Mandragora combines the best parts of an RPG and a Metroidvania

Mandragora is the story of an inquisitor on a hunt for a witch, who learns that not everything is as it seems. Mandragora isn’t a well-known game, but I had so much fun playing the title. Throughout the last few years, I discovered my love for metroidvanias, playing titles like Hollow Knight, Nine Sols, Ender Magnolia, and Ori and the Will of the Wisp. And while I loved these titles, my true heart lies with role-playing games (RPGs) like Skyrim and Dark Souls. 

Mandragora cleverly combines some of the best parts of an RPG and a Metroidvania. RPG tropes include amazing talent trees, cool-looking weapons, combined with Metroidvania-esque maps, puzzles, and retracing your steps with new movement abilities.

In Mandragora, players can create their inquisitor with a few customization options. The character creator doesn’t have many choices regarding skin colour, hairstyles, and body types, but there are six classes to choose from.

These classes include Vanguard, a melee-tank class, the only ones who can use a shield; Flameweaver, a battle mage class that uses strength-based attacks and fire magic; and Spellbinder, which focuses on purple chaos magic and is a very hard-hitting, glass-cannon build. There’s also Nightshade, a rogue class that uses poison and traps, Wyldwarden that uses vines, thorns, leaves and lightning to defeat their foes, and lastly, the Vindicator uses Astral and Holy magic and is also a tanky build that self-heals.

While each of these classes is super cool and you can combine them, the talent tree is the best RPG aspect of this title. The talent tree offers passive aspects like increasing strength, dexterity, vigour and more. Among these were the travel nodes that grant plus one to a given stat. Tri-nodes are also pretty similar, but they allow you to upgrade three times in the node category, like damage, defence, or utility.

But the crème de la crème are Keystones, which grant build-enabling passives, each is unique per class. I loved Keystones because they offered unique abilities. I picked the Wyldwarden class, so my Keystones offered an ability that sent out a green spirit raven to attack enemies, or every few hits, electricity would cover my sword, or certain spells would cause my enemies to get poisoned.

I found these passive abilities pretty fun to mess around with and meshed well with the active skills or spells, depending on your character. For the Wyldwarden, there were spells like the ability to summon a green spirit wolf that follows me around, another that used chain lightning like I was a Sith Lord. I also mixed skills and spells for the Vindicator class, like a spell that summoned two hammers made of light to circle and attack enemies.

I loved these RPG aspects in a Metroidvania because they bring more depth into a game like this. However, the title has a lot more going on than just passive and active features. I thought Mandragora had an interesting story, as well. The beginning cinematic is beautifully rendered in a paint-like style. It showcases how the King Priest tortures a witch at the stake; and the inquisitor couldn’t stand for it any longer and takes matters into his own hands, killing the witch. The King Priest, angry at the inquisitor, sends them on a mission to kill the witch’s sister.

Note: some light spoilers for the story follow.

However, the character starts hearing a voice in their head, leading them to question certain aspects of the witch-hunting inquisition. After defeating some challenging bosses, you learn that the voice in your head is a witch named Mandragora, and that the King Priest is a creator from another world who killed all the dragons in the world and pretends to be priestly to hunt down all the witches who are the only ones who can stop them.

I thought the story was thrilling, and there were a lot of ups and downs, and even dialogue options for the character. You also meet many interesting characters that provide you with the ability to craft and upgrade weapons, enchantments, clothing, and more. They also provide you with side quests and missions, some are to chase down monsters, others to look for certain items in the world, and more. While the side quests from your new friends can get boring, some mysteries throughout the game are pretty interesting, like a treasure map that doesn’t provide a lot of information, or trying to figure out a murder and more. I enjoyed many of the side quests, but I liked some aspects of the title considerably less.

My character used mana for his spells, but getting potions to refill my mana for most of the game was a pain in the ass. I would have to buy them from someone, and it required selling most of the items I found. At some point, I found an alchemist who allowed me to craft mana potions, but even finding crafting items for the mana potions was a little annoying. I managed to get a little system going, which was helpful, but eventually, I found someone who let me buy craft ingredients in bulk, which made using the alchemist a lot easier.

I needed these mana potions to keep fighting the incredibly challenging bosses throughout the game.

Mandragora had some of the most challenging bosses I’ve fought in a long time. I really enjoyed playing against some of them, and most of them had awesome designs. I was annoyed that some would repeat, such as the oversized rat, walking mandrake, and a giant-like monster. Still, otherwise they were cool, like a half-spider humanoid, a werewolf or a witch controlling marionettes and using them to tell a story during your fight. Combined with spells, passives, an assortment of weapons, and dodging mechanics, I liked the combat in Mandragora. It helped when I had to fight some of these bosses repeatedly because they were very difficult.

Mandragora is a side scroller, but since it’s 2.5D, it offers more depth than others in this category. The world has a lot of details, in both the foreground and background. The music in the background is also lovely and calming, until you get into a boss fight, one of which had a choir singing in the background, amping you up before combat.

I’m still working through my game, but my PlayStation tells me I’m 80 per cent through the title.

Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is available on PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.