If you asked ChatGPT to combine all the most popular action-RPG mechanics in the hopes of creating a single game with broad appeal, you might end up with something as regrettably unfocused as Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. This 2D sidescroller borrows from soulslikes, metroidvanias, platformers, and more, but it only ever achieves a moderate level of success with any of them and is spread woefully thin in the process. You can see a glimmer of potential in its combat, but that’s immediately undermined by one-dimensional, repetitious enemies with easily evaded attacks; The setting and characters start out intriguing, but quickly devolve into a chain of predictable tropes; And initial lure of running back through previous areas with new abilities becomes monotonous once you get about halfway through and realize how shallow this map really is. None of these missteps are so grievously bad that I outright regretted my time dodge-rolling around the world of Faelduum (apart from the combat), and the deep RPG options the six interesting character classes, dense skill trees, and in-depth equipment and crafting systems provide went quite a long way toward keeping me invested, but this still an otherwise underwhelming adventure in most aspects.
Mandragora’s mix of familiar ideas manages to stand out as its own kind of thing, but no matter what general label you decide to put on it, the important part is that you’re going to be swinging melee weapons, dodge rolling away from attacks, slinging spells, and swinging across gaps with a grapple hook. As you do, you’ll get to know this pessimistic and creepy world, which has been overrun by evil creatures who have left humanity cowering behind city walls. You play as an inquisitor who is sent out into the world in search of evils to kill, all while the creepy voice of a creature you sympathy-murdered whispers things in your head (long story). Unfortunately, that interesting starting point evaporates into a series of extremely lame anti-twists and cliches. For example, there’s not one, but two sections where you meet a character who is obviously the person you’ve been hunting down, but your dumb character believes them when they deny it…only for them to completely shockingly reveal they misled you less than an hour later.
It’s really too bad, because in my early hours I was quite intrigued by the bizarre dark fantasy world filled with 10-foot tall witches, dangerous monsters, and a mysterious cosmic energy called Entropy that seemed like it was going to be a really big problem. There are some great characters to meet too, like the completely unhinged jewel collector, Yrsa, who I always enjoyed bantering with. But that writing, not to mention voice acting, is nowhere near consistent, and you spend a lot of your time hearing from various bad guys about how you can’t possibly defeat them as a mere human. Sounds like someone received a word-a-day calendar filled with bad guy cliches for their birthday!
If there’s one thing Mandragora is consistent about, it is its extremely shallow combat, which pits you against sluggish soldiers and skeletons with hilariously obvious windup animations, pushover rats, and flying bats that are there to annoy you more than anything else. All of them have you simply dodging back and forth each time they take a swing, then getting a few hits in before doing so again. Boss fights are even worse, as most only have three or four unique attacks they hopelessly spam, many of which appear five or more times across the 25-hour campaign, making them feel like rank annoyances that completely betray the difficulty they’re clearly going for. Dying in Mandragora therefore usually has more to do with impatience in trying to get through a certain section of samey enemies or repeated bosses than actual challenge. There are moments where the combat’s promise comes through and you get an energizing 2D duel, like when you come across a new minion with a fresh bag of tricks or during a few of the bigger, more unique boss fights. But I mostly found myself starved for those encounters and immediately upset when they passed and I went straight back to fighting bland suits of armor for a couple more hours.
Platforming primarily acts as the most minor of breaks between fights.
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The main things that make combat more bearable are the skill trees and RPG mechanics you build up and customize along the way, which have some pretty neat options that at least offer new ways to defeat that fourth giant poisonous rat boss. I spent most of my time as a fast-moving assassin with poisonous daggers, teleporting in to close the distance with my enemies, but there’s also spell slinging options and tanky sword-and-board builds, plus the option to cross-pollinate into other skill trees to make yourself a little more well-rounded. For example, I ended up leveling my assassin into my two neighboring magical skill trees to diversify the types of damage I could deal, since poison wasn’t always effective when fighting the sixth giant poisonous rat boss (they seriously like reusing that boss). You’re also able to find and craft loot, tweaking its stats with runic enchantments and all that usual RPG goodness, and that level of buildcrafting depth is one of the ways in which Mandragora stands out.
As a sidescroller, there’s also a fair bit of platforming and secret hunting to be done, but these sections have mostly acted as the most minor of breaks in between combat sequences. There aren’t any puzzles to solve, and the handful of sections that have you dodging traps are mostly extremely obvious obstacles where giant blocks slam up and down with basically no chance of actually crushing you unless you straight up aren’t paying attention. In true metroidvania fashion, you’ll find plenty of spots that are just out of reach until you unlock a certain upgrade, but this too is quite shallow – there’s only a grapple hook, a double jump, and a glide, all of which are spread super far apart.
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You’ll see about a hundred opportunities to use a double jump before you get it way too late in the adventure, and not in a tempting, “I can’t wait to get up there” sort of way. The glide is particularly hilarious as you don’t get it until the very last hour, by which point you’ve got little incentive to go back through every area looking for extras before heading into the final stretch. I generally enjoy backtracking for secrets in games like this, but after seeing eight-hours worth of new levels before getting the next upgrade, it’s a bit exhausting to consider retracing all of that just to get a few upgrade materials, especially when you’d be subjecting yourself to the same tedious combat encounters you’ve already completed a bunch of times.
Mandragora also suffers from some mild technical issues. Whenever I played for long stretches at a time, the framerate would gradually begin to tank until it was nearly unplayable. It never outright crashed, but I got to the point where resetting my PlayStation was the only real option, and that would reliably fix the problem for the next six-to-eight hours. I don’t imagine going for that long in one sitting will be the way most people play, though, and I only ever encountered the most minor of problems outside of these marathons, so this might not be an issue if you aren’t an absolute goblin like me.
