Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist

Glad I waited over a year to buy this on sale. Great visuals and removing contact damage were all it had. Story was alright but the flow kept getting interrupted by poor progression, unforgiving combat and bland bosses with reused mechs from Ender Lilies. I found the first game more forgiving and an even ground for medium-casual and hardcore gamers but this was not even hardcore. It was more like stupid. Random sporadic attack patterns from mobs and bosses which makes starting over extremely unrewarding because there is absolutely nothing you can learn unless you spam buttons and even then the buttons aren't sensitive. Irritating mobs that fly out of your way and you have to keep chasing. Mini bosses were more annoying than meaningful, in fact only having 2-3 moves. "Boss" fight for some maps were just fighting the same boss but split into 3 different maps. Did I mention ZERO i-frames? Not even using the single counter skill will give you a reasonably enough invincibility because there's mobs and bosses with "magic" skills that continuously damage you. Basic features like better speed movement and laughable "additional" invincibility frames are locked behind relics which you have to equip all the time and keep swapping out if you reach a map that requires a higher jump. Progression was unequal - you start out with stupidly lousy defenses and then towards the end of the game, you suddenly get a lot of relics and upgrades that could've been given earlier. Homunculi skills were irrelevant and wasted if you don't plan to replay the game (TEN of them) because you don't even have time to master one before another one comes and the final boss is suddenly here. Upgrades were meaningless unless you like grinding for less than 0.2cm of a bar of extra break damage - unlike Ender Lilies where each Homunculi skill corresponded to the following maps and bosses. It's great that you no longer have to return to a respite to check your map but also why not include auto-select to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Craftory??? Had to either keep scrolling the map or the list of respites. Carapace was a useless addition and provides only 0.0000002 seconds of invincibility as another review said in comparison to 0.2 seconds with dodge. I don't see anybody mentioning the tedious and punishing jumping required in some of the maps, including some "challenges" that are just as ridiculous as the above like tight jumping windows and using your skills to jump your way across one of the maps to get to a relic that requires >20 tries. And how about the optional map where you had to jump around to find the hidden pathway? Hated the overly open world feel where you could ♥♥♥♥ up your own progression if you stumbled upon a harder map. At times, there was no clear instruction where to go unless you like scrolling across your map multiple times and exploring every corner you've explored. Maps were pretty but forgettable because of all the annoying things and oversized for no good reason other than to plant annoying mobs on the walls or have some "automated machinery" shooting at you. The last map before the final boss only had TWO respites across an extremely bloated map where you go from left to right to left just to unlock ONE door. If the developers weren't clear that they want to make you grind, upgrade prices were bloated and imbalanced to the material drop rates. "Secret" ending did not even feel worth it. Planned to 100% the achievements before I knew what a downgrade it was and not returning to the game.