Tracing the Purification of the Land's End Through the Boss Fights of ENDER LILIES

The story begins as the last surviving priestess of this land wakes up in a remote region. The girl who is the protagonist had been asleep for a long time, but awakens when a knight finds her. The kingdom has already fallen, and the girl has no memories. She sets out with the knight to see what has become of the outside world.

The first boss, encountered deeper in the church, is Guardian Siegrid, who was turned into a beast by the Rain of Blight. The first thing the speaker emphasizes is how powerless the protagonist herself is. She can't even swing a weapon; about all she can do is dodge. Instead, she summons the knight accompanying her to attack for her. Using this power, she travels across the blight-stained kingdom, purifying the beasts in each region. The speaker introduces this as the general flow of the story.

The basics of combat are also explained during this first boss fight. Above an enemy's head are two gauges: the top one is health and the bottom one is stamina. Attacking also depletes stamina, and when it hits 0, the enemy is downed for a period of time. Focusing your attacks during that opening lets you take a large chunk out of its health.

Once Siegrid is defeated, the White Priestess's power comes into play. By touching a beast, the protagonist can take on its blight, read its memories, and make its power her own. This lets her summon Siegrid, and also makes double jumping possible. This system, in which defeated bosses join you as allies and skills, forms the basis for the later discussion of skill setups.

After leaving the church, the protagonist enters the Witch's Forest and fights Eleine, the Black Witch, who has become a beast. This place is said to be the ruins of the "Mage Association," an organization founded jointly by mages. Eleine was a powerful figure who had been hailed as a prodigy mage since childhood, and she continued her research here in hopes of easing the White Priestesses' burden even a little. But she could not resist the Rain of Blight, and in the end she became a beast.

In this fight, the speaker uses Guardian Siegrid and the Floral Sorceress, who are good at whittling down airborne enemies. They also explain that the game's paths aren't linear, and that upgrades are hidden in all sorts of places. The more you explore, the more skills you can use, so the speaker's assessment is that there's real enjoyment in searching every corner.

In the second phase, bullet-hell-like attack patterns are added. The speaker praises the game's use of music highly, pointing out how it shifts the atmosphere: calm, subdued music in the first phase, and tense, urgent music in the second. The music during exploration is wonderful too, and they say there were many times they stayed put after finishing exploring an area just to keep listening.

On the bridge leading to the castle, a fight with the old warrior Gerrod begins. According to the speaker, Gerrod is a great hero of the Land's End. He wiped out the beasts that had overrun this land, and when the beast hordes invaded again, he drank a potion that turned him into a beast himself, contributing greatly to the kingdom's defense. However, because he had become a beast, he was shunned by those around him and spent his final years alone. Gerrod, too, is turned completely into a beast by the Rain of Blight, and attacks the protagonist.

For this fight, the speaker brought the "Headless Knight," a skill that blocks the opponent's attacks and counters them. They say it made fending off his powerful blows effortless and comfortable. The speaker names the moment of agonizing over which skills to bring as one of the fun parts of this game. In the second phase his attacks become fiercer, such as follow-ups after two consecutive jump attacks, but the counter shines all the more for it. Using the guard again once its cooldown ended, the speaker whittled down the downed opponent and defeated him. When the protagonist approaches to take on his blight, Gerrod's memories flow into her.

Waiting underground is Guardian Silva, Siegrid's older sister, who has become a beast. Silva was the guardian of Fretia (as written in the subtitles), the "White Priestess of the Fountain." The speaker explains that each White Priestess had one guardian assigned to her: Siegrid for Lily, Silva for Fretia, and so on.

The White Priestess of the Fountain was the people's hope, and she tirelessly purified the blight. But eventually blight built up inside her body, and she was ultimately sent to a certain experimental facility. Unable to bear watching this, and partly at the urging of the mages, Silva accepted a potion to gain power. But she grew horrified by the experiments being performed on the White Priestess, fled from there to the underground, and in the end became a beast.

On the combat side, this fight is described as an example of switching skill setups between phases. In the first phase, Silva flies around while attacking, making it hard to land normal attacks. So the speaker brought the "Western Merchant" (as written in the subtitles), a skill that attacks automatically and very effectively. Since you can bring up to two skill sets in total, they prepared a separate skill for the second phase that scatters projectiles over a wide area. It's easy to rack up damage by landing lots of hits on large bosses, and it also pairs well because it's easy to hit from long range. While the boss still had more than half its health left, the speaker landed multi-hit projectiles to take it down quickly, then defeated it after a focused assault while it was downed and an attack as it got back up.

At the great castle wall that was once a key point in the defense against the beasts, the speaker fights Ulv, the Mad Knight, who has become a beast. A taciturn knight devoted solely to battle, he was called the "Mad Knight" for the reckless way he rampaged across the battlefield. During the beast invasion he took the potion and fought through to the end, but after that defensive battle he abruptly stopped fighting, and is said to have spent his time here doing nothing but tending flowers.

From this fight onward, ultimate skills that draw out the allies' power became available. Landing attacks fills a gauge, and you can spend one bar of the gauge to unleash a powerful move. The speaker brought the two guardian sisters, along with the Floral Sorceress for the flower-loving Ulv. They filled the gauge with Siegrid and the Floral Sorceress, used Silva's ultimate to drain health and stamina, and filled the gauge again once the boss was downed. Fighting in this cycle, they defeated Ulv.

In the dim underground execution grounds awaits Hoenir, Keeper of the Abyss, who has become a beast. Here there was a dark order that handled dirty work such as managing and executing criminals, and Hoenir led it. When the Rain of Blight began to fall, Hoenir tried to escape through these underground execution grounds to get one of the White Priestesses out of the country. But he was blocked by the beasts and narrowly failed, and he ended up becoming a beast here.

This fight has a large number of minions. The speaker brought the "Cliffside Village Elder" and the "Fallen Guard," which can attack over them, and chose Ulv, the Mad Knight, who had just been defeated, as the main skill, launching swift attacks on the evasive Hoenir. In the second phase, Hoenir flies around even faster and chips away with small attacks. Even so, because Silva's wings had enhanced the protagonist's dodge, the speaker says it was easy to maneuver even in a spot like this. Including the double jump, the speaker looks back and says they owe "a lot to those sisters."

On the throne of the royal castle were the murdered king and Knight Captain Julius, who had become a beast. The speaker explains that Julius had a complicated birth. His father was the king and his mother was Hoenir's younger sister, and Julius was born illegitimate. His mother died right after giving birth, and he was then raised by Hoenir. The speaker adds that many members of the dark order were war orphans, and that Hoenir, as head of the order, seems to have had a surprisingly caring side, acting as a parent figure to them.

Julius himself believed he had been abandoned by the king. So, to make the king acknowledge his existence, he worked extraordinarily hard and, while hiding his identity, rose to become knight captain at a young age. This earnest single-mindedness drew comrades to him, and he is said to have been deeply trusted by the knights.

In combat, frontal attacks barely work against him, and even if you get behind him, he quickly retreats. So the speaker brought the Floral Sorceress and the "One-Eyed King's Shield," both of which activate quickly. The second phase is characterized by attacks with a giant spear. The speaker mentions this spear as being connected to Gerrod, the previous knight captain. They say that if you keep landing attacks, you get plenty of chances to use ultimates and can wear him down easily, and they finished him off by downing him and closing with an ultimate.

In the forbidden area, where research on the beasts is said to have taken place, darker facts are revealed. The speaker explains that here, clones of the White Priestess appear to have been made to transfer the blight of the White Priestess of the Fountain, and that a potion granting artificial immortality was apparently made from the flesh of the blighted White Priestess.

Standing in the way is Miriel. Miriel was the lover of Faden, of the order of mages who conducted research here. When his lover became a beast during the research, Faden became even more absorbed in his work, and as a result, the monster the speaker mentioned earlier was born as the product of that research.

For this fight, the speaker brought Eleine, the Black Witch. Landing her ultimate at point-blank range deals heavy damage. They defeated Miriel by landing five ultimates. What the beast Miriel had been protecting to the very end was Faden.

In the depths of the forbidden area, the White Priestess of the Fountain, no longer able to contain the blight, stood alone. Here the confrontation with the final boss, the Blighted King, begins. According to the speaker, the Blighted King was the mightiest enemy of the great beast invasion long ago, and at the time it was believed to have been purified by Fretia, the White Priestess of the Fountain. But the blight steadily ate away at the White Priestess from within, and the blight she could no longer contain leaked out onto the surface. What poured down across the whole country as a result was the Rain of Blight.

The protagonist has resolved to take upon herself the blight Fretia has been carrying, including the Blighted King. Having taken on so much blight up to this point, the protagonist, who originally had pure white hair and snow-white skin, now has hair stained black, and abnormalities have appeared all over her body. Even so, she carries on the wishes of the other Lilies and decides to purify Fretia.

The speaker explains that while White Priestesses are resistant to blight, they cannot escape its suffering. However, by using an amulet that suppresses the White Priestess's suffering, made from what Faden left behind after deciphering an ancient spell through exploration, the protagonist became able to withstand the suffering of purification. Floating behind her are eight Lilies, and the speaker says that by cooperating with the Lilies she has brought this far, it looks like the cycle of blight can finally be brought to an end.

The setup the speaker lists for the final battle is: the poison-spitting mage, a skill that fires a heat ray, the ever-reliable Floral Sorceress, Lily's guardian Siegrid, and Faden, whose ultimate summons the claws of his lover Miriel. The speaker characterizes Faden as someone who, despite repeatedly carrying out inhumane human experiments, never forgot his original goal and devoted himself to the end to saving his lover and the priestess.

After defeating the Blighted King, the protagonist attempts purification once more, and the purification of all the blight is achieved. The purified Fretia finds peace of mind, the Rain of Blight stops, and the curse on the Land's End comes to an end.

On the game as a whole, the speaker cites its distinctive, atmospheric graphics that are neither 2D nor 3D, the wide variety of music that colors the story, and its deep narrative, saying all of them were pleasant and that they enjoyed playing it to the very end. They close by noting that there are still many elements they weren't able to cover in this video.