check eventually it began to spread. The Rain of Death happens to be a more potent and uncontrollable form caused by the Blight leaking from Fretia's body.
- Mystical White Hair: The Priestess of the Fount and the other White Priestesses all have white hair that gives off a gentle light at all times. As Lily absorbs more of the Blight into herself, her hair starts turning brown. During Endings B and C, it turns completely brown from overwhelming corruption, though she recovers in Ending C.
- Nothing but Skulls: The deepest area in the Catacombs is nothing but skulls in the background. One respite is even located in a mountain of skulls.
- One-Winged Angel:
- Siegrid and Silva do this during their boss fights, as well as if their Last Rites are unleashed.
- The Final Boss of the game is the White Priestess of the Fount, who had taken so much Blight from purifying the Blighted Lord that she transforms into a Blighted Lord herself by the time Lily reaches her. In the True Final Boss, she also Turns Red for one last challenge.
- Powers Do the Fighting: As a timid child, Lily cannot fight; any skills she derives from her guardian spirits are for evasion and exploration. Actual combat is conducted by the spirits themselves, requiring Lily to be in the thick of the action to channel them there.
- Rule of Three: Enforced in the "Executioner's Missive" Finding. Whenever test subjects are escorted to the Verboten Laboratory, they're to be escorted in groups of three.
- Save Point: Respites serve as this; the player can fast travel from them, equip and upgrade spirits, and swap out relics. Resting in these places, however, will also cause all previously defeated enemies to return.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The White Priestesses serve as "cans" since they purify the Blight by taking in its corruption from the infected. While this does not have negative effects on their sanity, it still puts great strain on their physical bodies. Taking too much of this corruption is what lead to Fretia's breaking down and the kingdom's attempts to create artificial white priestesses who could take in the Blight in her stead.
- Sequence Breaking: A large number of collectibles are placed in high-up or far-out areas, intended to be gotten by using major or minor mobility upgrades obtained across the second half of the game. However, Guardian Silva can use her Charged Attack twice in the air to give Lily a slight Recoil Boost, resetting after a double jump or air dodge. Exploiting this for higher/longer jumps makes it possible to obtain a lot of early upgrades and relics around the halfway point.
- Shout-Out:
- Like in Drakengard and NieR: Automata, each of the endings is lettered with a title containing the emphasized letter.
- Blight motherloads (800x) look eerily similar to "The Marker" from Dead Space. Given how the Blight and Necromorph pathology works, it's fitting.
- The "Verboten Domain" gives strong Dark Aether/Phaaze vibes. Complete with toxic atmosphere, moving safe-spot to safe-spot, and being the epicenter of a corrupting force.
- The true ending requires finding a secret area deep within a place called "The Abyss" which is alluded to being a "birthplace" and provides material necessary to carry out a ritual to craft a protective charm. Sound familiar?
- The Umbral Knight has drawn comparisons to Goblin Slayer. The connection strengthened by the game's soundtrack being done by Mili.
- Lily's moveset, in particular the way she slides on her belly to dodge, is very reminiscent of Maria Renard.
- Snow Means Death: Literally in Twin Spires as the Blight is spreading through snow instead of rain.
- Souls-like RPG: It's more of a metroidvania/search-action game than an RPG, but Ender Lilies still ticks most of the boxes. Story-wise, there's a Crapsack World, a Hopeless War, a hero that's Late to the Tragedy, enemies that are corrupted by a dark force, and a gloomy atmosphere that permeates the entire game. Gameplay-wise, there's an emphasis on dodging to avoid damage, restricted healing in the form of prayers, respawning enemies upon saving, visual cues that an enemy is about to strike, and
a very high difficulty.note - Summon Magic: Lily completely relies on the spirits she summon to fight for her. She has no other combat skills other than dodging.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: After purifying the Dark Witch Eleine, Lily gets the Witch's Bubble ability, that allows her to freely move underwater with no risk of drowning. Enemies not native to the water, however, are subject to Super Drowning Skills instead, causing them to explode the moment they touch a body of water.
- Tomato in the Mirror: In regards to Lily, she and all those dead white priestesses she finds along the way are clones of Fretia, the White Priestess of the Fount.
- Turns Red: Not only does every boss get a tougher, more aggressive final phase, they also get a new music track to go with it. The one exception is The True Final Boss, who stops attacking and constantly weeps at low health.
- Variable Mix: Most background music in the game will fade in and out as you move between outdoor and indoor areas, and will also become significantly calmer when you're at a save point.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Abyss, the place far below the Verboten Domain where the Blight corruption is at its peak.
- Video Game Dashing: Comes in different varieties:
- When you first start, attempting to dash will make Lily fall over instead. This moves her a bit forward and she's invincible during the period, but it takes time for her to get up.
- After you beat Silva, you get the Guardian Wings ability, a more conventional dash where Lily briefly floats forward without falling over. It can be used midair to propel Lily forward to reach ledges she couldn't reach before.
- After you beat Julius, holding the dash button will make Julius' spirit appear and charge forward while carrying Lily in his arms. Pressing attack in this state will make him stab his spear forward to damage enemies and break pustulant walls.
- The Incompetent Sinner, fought near the end of the game, imparts a Dash Attack that can also be used to extend your air-dashes.
- When She Smiles: Ending C has an epilogue wherein Lily smiles at the camera. While most of her body is still partly corrupted by Blight, she's purified the Blight and is now free to do as she chooses.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Through his research on the Blight, Faden the Heretic managed to create a Deathless Elixir from the blighted flesh of the White Priestess, which would turn anyone who drank it into an immortal. This allowed the newly christened Immortal Knights to fight on even ground with the ever-regenerating Blighted, although most of them would later lament their immortality, seeing themselves as no different from the Blighted they fought (with Ulv in particular being denied his wish for a warrior's death). The Elixir would also result in them turning into monsters when the Rain of Death began.
- Zombie Apocalypse: What the Blight does to people in a nutshell is a hefty dose of Body Horror along with driving them Ax-Crazy, making them attack anyone who comes close.
