Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree Review

Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree appears to have been a delightful surprise. The game may not have had the same level of marketing support as its more well-known Souls-like or Metroidvania counterparts because a relatively unknown independent team created it. 

However, it began to gain traction due to the internet hype. The combination of the Metroidvania and Soulslike genres is what makes it unique. The developer, Primal Game Studio, and Publisher Knights Peak took this bold risk and successfully established their own distinct identity in a crowded genre.

In Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree, you take on the role of an inquisitor who can be fully customized. Customization includes the appearance and class, all set in the captivating dark fantasy realm of Faom. As you get caught up in an ancient war filled with chaos, corruption, and lost magic, your mercenary adventures take an intriguing turn. 

The story consists of exciting boss battles, conversations with vibrant NPCs, and hidden lore you need to decipher as you make your way through the central story. Later in the story, survival becomes a real struggle for life, taking on rich political and emotional meaning. Excellent voice acting brings the world to life, filling it with real personality and depth, all aided wonderfully by crisp, immersive writing.

The core gameplay cycle of Mandragoraa is exploration, combat, and progression. As you travel through interconnected regions of Faom, you'll be discovering shortcuts, uncovering secret areas, and accessing new regions through acquired abilities—a Metroidvania convention. 

Combat leans heavily into Soulslike: you manage stamina, time dodges, block with shields, and strike with measured deliberation. Character development comes in the form of equipping different weapons, armor, accessories, and arcane trinkets that tailor your inquisitor to a specific playstyle—melee, magic, or hybrid. You can dual-wield weapons, cast spells, or be a jack-of-all-trades based on what is required.

Where Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch succeeds and fails is in its delivery of puzzle and combat mechanics. Starting with the puzzles, the game has a reasonable amount of light environmental puzzle-solving. This spans from figuring out how to activate hidden levers, using traversal mechanics like double jumps or shadow dashes to access secret rooms, or nudging large objects to create new pathways.

While not overly complicated, the puzzles are doing their job well enough to add pacing variety between bouts of combat or exploration. They're never annoying, but neither are they overly exciting; they occupy the sweet spot where they augment without bogging down the loop.

Combat, though, is where the majority will conclude—either by acclaim or mockery. The soul-like emphasis is rewarded and repaid. Attacks are weighty, dodging has correct i-frames, and parrying is rewarded when done at the right time. 

That being said, the game suffers from a significant issue with reusing enemies and bosses. Some enemy classes are reused with cosmetic or elemental tweaks, and bosses—especially mini-bosses—are reused several times with mechanical tweaks. This can make some fights lose tension or significance.

However, despite all these defects, the variety in build choices, weapons, and magic makes the combat never repetitive. You're always allowed to engage in a battle another way—even in combat with a reused enemy. Thus, even though recycling is a strong tarnish, it's not enough to break the system utterly, especially for players who enjoy crafting various builds.

Progression in Mandragora is involved and surprisingly profound, considering it was developed in a small studio. At its center is a classic XP-based leveling system, where you gain experience termed "Ashlight" for killing monsters, completing quests, or revealing lore secrets in the world. 

You use this XP to unlock nodes on a massive skill tree that resembles something midway between Path of Exile and Salt and Sanctuary. While the visual complexity may be overwhelming at first, the system is very intuitive once you understand its flow.

Nodes diverge into passive buffs, stat increases, and active skill traits. For example, striking a new node can increase your strength scaling, reduce your stamina consumption, or grant a temporary buff on kill. This layered growth encourages replayability and experimentation, especially when you consider that you can make a tanky knight, an elemental spellcaster, or a pyromancer-warrior hybrid. 

One of the most noticeable issues with the system, however, is the lack of being able to respec. Once you've committed to a path, you're in it for the long haul. If you want to attempt a different playstyle, you more or less need to restart, which can be frustrating for build-crafting-loving players.

Grinding is nicely balanced. You won't be stuck unless you go out of your way to avoid optional content. The game is considerate of your time in this way, giving liberal XP for more challenging encounters and making exploration and risk nearly always rewarding—in gear, in lore, or sheer experience.

Visually, Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch is a gothic work of art. Although it doesn't push the technical boundaries of contemporary graphical quality, it more than makes up for it with atmosphere, tone, and art direction. 

The game has a highly stylized visual style, similar to Remnant: From the Ashes and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, but with a darker and richer color scheme. This contrast of bright and dark colors yields a hauntingly lovely world that is both alive and sad at the same time.

What sets it apart is the environmental diversity. You'll travel through decaying crypts lit only by flickering candlelight, frost-covered mountain monasteries, rotting villages plagued by cursed spirits, and vampiric castles steeped in rich crimson hues. Each area is handcrafted with care, ensuring that no two regions feel alike, even if the enemy types might repeat.

Performance-wise, the game is extremely well-optimized. It operates smoothly on a PS5 natively at 4K, and clocking 60fps at maximum settings says volumes about the engine and optimization taking place behind the scenes.

From a visual artistic standpoint, Mandragora ranks alongside some of the best the genre has to offer. It won't be "next-gen," but its solid visual identity will make it stand the test of time far better than most photorealistic games.

Mandragora's audio design is flawless, for lack of a better term. The game's audio is one of its best features and a polished element of the entire experience. Every swing of the blade, crackle of lightning, whispered spell, and step on creaking wood has been carefully tuned to draw you into its world. 

The environmental atmosphere is claustrophobic in the best sense of the word, making even moments of silence feel oppressive. The voice acting, by extension, is worthy of special praise. All significant NPCs and the player character are voiced with sincerity, emotion, and depth. 

There are no cardboard performances here. One of the standout moments early on is a monologue in which the protagonist recalls her past and her mother, a scene heavily supported by a combination of outstanding vocal work and foreboding atmospheric music.

Speaking of music, the soundtrack is a treasure. Composed by Christos Antoniou of Septicflesh, it is orchestral, gothic, and dark with an air of foreboding. It contains medieval court instruments blended with foreboding choirs and occasional ambient guitar or piano melodies, leading to a sense of annihilation. You will not merely hear the music—you will feel it in your bones. It sets the tone for exploration and provides the emotional punch of grand moments.

If anything's wrong with it, some of the shorter tracks are played too often in certain areas, which makes them less enjoyable to play again. Other than that, however, the soundscape is so great that it's hard to find much to complain about.

Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch is a beautiful and deeply engrossing experience that defies expectations for a small development team. It draws from both the Soulslike and Metroidvania genres, combining them into a coherent and fresh package that still manages to carve out its own identity. 

From its addictive combat, deep build options, creepy atmosphere, and tension-inducing sound design to its massive world full of hidden discoveries, the game offers so much more than its humble Kickstarter origins would suggest.

The drawbacks include recycled bosses, the lack of the option to respec, and some story clichés that don't prevent it from being genre-defining. None of these problems is enough to detract from the work that went into the game. 

With its challenging combat and atmospheric storytelling, the game offers hours of solid gameplay for dark fantasy fans. Above all, Mandragora is a labor of love, and each detail was meticulously planned—not to meet expectations but to surpass them.