It’s dangerous to go alone. So many new Metroidvania games come out every year that it can be hard to tell one from the other. Ender Lilies , a new addition to PlayStation Plus this month, might look like another run-of-the-mill Metroidvania at a glance, but with a few subtle tweaks to the formula, it manages to do something brand-new while still delivering everything you’d want from this kind of game.
Released in 2021, Ender Lilies stars, not a powerful warrior, but a small, frightened girl. The game’s story is told subtly through scraps of information found as you explore and in short cutscenes detailing its bosses. What’s easy to pick up is that your character, Lily, is also known as the White Priestess and gifted with the power to end an undead plague known as the Blight that’s infecting her world.
She is, in fact, the last in a line of White Priestesses, the only surviving member of her order and the last person left who can stop the infection. Throughout Ender Lilies , you do battle with hordes of monsters, all formerly living things infected with the Blight. Ender Lilies is a very combat-focused game.
While it does feature the platforming and exploration players expect from a Metroidvania, its challenge lies more in surviving fights than using movement skills to get around its environments. Rather than fight directly, Lily has a unique method of protecting herself that sets Ender Lilies apart from similar games. At the outset, Lily’s only means of defense c.