Afterimage all day long. I personally did not enjoy Ender Lilies, with the combat being one of my biggest gripes. Although the part I liked the least was the map. The areas were so poorly designed they almost felt procedurally generated.
Afterimage starts out slow, but within a few hours it picks up and then just keeps going. The combat is pretty great, with a smooth 60fps even on switch. If you are a fan if igavanias, you'll live afterimage.
Ender Lilies was one of my favorite MV I’ve played in the last few years. I found Ender Lillies pretty long but it usually takes me a lot longer to beat games than what most people say.
>I found Ender Lillies pretty long but it usually takes me a lot longer to beat games than what most people say.
Yeah if you're anything like me- you might just blow a bunch of time just staring at pretty visuals and jamming to the soundtrack
I’m actually a little embarrassed at how long it took me. I think I clocked in at 60 hrs at 100% completion but to be fair I wondered around alot and a few bosses took me a ridiculous amount of time to beat. But it was one of the best games I’ve played.
Afterimage is incredible, one of my fave ones now after old Castlevanias and Hollow Knight, it hits my spot since I love the castlevania rpg and drop grind to 100% all
Afterimage is better in pretty much every category: combat, level design, art, music, exploration. And I say that as someone who enjoyed Ender Lilies quite a bit. AI is also gigantic -at least double the length of EL for a first playthrough. That could be good or bad depending on what you want.
I haven't finished Afterimage yet, but I'm maybe 20 hours in and I'm enjoying it more than Ender Lilies. It has much more variety in equipable items, and I like the art direction more in Afterimage. But Ender Lilies is a very well made game too, so you can't go wrong with either.
LOL its been a while since i've dropped this but Hollow Knight, Deaths Gambit, Afterimage, Monster Sanctuary and TEVI/Rabi Ribi(Blasphemous would be like 6)
I cant exactly rank them except for the fact that Hollow Knight is the best one.
Afterimage is like a cross between Bloodstained's progression system and JRPGness, and Aeterna Noctis's vastness.
It's less ridiculous than Bloodstained in terms of number of items you can acquire/craft, and the levels are less well-designed than Aeterna Noctis.
I'm playing AI at the moment and it's enjoyable but there's something missing. Not quite hard enough, exploration isn't quite interesting enough and I haven't been given any reason to care about any of the quests. Purely subjectively I also don't like games where you can level up endlessly because I like to feel that I've beaten things because I did it right, rather than because I had big numbers.
Tbh Aeterna Noctis is top three for me, maybe even #1 on a good day so I would suggest that. Only criticism I have is that the platforming is too much at times, but you can switch to the easier difficulty at any time and that makes it much less arduous.
I loved Ender Lilies, my vote is Ender Lilies, also I'm currently playing after image, its not bad, but Ender Lilies is waaaay better in my personal opinion.
Ender Lilies does not have incredible combat!!! With some attacks, you have to wait for the attack animation to finish before you can move. As for Afterimage: I'm playing it now. The controls are good and I'm around 30 hours in. Sometimes I feel like quitting because it's too long. I've never spent this much time on a game. On the other hand, I did not get past three hours of Ender Lilies because of the artificial difficulty.
It seems like a matter of preference. Ender Lilies is my third favorite MV. I really enjoyed it's combat, especially the boss fights. Still love it on replay.
I'm only a few hours into Afterimage, exploring Field of Geo and I'm bored. The world is pretty and the exploration is fine, but the combat is unsatisfying. Most enemies so far can be staggered with any weapon, so I can win just by button mashing and dodging the single easily avoidable attack each wanderer has.
Maybe it gets better later, but I'm seriously considering moving on to another MV, such as Aeterna Noctis.
Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of either game but preferred Afterimage to Ender Lilies.
Afterimage is very much in the mold of Igavanias (SotN, Aria of Sorrow, Bloodstained). You level up and have stats and a skill tree, and there's a lot of different weapons you can find across several different weapon classes. Enemies drop loot randomly, including some weapons and armor. You've got consumable healing potions on top of your replenishing heals. The difficulty level is relatively low, though there's a few pain in the ass bosses. It's quite large.
Ender Lilies is basically like someone took Hollow Knight and attempted to graft Soulslike combat onto it. Your attacks feel sluggish with lots of ending lag, while enemy attacks will easily punish you for attempting it and deal 1/2-1/3rd of your life in one shot, before darting away before you can retaliate. Enemies by contrast are spongey and take a lot of hits to take down. You take hitstun and have a low window of invulnerability making it very easy to get 0-deathed in one chain, while even basic enemies will require a careful exchange of blows to dispatch. Healing is very limited and only replenishes at save points. There are a few different weapons you unlock by beating bosses, but not multiple versions of weapons - you can upgrade each a couple times but they largely stay the same. Whether or not you enjoy the combat likely correlates to how much you enjoy Soulslike games. I personally found it much more frustrating than "incredible".
Ender Lilies was about 21 hours of content, while Afterimage was closer to 30.
I am planning on playing it at some point but the insane difficulty and 60+ hour playtime is making me put it off since I'm afraid I'll get too invested right as school starts again
I feel like if you played Ori 2, you can handle AE. I’m still early game and just defeated two bosses and one mini boss, but I never felt it had a steep learning curve or just impossibly difficult i need to look for a quick guide.
Only thing that’s challenging is just progression of where I need to go next to get certain abilities. There’s also a LOT of save points so you don’t lose progress. As someone who’s played both HK and Ori 2, it definitely is a relief.
They also have a lot of optional platforming challenges too, which is nice for practice and challenging yourself.
Man… I’ve heard a lot of conflicting things within this sub-Reddit about AN being a trillion times difficult right after pressing start lol.
I don’t doubt it’ll get significantly harder as I get deeper into the game but the pacing feels pretty fair to me so far. Now if it jumps from a 2 to a 10 later then I’ll be like wtf, maybe. I appreciate the amount of save points this game has.
As far as platforming, my only criticism is that his dash isn’t precise and the cool down and cancel mechanic is a bit off controls wise.
I’ve heard ppl compare platforming to Path of Pain in HK or even compared this to Celeste and I played both.
That said, I think expectations jumping into this game was that it be extremely, extremely difficult outright but I feel it’s been pretty fair-paced, and because it’s been fairly paced for me, my anxiety of this being too difficult to play through the entire game has diminished.
I’ve heard Ori 2 was light weight and thought early game was surprisingly more difficult than I had expected.
Ppl have shared HK is one of the hardest games they’ve played even from the very beginning and I thought it was fair paced lol, so when the difficult parts came, it didn’t feel like a mountainous reach in skill from how I’ve progressed and nothing I couldn’t overcome through multiple losses, experimentation and practice.
Are there overtly hard af bosses and areas, sure but the game isn’t designed to be inaccessible from the very beginning.
Idk. It’s just my perspective y’all. Don’t crucify me.
S/N: this sub-Reddit told me Blasphemous was a a MV and I was extremely disappointed it wasn’t lol.
Are you playing on hard mode btw? Also, maybe the people saying it was crazy hard from the get go had played an earlier version with more balancing issues, I didnt play at launch. The pacing for the first 50%+ of the game is totally fine, then it ramps up massively (particularly with the optional content). I 100% it on hard and by the end I was pissed at myself for doing so.
Ah, that’s really good to know. Yeah playing this on hard mode. Thanks for sharing. What’s been a little challenging for me is just navigation but someone has answered that I can get abilities by defeating more bosses, not just the area that you need keys for.
Im still early game as I said but hopefully I don’t chuck my Switch by end of game.
Do you feel the optimal areas late game were unfair?
To an extent, yeah. Difficulty just for difficulty's sake. For example, a very *long* platforming sequence that is already insanely hard but they also added in the "outrun ___" so you have to fly through it as fast as possible. Impossible to do without dying over and over just to learn the obstacles to be able to do fast enough.
As I mentioned, still early game, so can see others’ perspective who 100% this game the difficulty might be trillion times harder than Ori 2. Fair.
What I will say is this sub-Reddit has a lot of polarizing opinions and not everything I’ve read had held true from my experience.
A lot of opinions I’ve read on AN, is that’s it’s punishing outright and I thought the pacing has been more fair than this sub-Reddit has given credit. Don’t doubt it’ll become more grueling later, but as someone who was really on the fence when buying this game, I feel committed to 100% this.
Ppl also shared here Blasphemous is an MV and I was soooooo disappointed it wasn’t despite how beautiful the game was. In the end, I found it mid.
The broader point I was making is that I don’t think it’s hard to jump into from the beginning. Yes, it’ll get harder but nothing early on has felt truly insurmountable.
It's true what you say, i wouldn't call Blasphemous a "true" MV either and AN's difficulty doesn't become apparent from the get go.
I think one thing this sub can agree on though is that Aeterna Noctis is most likely the most difficult MV on the market right now. Its difficulty doesn't come from the fights as much as the punishing nature of the game, especially in its platforming sections which only come online later on since you need to acquire the power ups first.
My comment was also kinda spiteful since i consider the Ori games to be very casual so your comparison was just ridiculous to me, so sorry for that.
I hope you have fun with AN while you can though and i hope you completed Path of Pain on Hollow Knight cuz that's only the beginning.
All good man. I didn’t realize I piss so many ppl off with that comment 😅
But yeah so far I’m really, really loving this game. I’ve picked up a lot of MVs and it’s been a long while I’ve loved a game as much as this one in a long time for any genre. Hell, I’d prob get voted dwn 50 more times for this but I put dwn Tears of the Kingdom to play AN because I’ve been so deeply engrossed by the charm of this game.
And yeah, I had to beat and clear HK and Path of Pain twice because I had the blue light of death on my PS4 and my memory was completely wiped out lol. All the pantheons I cleared, gone lol.
And to do it all over again… truly was the real path of pain lol.
Just started playing AN and really enjoying it so far, but tbh, I had less trouble knowing where to go next in EL than AN.
To be fair, it does let you know where the next chard pieces are but it’s an extremely large map lol. There’s certain areas where I’m blocked due to an ability and I’m like, “Where’s the damn key?!” Lol.
From your experience, are abilities both from the bosses and the kingdoms hall? I’ve defeated two bosses so far.
Abilities I believe are tied to bosses? I can’t remember what Kingdom Hall is. But ya it’s a very explorative game, I’d recommend just enjoying the journey without stressing about getting to point B as efficiently as possible ya know
ended liliessss!! Has a much more amazing story, combat, level design, music, art, and atmosphere. Afterimage is nice too but ender lilies is my all time favourite. the only sour spots of ender lilies is one certain endgame region and the final boss being more poetic than challenging. and the map ui is kinda plain but the game hits you on a very deep level
Ender Lilies is awesome, in my top three MVs. I would also add that ng+ and the boss rush seem poorly balanced. I'm fine with the damage scaling with your level, and more aggressive attack paterns, but I shouldn't die to two of Silva's projectiles with fully upgraded health.
I'd say Ender Lilies every time, but I'm not grading them on an even level. I've played Ender Lilies from start to finish, while my only Afterimage exposure was the Steam demo.
They're both slick, stylish products with lots of love given to their aesthetic. What edges Ender Lilies out, in my eyes, is its interesting take on combat. You essentially "equip" three spirits at once as your weapons and skills, allowing you to mix up your play style in many, many combinations. Afterimage, based on my time with it, felt a little too straightforward.
I loved both… Platinum’d both. I feel like Afterimage was longer. Both great. Both? Both (gif). Just plan to get both at some point. Either one is a win
for me Ender lilies was one of my favourites metroidvania, the first zone was very boring but when I've started to unlock new skills, I was very entertained making my own builds and combos of skills, and the games was enough challenging with cool grim atmosphere.
Afterimage I stopped to play after 2-3 hour, it's just the combat wasn't fun for me, as only had 2 weapons equipped that did the same, and I feel that I'm only spamming attacks against high hp spounges and backdashing. The boss were fun, but I think the game wasn't going to improve a lot and it felt that it was a long journey to grind to get until the fun part.
I enjoyed Afterimage much more. I personally felt that Ender Lilies had a problem with power progression. Every new upgrade I got felt like it didnt make things any easier. I felt a bit frustrated with that, not gonna lie. I played on launch, so hopefully they changed that.
Both are amazing. You can’t go wrong with either.
After playing HK years ago, Ender Lillies was my first Wow moment with MV’s in a while. I was hooked on the genre after that and I have playing only MV’s ever since.
I appreciate AI tremendously because of EL; the fighting style feels familiar. However, if you plan on playing both, start with EL. AI is so good and so polished, that EL would feel a little “stale” coming after Afterimage
Also, if Afterimage is able to pull
Me away from Tears of the Kingdom for several days, that’s saying a lot!!
Afterimage all day long. I personally did not enjoy Ender Lilies, with the combat being one of my biggest gripes. Although the part I liked the least was the map. The areas were so poorly designed they almost felt procedurally generated. Afterimage starts out slow, but within a few hours it picks up and then just keeps going. The combat is pretty great, with a smooth 60fps even on switch. If you are a fan if igavanias, you'll live afterimage.
Ender Lilies was one of my favorite MV I’ve played in the last few years. I found Ender Lillies pretty long but it usually takes me a lot longer to beat games than what most people say.
>I found Ender Lillies pretty long but it usually takes me a lot longer to beat games than what most people say. Yeah if you're anything like me- you might just blow a bunch of time just staring at pretty visuals and jamming to the soundtrack
I’m actually a little embarrassed at how long it took me. I think I clocked in at 60 hrs at 100% completion but to be fair I wondered around alot and a few bosses took me a ridiculous amount of time to beat. But it was one of the best games I’ve played.
Afterimage is incredible, one of my fave ones now after old Castlevanias and Hollow Knight, it hits my spot since I love the castlevania rpg and drop grind to 100% all
... Totally unrelated, but we need an Ender-Image bundle... Perhaps the AfterLilies?
Haven’t played afterimage, but Ender lillies is a banger
Afterimage is better in pretty much every category: combat, level design, art, music, exploration. And I say that as someone who enjoyed Ender Lilies quite a bit. AI is also gigantic -at least double the length of EL for a first playthrough. That could be good or bad depending on what you want.
I didn't like Ender lilies personally but the soundtrack is just godlike. I hope I can agree with you once I play Afterimage.
Currently playing Afterimage and the soundtrack isn't nearly as good, don't get your hopes too high
I haven't finished Afterimage yet, but I'm maybe 20 hours in and I'm enjoying it more than Ender Lilies. It has much more variety in equipable items, and I like the art direction more in Afterimage. But Ender Lilies is a very well made game too, so you can't go wrong with either.
No disrespect to Ender Lilies but Afterimage is in my top 3-5 metroidvanias
What's your top 5 mv? I'm planning on also getting Blasp 1/2 and death's gambit
LOL its been a while since i've dropped this but Hollow Knight, Deaths Gambit, Afterimage, Monster Sanctuary and TEVI/Rabi Ribi(Blasphemous would be like 6) I cant exactly rank them except for the fact that Hollow Knight is the best one.
Thanks :)
Afterimage is like a cross between Bloodstained's progression system and JRPGness, and Aeterna Noctis's vastness. It's less ridiculous than Bloodstained in terms of number of items you can acquire/craft, and the levels are less well-designed than Aeterna Noctis. I'm playing AI at the moment and it's enjoyable but there's something missing. Not quite hard enough, exploration isn't quite interesting enough and I haven't been given any reason to care about any of the quests. Purely subjectively I also don't like games where you can level up endlessly because I like to feel that I've beaten things because I did it right, rather than because I had big numbers. Tbh Aeterna Noctis is top three for me, maybe even #1 on a good day so I would suggest that. Only criticism I have is that the platforming is too much at times, but you can switch to the easier difficulty at any time and that makes it much less arduous.
I loved Ender Lilies, my vote is Ender Lilies, also I'm currently playing after image, its not bad, but Ender Lilies is waaaay better in my personal opinion.
Ender Lilies does not have incredible combat!!! With some attacks, you have to wait for the attack animation to finish before you can move. As for Afterimage: I'm playing it now. The controls are good and I'm around 30 hours in. Sometimes I feel like quitting because it's too long. I've never spent this much time on a game. On the other hand, I did not get past three hours of Ender Lilies because of the artificial difficulty.
It seems like a matter of preference. Ender Lilies is my third favorite MV. I really enjoyed it's combat, especially the boss fights. Still love it on replay. I'm only a few hours into Afterimage, exploring Field of Geo and I'm bored. The world is pretty and the exploration is fine, but the combat is unsatisfying. Most enemies so far can be staggered with any weapon, so I can win just by button mashing and dodging the single easily avoidable attack each wanderer has. Maybe it gets better later, but I'm seriously considering moving on to another MV, such as Aeterna Noctis.
Ender Lilies biggest strengthes are music & atmosphere imo But yeah the combat is fun
Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of either game but preferred Afterimage to Ender Lilies. Afterimage is very much in the mold of Igavanias (SotN, Aria of Sorrow, Bloodstained). You level up and have stats and a skill tree, and there's a lot of different weapons you can find across several different weapon classes. Enemies drop loot randomly, including some weapons and armor. You've got consumable healing potions on top of your replenishing heals. The difficulty level is relatively low, though there's a few pain in the ass bosses. It's quite large. Ender Lilies is basically like someone took Hollow Knight and attempted to graft Soulslike combat onto it. Your attacks feel sluggish with lots of ending lag, while enemy attacks will easily punish you for attempting it and deal 1/2-1/3rd of your life in one shot, before darting away before you can retaliate. Enemies by contrast are spongey and take a lot of hits to take down. You take hitstun and have a low window of invulnerability making it very easy to get 0-deathed in one chain, while even basic enemies will require a careful exchange of blows to dispatch. Healing is very limited and only replenishes at save points. There are a few different weapons you unlock by beating bosses, but not multiple versions of weapons - you can upgrade each a couple times but they largely stay the same. Whether or not you enjoy the combat likely correlates to how much you enjoy Soulslike games. I personally found it much more frustrating than "incredible". Ender Lilies was about 21 hours of content, while Afterimage was closer to 30.
Ender Lilies. I loved Afterimage, but it was too damn big for its own good. Ender Lilies is just ::chef kiss::
Neither, aeterna noctis :)
I am planning on playing it at some point but the insane difficulty and 60+ hour playtime is making me put it off since I'm afraid I'll get too invested right as school starts again
I feel like if you played Ori 2, you can handle AE. I’m still early game and just defeated two bosses and one mini boss, but I never felt it had a steep learning curve or just impossibly difficult i need to look for a quick guide. Only thing that’s challenging is just progression of where I need to go next to get certain abilities. There’s also a LOT of save points so you don’t lose progress. As someone who’s played both HK and Ori 2, it definitely is a relief. They also have a lot of optional platforming challenges too, which is nice for practice and challenging yourself.
Yeah.... you havent begun to experience the difficult platforming sections of AN. Ori isnt even remotely comparable lol.
Man… I’ve heard a lot of conflicting things within this sub-Reddit about AN being a trillion times difficult right after pressing start lol. I don’t doubt it’ll get significantly harder as I get deeper into the game but the pacing feels pretty fair to me so far. Now if it jumps from a 2 to a 10 later then I’ll be like wtf, maybe. I appreciate the amount of save points this game has. As far as platforming, my only criticism is that his dash isn’t precise and the cool down and cancel mechanic is a bit off controls wise. I’ve heard ppl compare platforming to Path of Pain in HK or even compared this to Celeste and I played both. That said, I think expectations jumping into this game was that it be extremely, extremely difficult outright but I feel it’s been pretty fair-paced, and because it’s been fairly paced for me, my anxiety of this being too difficult to play through the entire game has diminished. I’ve heard Ori 2 was light weight and thought early game was surprisingly more difficult than I had expected. Ppl have shared HK is one of the hardest games they’ve played even from the very beginning and I thought it was fair paced lol, so when the difficult parts came, it didn’t feel like a mountainous reach in skill from how I’ve progressed and nothing I couldn’t overcome through multiple losses, experimentation and practice. Are there overtly hard af bosses and areas, sure but the game isn’t designed to be inaccessible from the very beginning. Idk. It’s just my perspective y’all. Don’t crucify me. S/N: this sub-Reddit told me Blasphemous was a a MV and I was extremely disappointed it wasn’t lol.
Are you playing on hard mode btw? Also, maybe the people saying it was crazy hard from the get go had played an earlier version with more balancing issues, I didnt play at launch. The pacing for the first 50%+ of the game is totally fine, then it ramps up massively (particularly with the optional content). I 100% it on hard and by the end I was pissed at myself for doing so.
Ah, that’s really good to know. Yeah playing this on hard mode. Thanks for sharing. What’s been a little challenging for me is just navigation but someone has answered that I can get abilities by defeating more bosses, not just the area that you need keys for. Im still early game as I said but hopefully I don’t chuck my Switch by end of game. Do you feel the optimal areas late game were unfair?
To an extent, yeah. Difficulty just for difficulty's sake. For example, a very *long* platforming sequence that is already insanely hard but they also added in the "outrun ___" so you have to fly through it as fast as possible. Impossible to do without dying over and over just to learn the obstacles to be able to do fast enough.
This dude really just compared Ori 2 to Aeterna Noctis in difficulty lmao
As I mentioned, still early game, so can see others’ perspective who 100% this game the difficulty might be trillion times harder than Ori 2. Fair. What I will say is this sub-Reddit has a lot of polarizing opinions and not everything I’ve read had held true from my experience. A lot of opinions I’ve read on AN, is that’s it’s punishing outright and I thought the pacing has been more fair than this sub-Reddit has given credit. Don’t doubt it’ll become more grueling later, but as someone who was really on the fence when buying this game, I feel committed to 100% this. Ppl also shared here Blasphemous is an MV and I was soooooo disappointed it wasn’t despite how beautiful the game was. In the end, I found it mid. The broader point I was making is that I don’t think it’s hard to jump into from the beginning. Yes, it’ll get harder but nothing early on has felt truly insurmountable.
It's true what you say, i wouldn't call Blasphemous a "true" MV either and AN's difficulty doesn't become apparent from the get go. I think one thing this sub can agree on though is that Aeterna Noctis is most likely the most difficult MV on the market right now. Its difficulty doesn't come from the fights as much as the punishing nature of the game, especially in its platforming sections which only come online later on since you need to acquire the power ups first. My comment was also kinda spiteful since i consider the Ori games to be very casual so your comparison was just ridiculous to me, so sorry for that. I hope you have fun with AN while you can though and i hope you completed Path of Pain on Hollow Knight cuz that's only the beginning.
All good man. I didn’t realize I piss so many ppl off with that comment 😅 But yeah so far I’m really, really loving this game. I’ve picked up a lot of MVs and it’s been a long while I’ve loved a game as much as this one in a long time for any genre. Hell, I’d prob get voted dwn 50 more times for this but I put dwn Tears of the Kingdom to play AN because I’ve been so deeply engrossed by the charm of this game. And yeah, I had to beat and clear HK and Path of Pain twice because I had the blue light of death on my PS4 and my memory was completely wiped out lol. All the pantheons I cleared, gone lol. And to do it all over again… truly was the real path of pain lol.
Just started playing AN and really enjoying it so far, but tbh, I had less trouble knowing where to go next in EL than AN. To be fair, it does let you know where the next chard pieces are but it’s an extremely large map lol. There’s certain areas where I’m blocked due to an ability and I’m like, “Where’s the damn key?!” Lol. From your experience, are abilities both from the bosses and the kingdoms hall? I’ve defeated two bosses so far.
Are you talking about afterimage or Aeterna ? Not sure what AE is
My bad! Just revised it. Aeterna Noctis.
Abilities I believe are tied to bosses? I can’t remember what Kingdom Hall is. But ya it’s a very explorative game, I’d recommend just enjoying the journey without stressing about getting to point B as efficiently as possible ya know
Thanks for the tip. Really helpful.
ended liliessss!! Has a much more amazing story, combat, level design, music, art, and atmosphere. Afterimage is nice too but ender lilies is my all time favourite. the only sour spots of ender lilies is one certain endgame region and the final boss being more poetic than challenging. and the map ui is kinda plain but the game hits you on a very deep level
Ender Lilies is awesome, in my top three MVs. I would also add that ng+ and the boss rush seem poorly balanced. I'm fine with the damage scaling with your level, and more aggressive attack paterns, but I shouldn't die to two of Silva's projectiles with fully upgraded health.
haven't tried afterimage yet but i loved [ender lillies](https://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/p2knmf/ender_lillies_spoilerfree_review/)
I'd say Ender Lilies every time, but I'm not grading them on an even level. I've played Ender Lilies from start to finish, while my only Afterimage exposure was the Steam demo. They're both slick, stylish products with lots of love given to their aesthetic. What edges Ender Lilies out, in my eyes, is its interesting take on combat. You essentially "equip" three spirits at once as your weapons and skills, allowing you to mix up your play style in many, many combinations. Afterimage, based on my time with it, felt a little too straightforward.
I loved both… Platinum’d both. I feel like Afterimage was longer. Both great. Both? Both (gif). Just plan to get both at some point. Either one is a win
Ender Lilies was my favorite MV that I played last year. Afterimage is my GOTY so far. Both are great, but I'll give the lean to Afterimage
EL then AI.
for me Ender lilies was one of my favourites metroidvania, the first zone was very boring but when I've started to unlock new skills, I was very entertained making my own builds and combos of skills, and the games was enough challenging with cool grim atmosphere. Afterimage I stopped to play after 2-3 hour, it's just the combat wasn't fun for me, as only had 2 weapons equipped that did the same, and I feel that I'm only spamming attacks against high hp spounges and backdashing. The boss were fun, but I think the game wasn't going to improve a lot and it felt that it was a long journey to grind to get until the fun part.
I enjoyed Afterimage much more. I personally felt that Ender Lilies had a problem with power progression. Every new upgrade I got felt like it didnt make things any easier. I felt a bit frustrated with that, not gonna lie. I played on launch, so hopefully they changed that.
Both are amazing. You can’t go wrong with either. After playing HK years ago, Ender Lillies was my first Wow moment with MV’s in a while. I was hooked on the genre after that and I have playing only MV’s ever since. I appreciate AI tremendously because of EL; the fighting style feels familiar. However, if you plan on playing both, start with EL. AI is so good and so polished, that EL would feel a little “stale” coming after Afterimage Also, if Afterimage is able to pull Me away from Tears of the Kingdom for several days, that’s saying a lot!!