Joshua Winters
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However, not that much is really unsafe in the isles. Aside from some optional, late-game areas, I never once felt like I was truly unprepared for combat. All monsters are sluggish and all their attacks are laborious. It’s easy to avoid danger. Plus, you receive no experience points for killing them, so if you can avoid it, avoid it. This may be a good time to say at least one critical thing: the combat is anaemic and useless. Maybe it’s how I spec'd my character but I was never pressed by monsters or enemies. You are never without several dozen potions of health, stamina, or mana — they are littered everywhere. Weapon upgrades were helpful and always seemed to be available when I needed them. And there are maybe… too many easy ranged weapons. I was so flush with poison shuriken by the end of the game I rarely swung my fully upgraded sword. But who cares? That ending…
Each individual scene is on a Mario-esque level map which labels each in the world-level format (i.e. World 1-6, World 3-2) which helped remind me that despite its dreamlike nature Cloud Gardens is a game with progression. Each collection of levels is named simply, like Junkyard and Factory, and delivers on its concept. Delightful to the discerning lore-lovers and place-imaginers among us is seeing how the straight line of the Railroad levels passes through the enclosed worlds’ sections on the overmap. It is the world we always return to, with a level representing another train station cropping up every so often. The exquisite delicacy found in all parts of Cloud Gardens can be observed here breathing the gentlest suggestion of a coherent landscape of post-human engineering and manufacture over which we grow our verdant garden of stillness and rest. Cloud Gardens is an artistically satisfying game that allows the non-diorama builder to experience the loveliness of the confidently arranged detail, the thrill of the unexpected aesthetic coherence, and the magic gift of gardening’s simplicity.
All told, Ender Lilies is above and beyond worth the purchase. If you want to juggle and fight or explore the teeny tiniest corners of the most dangerous and dimmest rooms on the furthest edges of the stacked 2D map of a ghastly little world, this is it. Also, the music is totally sick. I want the soundtrack and I never want the soundtrack.