I don’t think I’ve ever spent as long on the preview build of a game as I did on Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. I previewed it twice in the past year, with the last build offering a good eight hours of gameplay but with three different classes and a good few secrets and optional routes peppered throughout. Coming back to the full game for review, but now with the other three classes unlocked and a handful of additions that weren’t in the working build, like a character-centric stat tracker and a much improved map, I fell in love with Primal Game Studio’s Soulslike Metroidvania all over again.
At its core it shares obvious DNA with Ska Studios’ Salt games, specifically Salt & Sanctuary. It’s less parry-focused, as only the sword and board Vanguard class can really make use of a shield, instead subscribing to the Dead Cells method of i-frame dodges and back attacks. Enemies typically come at you from either side, with very few dangers moving in from above. As a counter to this, Mandragora’s combat is largely up close and personal, with no bows, guns or crossbows. Ranged damage is delivered by way of the four magic-based classes that wield Fire, Chaos, Astral Magic, and natural Wyld magic.
As an Inquisitor who has fallen out of favour with the clearly tyrannical King-Priest of Faelduum, you’re initially tasked with hunting down the Witch of Gravesend Swamp. In this world, Witches are like supervillains and must be eradicated at all costs. Before long, however, you’ll start to realise that not everything is quite as it seems. The story is decent, with the usual pacing issues that arise from the genre. You’re encouraged to backtrack and explore so much that hours and hours can pass between narrative developments, and it soon becomes all so much background noise regardless of the calibre of the writing – and Mandragora is no The Witcher 3. Dialogue is delivered in a hodgepodge of dialects and styles, with anachronisms and odd colloquialisms all over the place. It’s not bad by any metric, but it’s not super memorable either.
Thankfully the campaign is, sending you through a variety of environments from swamps and forests to vampire castles and ancient dungeons. As you traverse the world you’ll slowly build up a caravan of NPCs who’ll gather around the titular Witch Tree, a safe place in the wilderness where you can return at will to buy gear and consumables, craft items, or grow seeds in the Alchemist’s garden. A blacksmith and tailor take care of the gear required for each class, while a cook offers food buffs, a goldworker crafts rings, and an enchanter can enhance your armour and weapons or sell valuable relics through which to channel magic. These characters also offer backstory and context for the world, with Gerald the scoundrel adding detail to your area map and offering a full bestiary cataloguing every enemy and boss.
Skills for each class are learned or purchased from set locations and vendors, and you can equip any combination of 5 (there are 6 slots, but one is usually reserved for your base attack). As is par for the course, these attacks pull from either Adrenaline for melee characters or Mana for the mages. The early game has something of a resource problem, if I’m brutally honest, as mana potions can be hard to come by unless you buy the next-to-useless cheap potions. When you find the Alchemist you can craft them, as well as various oils and tinctures to buff your stats or damage and defence, or the Cook can make meals that add passive regeneration, but mages simply burn through Mana at a rate of knots and even hitting all the relevant nodes on the Talent Tree won’t boost it that much.
This is largely because Mandragora simply has so many stats and attributes to balance. Enemies hit fast and hard so you need damage mitigation, which often means heavier armour and, unless you’re playing the Vanguard, your equip load limits will cripple your movement. It’s not entirely imbalanced, but it took me until around level 40 to finally feel comfortable with the build I had on my Flameweaver. At level 25 you can unlock any of the other 5 Talent Trees and start essentially multiclassing, but this dilutes the class you started with and makes it harder to min/max your efficiency there.
Enemies only respawn when you rest or die, though, so it’s possible to clear out an area, learn where all the traps and pitfalls are, and then explore at your leisure. You can only level up at Rest spots, and death will drop you Essence, necessitating some tense corpse runs, but the movement is a joy. You’ll eventually unlock a number of traversal options such as a grappling hook and double-jump, which gradually open up new areas. Later in the game you’ll be able to use a Witch Lantern to enter the dark space between worlds and explore a whole new dimension filled with dangers, where even standing still too long will kill you. Here you’re encouraged to spend your Essence and find rare Mandragora roots to make yourself stronger in this other realm.
Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is visually quite arresting at times. There’s something about it that reminds me of No Rest for the Wicked, or even Trine, with cartoony characters and wonderfully effective lighting. The musical score is also great, evoking the necessary ambience without being overbearing. For fans of 2D action adventure games or Metroidvanias specifically, it’s an absolute blast, offering a comparatively massive campaign with alternate routes, multiple classes, and a variety of secrets, hidden areas, and optional bosses. The difficulty feels skewed occasionally, even when you can tweak sliders that reduce enemy health and damage by 30%, but with a story that is happy to take a backseat to exploring its dangerous, beautiful world, Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree delivers everything a fan of the genre could want.
