Enderal is Amazing and You Should Play It
A few weeks ago, Summer 2020 I was looking for something to play. I sort of toyed with the idea of re-installing Skyrim and picking up on a playthrough that had gotten messed up due to fucking up a quest I wanted to do one way and realized I had done things the wrong way and would have to backtrack a few hours of playthrough to do it right. And then while toying with the idea I remembered Enderal.
Enderal is a total conversion Skyrim mod -- if you already own base Skyrim (not SE) it’s free. (Otherwise you need to buy base Skyrim, which most of you already have.) **UPDATE 2021 -- There is now a Skyrim Special Edition version of Enderal! So whether you have base Skyrim or SE, you can get Enderal. AND IT’S STILL FREE. Really truly actually free. Install the SE if you have the option, it’s way more stable. OK back to the post.**
By total conversion I mean it’s an entirely new world, new characters, new story, etc. It’s not really even a mod more than it is an entire new game built on the back of Skyrim’s engine. It incorporates a ton of mods you’d already want naturally, has its own section on the Nexus as well, and changes a lot of Skyrim gameplay elements like the leveling system is very different. If you liked Skyrim but don’t really wanna play Skyrim again, which is where I was, Enderal will scratch that itch.
What I expected was a fun Skyrim-lite game to bide some time in, and to be amused by an amateur-ish attempt to recreate Skyrim in someone else’s D&D-like world. I didn’t expect to finish it, just to play around for a few hours, roll my eyes at some cliches and give up halfway, tbh.
Instead, what I got was near-professional level polish, with several aspects outshining Skyrim (and many other games I’ve paid big $$ for) drastically, including level design, characters, and especially story elements. I got an experience that was engrossing and deep, tense, grim, emotional, and to be honest, took something extremely familiar to me and made it not only new, but did it significantly better than the sources it felt inspired from. I gasped, I cried, I mourned, I cheered, I was delighted and depressed, I want to play it again. Now that it’s over I’m going to miss those characters as much as I miss my Bioware faves. I want to tell every video-game playing friend I know to play this game.
I’m going to do my best in this post to be as spoiler-free as possible, and leave places where I need to do heavier spoilers until the end. I’m going to post some screenshots, but there are so many things you should just see for yourself that most of my “best” screenshots I can’t post because I just don’t want to ruin things for you when you play it. This is going to be long, but I have so much I want to say. Hear me out.
Things You Should Know
First, just a few factual things that I wish I’d known before going in.
1) Like I said, you need to install base Skyrim, and then install Enderal. Steam makes all this really easy, and Enderal installs in its own folder. It took awhile to do both, but it was simple. *Edit* I don’t think this is true for SE, I think you just need to own Skyrim SE and then you can install Enderal SE. I definitely rec installing Enderal SE! It just didn’t exist when I played the first time and made this post.
2) The game is harder than Skyrim. I was regularly getting my ass kicked for awhile. You may want to turn down the difficulty or install a mod that will uh, help you advance in some way.
3) There are mods! (Note: The below list is for the base version, not the SE version. Most of these now also exist in the SE , but I haven’t gotten around to updating the links, but here is the link to the Nexus page for it. They all install easily with Vortex.) Like with Skyrim, the more you mod it yourself, the glitchier it gets. Here’s a quick mod list from Non-SE Enderal Nexus I’d recommend for your first playthrough:
Enderal Amnesia Shrine - So you can reset your skills/talents when you figure out what it is you wanna do.
Longer Buffs/Summons - because I hate recasting things all the time.
Arrow Tweaks - Archery was nerfed in Enderal. Use this mod to un-nerf archery if you go that way. I used the lowest setting on this and it was still a challenge without being too hard. The game wants you to play a mage, tbh. But I was happy going this way (and eventually DID max out one of the magic skills anyway.)
More Affinities - when you put a lot of points into more than one Memory tree (will explain what this is down at #4) you get subclasses unlocked for only certain combinations. This mod adds more subclasses, if you want them. They’re pretty balanced.
Base Carry Weight 10,000 - You know what this does. Either you love having to pick and choose every thing you pick up and carry around or you just wanna carry everything. I’m a “stop making me decide, I’ll just carry everything” person. Obviously, this puts you ahead economically because you’ll have more to sell when you get back into town. It exists, use it or not.
Player Housing stuff (YES! There’s housing!) Riverville Cabin to have your own space in the first town you spend time in, already pre-decorated. Ark Noble’s Quarter House Redone. You can craft and decorate your own furniture if you want for the two houses in the main city, or you can pay some money to buy the pre-decorated version. This mod re-does the pre-decorated version to make it better. There’s another choice on the Nexus that also looks good if you don’t like that one.
There’s also Enderal Tracking Tool which, first of all, about half the functionality is broken on due to not being updated. But I used to to track a bunch of “fetch/find quest” type things and more importantly, to track my affection with companions. Oh yeah, we’ll get to that.
There’s several armor / monster texture replacement mods. I used some, none were like “OMG you must use this!” also an arachnophobia mod if you need it.
There’s lots of other mods, browse ‘em, but you know, it’s Skyrim... the more you mod, the more unstable it’ll be. I sometimes would play for hours without a crash, sometimes I’d crash every 30 minutes. (Rebooting helped when it got that bad. Also the game auto-saves every 5 minutes so I rarely lost much time.)
I honestly don’t rec you install fast travel mods. The game has some pretty decent travel systems that open up, (scrolls to get back to cities / major locations, a flying system as well, and when you’re in the main city USE THE SIGNPOSTS!!) Also heard they’re pretty unstable. I am a mod-heavy person and for Enderal I went very mod-light. Like I said, there’s already a ton of Skyrim mods incorporated. I would not install Skyrim-specific mods unless you know what you’re doing. I did not.
2022 Edit: For the SE if you have a paid Nexus account consider installing the Path of the Prophet collection. Important to note:
You need to read and follow the instructions especially the post-install extra steps.
As previously stated, Enderal is already a difficult game in the beginning, some of the PotP changes make it HARDER. There are a bunch of optional mods included that undo some of those changes. Install them.
I also suggest manually disabling/uninstalling “Skyrim Souls” and “No Floating Quest Markers” once the install is complete. And then lower the difficulty and cheat yourself in a good weapon or two if it’s still too hard. No shame. And the game is worth it to make it through.
The Tracking Tool mod for the SE doesn’t seem to work, carry weight is going to be a problem and the Amnesia shrine mod are all buggy and not rec’d. I’d make a hard save before installing the amnesia shrine and see if it works, and uninstall it when you’re done with it.
You’re gonna want this mod. Trust me.
This scene literally took my breath away the first time. This whole area is so fucking amazing. I need to talk about level design later.
4) The leveling system is different from Skyrim. Instead of gaining XP by using your skills, you gain XP for completing quests / killing monsters / reading some books / other stuff like more traditional RPGs. When you level, there are three kinds of points you get:
Out of combat skills (4 per level) (enchanting, crafting, alchemy, sleight of hand etc.)
In-Combat skills (5 per level) (Archery, sneak, block, 1-handed, 2-handed, 4 schools of magic)
For BOTH of the above, you have to buy books from vendors (most vendors carry at least SOME books) or find books in the world. You read (well, technically they’re flagged as food, so you eat them) to read to get better at those things. This can be expensive! Save money for your skill books!
Memory Points - You press X while in-game to “meditate” and spend points in skill trees there for talents, which you should probably synergize with what kind of books you’re buying and reading for your skills.
5) Translation - The game was originally made in German, and translated to English, and is fully voiced in English (or German, if you wanna do that instead). There’s a few other localizations of it, which are not fully VA’d. Also I found one place where I was spoken to in German (a bug, I’m sure) and it was really jarring, haha. There’s a few places where the language was a bit... odd... but few and far between.
Gameplay
The game still mostly feels very Skyrim in gameplay outside of the leveling system, obviously. If you hated Skyrim gameplay, you may hate this too. There are a lot of things that are Skyrim-familiar. There’s an open world, though it is level scaled, so there are areas that will kick your ass until you level up high enough. There’s a lot of “Oooh what’s in this cave, let’s get sidetracked and go explore it!” There are a lot of areas that exist with no quest associated, or only a “find one of these 100 objects that are in the world for you to explore and find which only result in an achievement when you get them all!” quest.
However, every rando-dungeon has a miniboss to find and kill for decent loot, so at least you know when you’ve done the big thing. Also, main or important side-quests have their areas locked off so you don’t stumble into a quest area before you need to. If you find someplace you can’t get into, you will be there later if you do all the quests. There are not radiant quests like Skyrim, even the bounty quests are specific and pre-generated. Bounties don’t spawn until you have their specific quest, so you may backtrack into bounty-quest areas you’ve explored before.
Guys, read the signs around the main city. A++
There’s a main story-quest you’re given from the beginning. Once you get to the big city (Ark), I recommend you mostly ignore the main quest a very long time until you do a bunch of side-questing and exploring stuff. There is a point fairly far along in the main story that will make exploration harder, and then a cutoff point. There is no post-game gameplay, once you’re done with the main storyline, the game is over. There is a warning ahead of time, it’s pretty obvious anyway.
There are a lot of one-off type sidequests and at least three very long, very deep, very amazing side-quests which almost feel like a main-story quest of their own. (They’d be paid DLC if you had to pay for this game.) On these, you get temporary companions who are crucial to those stories. You need to do them. They are fantastic.
Later, you’re gonna see this scene and be like “What the fuck, how can this be so good?”
I’d suggest keeping the Enderal wiki open and handy to make sure you grab all the quests. And maybe that you don’t fuck any up too badly. I actually completely fucked up one of these main sidequests and now am planning on going back and finding a save from before I fucked it up to finish playing through it. *shakes fist*
Also the wiki has a world map that is useful
The Lore
Hey do you like lore? Learning about new worlds? There’s like, so much of it in Enderal.
Look, I’ll be honest, I’m usually a skimmer. I’ll see an ingame-book and skim through it and get the jist then forget mostly about it. I skim the codex, if there is one. I’m like “yeah, ok, I’m playing this game, not here to read a book.”
Um... in this game... I read the books.
In fact, there was an entire 10-book series in this game that after the first two, I started getting excited when I’d find the next chapter. And each book is long. I clapped and fistpumped when I finally came across the last one. I loved this story, and that was BEFORE I knew how closely it tied into one of the main sidequests!
I ended up reading MOST of the books in the game, in fact.
That said, there is a 12-book series in the game that is the lore deep-dive. Even with that, I’d suggest you read this wiki page which summarizes it a good bit and also if you read that early on, you’ll understand what you’re being thrown into a lot better. Sure, a lot of this game is somewhat standard human-dominant fantasy fare (technically only Elves -- called Starlings in this world -- and Humans the the only races) but there’s some pretty deep, and good, lore here, too.
You better believe I read this whole book!
Romance? ROMANCE!
(And Other Companion Things)
YES, THERE ARE ROMANCES IN THIS GAME!!
Without giving away too much, there are two main “Companion” characters in the game, however, they are both associated with the main storyline, and neither one of them is with you most of the time. They do accompany you sometimes, on specific quests. Most of the time, you will be exploring on your own. There are a few companion mods out there but I wouldn’t install them. If you want someone with you when you travel, look into summons in one of the magic tree, or eventually go Phantasmalist like I did (a new tree in Enderal).
They both also have their own companion questlines. You will not always have a quest active for them, they come and go throughout the story. You find one of these characters very early on, the other takes awhile through the main story. One is male, one is female.
It’s them, the two. You’re going to love them. Also, originally I was going to use a much cooler screenshot of them but wanted you to see that environment on your own for the first time so please forgive this drab grey screenshot, it’s for your own good.
You can romance either of these characters, (but only one!) no matter what gender you are playing. I romanced the male companion and no regrets, though I also very very much loved the female companion, too. They are both very well written characters with their own strong personalities and questlines. They both have a lot of things to say when they were around and added a lot to the game. They both made me laugh and cry a little and I loved them like any Bioware-level companion. The two of them are worth the game alone. I have a lot more I want to say about them but I’m trying to stay spoiler-very-lite here.
Honestly, I rarely missed having Skyrim-style companions with me. Rarely do Skyrim companions say or do anything that adds to what’s going around you. I enjoyed having a ghost that I could summon to tank for me (phantom) when I needed him and send him away when I didn’t need him. It should be noted that when you have the Main-NPC companions with you, they will not stray from their path. So if you’re traveling with them and see a cool cave you want to explore they’ll be like “lol, have fun, I’ll wait for you here!” then pick back up with you when you come back to them.
Also, for those Major Side Quests, you also get temporary companions along for the ride! I believe there is one who you can romance (or have more like a fling with) but that’s the major sidequest I fucked up so I never saw it.
Me, my bow and my phantom will kick your ass.
The Story
(Spoiler Free or Light, depending on what you think is a spoiler.)
Guys... there’s so much to say about this story and I can say so very little of it. I posted about my feelings going into the ending and I stand by every word in that post and the follow-up.
First of all, you should know that the game starts out very cutscene heavy until you get real control over your character, a little bit after character creation. It takes awhile. It’s worth it. Honestly even with all the cutscenes, the story grabbed me quickly.
And then for awhile you’re like “Yep, this is some Skyrim-living I’m doing here.” Which is great if you love Skyrim but for awhile you may be like “I don’t know why Annakie was like “WOW THIS STORY! I mean the game is fun and there’s a couple of memorable NPCs but whatevs.” You spend some time in a small town, but the game doesn’t take off til you reach the Big City and even then only after you get a quest or two more into the main story. And then uhhh.... holy shit.
Please just enjoy playing “Like Skyrim, but not Skyrim” for the first 5 - 20 hours, depending on how fast you go, until you get to the main town and a couple of quests into the main storyline. You should take your time in Riverville and exhaust yourself of quests and new places to explore before heading to Ark with the guy you meet early on.
Also, when you get to that point where the story realllllly takes off, most of you are going to think is something like “lol, haven’t I heard this main storyline somewhere before?”
Well, sorta, yes. I stopped and went and googled this game + this other term (you’ll understand when you get there) and read the criticisms about it, but was also reassured that it’s a very different take, despite the similarities. All along the main story I was like “this sorta equates to that” about certain things... but in the end it was like two entirely different rides with similar themes and dressing. Again, I know this doesn’t make a lot of sense now. It will for almost all of you later.
But tbh I put off doing the main storyline as much as possible whenever I could. I loved the world and the lore and the sidequests so much that I purposefully would not do the main quest unless I felt like I had to. The only bad thing about this is that it did make the ending feel rather rushed, but that was my own fault. I literally had nothing else to do but the main story there at the end. So, space it out somewhat. But also there’s a point that the main story will make traveling in the world a little harder.
I will say, and I may have missed some things... I wish that we’d gotten to know certain characters a little better. On a scale of Skyrim NPCs you barely get to know but are told are important all the time (but end up not caring about them because so little character development) and Bioware NPCs who you get to know everything about and evolve so much.... this is about 2/3rds of the way towards Bioware for the major NPCs outside of the main companions, who are about 85% of the way there.
But do talk to the important characters, do any sidequests offered to you.
THE ATMOSPHERE, Y’ALL.
Oh... and choice?
Look, it’s a Skyrim-like game so there’s not OFTEN a ton of choice in dialog / end of quest stuff, there ain’t no dialog wheel... but there’s a hell of a lot more than, you know, Skyrim. Basically, on a Skyrim to Bioware scale, it’s like, halfway to Bioware. There is an affection system with a handful of NPCs, including the two romancable ones, which will determine outcomes of some of the best quests. And there are certain choices you make, most of which are NOT obvious, which REALLY DO have some fairly drastic outcomes for the ends of their storylines.
Including the ending. Oh yeah, there’s different endings. I don’t even want to talk about the ending here because... spoilers. What I said in that post I linked above is all that needs saying
There were many times when I WAS faced with a choice that I REALLY had to put some thought into it. And... sometimes I googled and spoiled myself to the consequences before deciding, because I’m that person. If I’d known what some of my choices I DIDN’T do that for would lead to, I would have.
I got someone I cared about killed, because tbh I thought by siding with them to gain more affection I was going to have a better chance to help them later. I made a choice in the game I wouldn’t normally make probably because I thought I’d try and cheese the affection system a bit. I made a mistake. The person I was trying to make happy... didn’t make it later.
And honestly, I kinda loved it.
Someday, you’re going to hate me for this screenshot.
World / Level Design
This world is a little smaller than Skyrim, y’all but feels bigger because there are several regions, and so many of them are unique, stuff you haven’t seen before in Skyrim. I don’t even want to post screenshots of most of them because I want your breath to be taken away. I mean, sure, there’s grey beaches, lush forests (using lots of mods so they look lusher and different than Skyrim), more autumnal areas, some crypts that use areas you’ll see in Skyrim but like, I never really felt like I was in the same place twice in Enderal. Even some basic mines and bandit hideouts each felt a little different from the last with cool level design.
And there are environments like I said, you’ve never seen before, and vistas that take your breath away in ways Skyrim either never did or has stopped doing so since you’ve seen it all before.
Like I said before, I’m not posting my favorite screenshots here. But this game had several places that were some of my favorite level design I’ve ever seen in a game, and use the design and atmosphere in amazing ways.
The Music
An absolutely amazing totally original soundtrack. So many memorable tracks. And they add so much to the game, especially the spooky ones. All original bard songs which explain the lore, with multiple singers for them, too! Hang out in the taverns and just listen to the bard songs. You’ll be glad you did, sooner or later.
I almost never buy game soundtracks. I want this soundtrack.
Posting my own character all dressed up before going on a date, because I can.
The Voice Acting
Nearly every voice actor sounded professional or at least a good amateur, with really only one important character as the exception. At the end when I read through the credits, they listed them by character so it was hard to tell how many characters each person voiced, but I’m positive there were significantly more than in Skyrim, I think most important NPCs had unique or rarely-re-used actors. I truly couldn’t believe the quality of voice acting here. I expected this would be the very worst part of a free mod (flashbacks to some terrible VAs recording on really shitty mics in other fan projects). Nope. Honestly except for the one NPC who dragged me out of the game whenever they spoke (her performance, sadly, reminded me almost completely of Diana Allers) all of the important NPCs were pretty impeccable.
How did they afford this quality on a free game budget (aside from donations and Patreon?!?)
My house, using that noble house redone mod I posted about back in the mods section.
Equality
So let’s talk the pros and cons of equality/social issues in Enderal.
LGBT:
Big Pro: Same-sex partnerships are 100% accepted. There’s several NPCs you meet or read about in same-sex marriages or relationships (mostly they’re called “companions”, whether both are the same or different gender.)
Not Pro: I don’t recall any Trans people specifically, however, but I really may have just missed it or been clueless. I don’t recall the issue being addressed one way or the other.
Sexism:
Women hold equal status in Enderal. (Pic above: right as you first enter the main city -- a poster saying True Women join the city guard!) One of the most powerful people in the city is a woman, you see them at every level of status.
On the flip side there, there are also women referred to as Whores (including prostitutes. There are also male prostitutes.) My female character was called "bitch” by several enemies, usually in radiant-type dialog. Didn’t love that.
I didn’t notice any similar words used towards male characters but maybe that’s different if you play male.
Racism:
Enderal is a typical mostly-white-homogeneous land, and white privilege exists clearly. Your character is a foreigner of one type or another, radiant dialog doesn’t let you forget it, and a few NPCs even display outright racism to you. This is always seen as those-people-are-shitty but it happens.
Although the game takes place in that kind of world, there are several important NPCs, some of high status, with darker skin.
Basically, microagressions are around, for both gender and race issues.
(Fantasy Racism) Starlings (elves) aren’t really seen as inferior, but are seen as different / outsiders as people with darker skin in Enderal. That said, there’s still several elves of status in the game.
I’d give them like... a B- on representation overall. The game was developed over several years in Germany and released 3 or 4 years ago. They coulda done better here.
Someday, you’re gonna have some things to say about this guy.
Trigger Warnings (Mild Spoilers!)
There are several important TWs I’d put on the game, obviously the things above (sexism/racism) could be considered triggers. There’s you know, skeletons and spiders, I mean things you expect to find in fantasy games, as well as gore, blood, death... you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting into there.
One particular one I wanted to point out is that at one point in the game, and yes this is kind of a spoiler, but you should know if this will be a problem, there is a fairly graphic audio-only domestic violence scene. If you’re worried about it, let me know and I’ll tell you exactly where it happens, it’s about late-mid way through the main quest.
Another one is that there is at least one fairly graphic rape that happens in one of the books you read. There is one more that almost happens in the main story. There’s a few more mentioned or hinted at. I really didn’t care for it, but it’s again, always shown in a very negative light.
Also, a big one, is child death. There are a couple of instances of child death in the game, and one is particularly devastating. You will hurt after finishing this quest, I promise you. You may also love the game for hurting you that much, if this isn’t a particular trigger for you. This quest is unavoidable.
Depending on choices you make, one fairly traumatic suicide may happen.
Also, I just want to give a general “It’s 2020+ and everything sucks” warning. And without getting too specific, the game is definitely funny and lighthearted sometimes, but overall the story is fairly grim. Things happen, above and beyond what I just wrote about above, that are devastating. But they will also bowl you over with how well executed they are.
ENDING TALK (very mild spoilers)
There are no 100% definitely happy endings. But there are hopeful endings. And they are, in my opinion, satisfying. I’ve only watched one of them so far (the one I’ve played) but read about other(s) and liked what I saw. But if you just can’t handle grimness right now, and you just want to play something light and fluffy all the time, this game isn’t for you right now. I get it.
I’m running out of non-spoilery screenshots to post, so here, have this one. It’s OK. I love both of these guys.
In Conclusion
Guys, there’s no way I would have spent all this time writing a post like this if I didn’t want people to give this game a shot and stick with it through the end. It was something I’d heard of and had thought about playing for awhile, and really didn’t expect what I got. It’s well polished, built on the back of something familar but also a very new experience, with a storyline and sidequests that make you think and feel in all sorts of ways.
Seriously, if you’re not convinced yet, at least give it a shot. It’s (probably) free! (Unless you don’t already own Skyrim.) I don’t know what else to say, but I hope this is enough words!
