I went into Ender Lilies expecting to love it, but came out extremely frustrated. By all accounts it should be great with its good progression system that lets you steal and upgrade enemy moves to its fantastic art and music that really give the game a somber and unique vibe. However, the annoying level design and clunky game-feel really hold the game back.

I'm not a developer, so I don't know how to make a character feel good to play, but I know enough to say they didn't succeed with this one. The girl's movements feel sluggish and awkward. There's end lag to certain moves that really just kills the flow of combat. Also, for half the game you'll be stuck with this pathetic dodge. It's pathetic for narrative purposes, but it's seriously bad that it sticks around for so long. You eventually unlock a much better one, but it still doesn't feel great to use. That's not to say that sluggish movement is inherently bad. For example, I had a great time with Salt and Sanctuary which also had slow combat and movement. There's just something missing in Ender Lilies.

Now for my biggest complaint, the level design. The enemy design and placement frustrates me to no end. The zones feel tailor made to trap you into unavoidable kill boxes. I'd often have more trouble traversing those zones than fighting bosses, which isn't my idea of fun. Sometimes I'd end up rage quitting a session because of a particularly annoying zone that tested my patience one too many times.

Last thing, the story. It's... fine. Sometimes it leans a little too into cry-bait with characters having comically tragic lives and then even more tragic endings. Stuff like, "...and then everyone died. The End," happened a little too often. Except the twist is that they killed everyone on accident while trying to save them. The characters were just a little bit too shallow for me to feel like the game earned its tragedy. A metroidvania doesn't need a great story so I consider this to be inoffensive. Also, it doesn't detract from the experience and I'm sure there are people out there who would love this stuff.

If all you want is an ok metroidvania, I say go for it, but I just did not have a great time with this one.

If you are looking for a good platformer with an incredible atmosphere and visual then this is what you need.
If you are looking for a good, solid platformer that is not overloaded with mechanics and overestimated complexity, where even all the achievements can be collected in one playthrough, then this is what you need.

Gameplay - 10/10
Visual - 100/10
Music - 1000/10
LILI - 100000000000000/10

Negative review on the basis of "is this a really great game I'd tell a friend to buy", not "is this game terrible." Ender Lilies is an okay metroidvania, but in comparison to the gems out there like Ori and Hollow Knight, it's very "meh." It goes through the motions of the genre, and does them competently, but it never does anything innovative, and nothing happens that you're going to remember in a week after playing it. I'd recommend it as a budget title at $5 or $10 when you're really bored and just want to play anything, but wouldn't say it's worthwhile at $25.

The upside of this game is that it's atmospheric and has good art. It feels like it wants to tell a compelling story through subtle world-building, but ends up uncomfortably close to cloning Hollow Knight's plot in a less interesting way. The fallen medieval castle town setting has been done to death. Most of the bosses amount to either "zombie knight with mace/spear/claws/etc" or "stronger version of a generic enemy." For some reason the mid-game bosses are more of a challenge than the anti-climatic final boss, who comes out of left field and whose strategy amounts to "jump up and down while smashing the attack button."

The part where Ender Lilies suffers is its controls. Lily's movement is very stiff. Gameplay is focused on combat rather than platforming, with customizable attacks much like Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. All of the attacks lock Lily into an animation where she is unable to move until it's over, with some lasting a couple seconds, so you're a sitting duck each time you swing. The jump height isn't great, hence you have to heavily rely on a dodge with invincibility frames to survive. Lily gains the standard double jump, midair dash and wall climb abilities, but that's about it -- even at the end of the game, her mobility is less than ideal. I strongly recommend playing with a controller instead of keyboard.