I am really hesitant to classify this game as a metroidvania. The game has some key elements suggesting it, but the progression feels more in-line with traditional, linear action RPG. Nonetheless, Mandragora: Whispers Of The Witch Tree is still a decent soulsvania. Combat is solid even though it breaks no new ground. The Talent Trees have some interesting connections between each class but the nodes and level requirement are really tight. If you like Salt & Sanctuary, chances are you might also enjoy this one.


Compliments

• The art style is impressive. Each biome is crafted with dynamic background and fantastic lighting. It feels really lively.
  
• Everything is smoothly animated and well-telegraphed. From characters' movement to background props, the animation is fluid and pleasing to look at.
  
• NPC's close-up face during dialogues may seem uncanny at first, but it does a great job at helping me memorize characters.
  
• Merchants in the hub world not only offers a wide range of supplies and equipment, their respective shop upgrades also provide some nice bonuses for exploration.
  
• Surprised to find out all the NPCs are voice-acted, and good performance as well.
  
• You can pet those cats.

1. Combat & Arsenals
Solid, but there are some hiccups.

Like
• Like I said, combat is solid. Weapon swings feel weighty. Sound effects are on point. Protagonist's movements may feel floaty but they are responsive.
  
• You can use dodging and jumping to animation cancel pretty much everything in this game. This easily give players more control over each enemy engagement. It would surprise you how many action games don't do this.
  
• Enemies' attacks are well-telegraphed and easy to read. Boss fights have the same philosophy but crank up the intensity.
  
• A decent amount of weapons and spells to play around. Armor pieces offer several stat boosts. Through enchanting, you can add new affixes to armor, alter weapon's scaling, and apply additional elemental damage.
  
• Interestingly, using spells and skills charge your off-hand weapon skill. Catalysts can release a big aoe stun and inflict guaranteed status effect, while two-hand weapons receive additional effects on their attacks.
  
• A lot of useful consumables, potions and foods to help you survive longer.
  Dislike
  
• Light Attack and Heavy Attack should be base kits rather than occupying skill slots.
  
• There is no way to toggle your weapon between one-handed and two-handed mode. I would love to bludgeon the enemies with a great hammer while setting them ablaze with fire spells seamlessly.
  
• There is no "level up" for weapons and armors. You HAVE to replace them with later, better equipment otherwise you risk losing significant damage boost and more attributes.
  
• More weapon types would be lovely.

2. Talent Trees
Minor stat-boosting nodes connect with various passives.

Like
• I like how the talent trees are connected with each other. This design not only offers convenient ways to access passives unique to each class but also gives a subtle hint on what alternative playstyle you can mess around without respec-ing.
  
• For example, Flameweaver mainly focus on Power and Strength. With many passives favor melee attacks and survivability, you can easily crossover with Vanguard to become battle mage. Or, you can take advantage of the fact that Power is also Spellbinder primary stat and freely swap between fire and chaos spells.
  
• Alternatively, you can freely invest in any classes' talent trees outside of your starting one if you have enough points to spend.
  Dislike
  
• The essence required to level up scale way too fast. At lv.30 you need 10k essence to level up. Mind you at that level range enemies only give around hundreds of essence.
  
• I personally dislike this type of talent tree design because it limits which stat you can get. Salt & Sanctuary makes this more bearable by offer more nodes, upgradable nodes, and less cost. Sadly this game does not.

1. Platforming
I think this the weakest part of the game.

• As a side-scrolling action platformer, Mandragora doesn't present much to platform variety. It is just a simple format of jumping up and down without spicing it up with interesting mechanics.
  
• I can think of two reasons. First one is quite obvious. Most of the levels are built like straight lines. Players only need to keep going left and right to progress. There is no sense of verticality in exploration, and naturally without verticality, platforming can only resort to climb up and climb down.
  
• The other reason may result from how the game handle mobility upgrades/gating abilities. Now I think about it, it is weird the way this game organizes its progression. You get your first gating ability after completing 50% of the game, the second at 70%, and the last at 90%. With players getting abilities this late, no wonder the platforming in first few levels can't have anything too drastic.

2. Minor Complaints

• This game reuses the same elite enemies way too much and way too early.
  
• Instant-kill pitfalls. God, I hate them so much.

中文小簡評
→一款體感還不錯的類魂類銀河系惡城，說它是後者個人覺得有點牽強，畢竟整體流程玩起來更像一般動作遊戲。
→看的出來製作組在美術及動作上有下功夫，動態背景搭配浮動的光影讓每個場景格外好看；角色動作流暢自如，配音也十分到位。
→戰鬥的部分算是可圈可點，打擊感和音效還行，主角動作偶爾給人一種漂移的輕浮感，但操作起來還算靈活。
→任何動作都能用跳躍及翻滾強制動畫取消，這點不僅可以讓玩家反應及時，更能在戰鬥中掌握自己的節奏，不再只是被動地等待敵人出招，不知為何很多遊戲都不願意這樣做。
→技能樹設計別有用心，特別將配點相同職業的技能樹連在一起，這樣一來一方面除了能讓你更快速從技能樹中取得心儀的專屬被動，也能讓你在相同配置下玩點不一樣的花樣，當然你等級高配點多也能隨意選擇其他不相連的職業技能樹。
→特殊武器和遺物(在這裡是類似法仗的存在)可以透過施放技能及法術充能，充滿可以施放專屬技能，遺物大多是大範圍擊暈附加相對應屬性減益，而武器則會為普通攻擊附加額外效果。
→很多實用的消耗品可做，藥水和食物都能暫時強化角色生存力。
→遊戲提供滿多武器與裝備供你自由搭配，除了常見的武器補正外，裝備也有附加額外數值，可以透過符石附魔去加成。可惜武器和裝備都只能有一種附魔，再加上遊戲並沒有實質的「強化功能(+1, +2那類)」，導致這款配裝都是替換制，前中期的裝備很容易被後期武器數值輾壓，不換都不行，這情況在類魂及魂系中算少見的。
→輕攻擊和重攻擊不應該劃分為角色技能，應該直接融入在角色動作中。
→遊戲並沒有單手和雙手持的設定，強迫你雙手武器一定要雙手拿，單手武器一定只能搭次要配備，想要遺物混搭雙手武器就得切換整個技能組。
→可惜升級所需資源增長幅度過大過快，僅僅30等左右就需要快一萬精華才能升一等(這階段的敵人頂多就給幾百而已。
→個人不太喜歡技能樹設計，配點順序綁死節點路徑，無法彈性增加。
→跳臺部分，這款的體驗對我來說算是比較低階。原因有兩個：其一關卡過於線性，許多場景都是以橫向卷軸的方式通過，少有縱向通關的需求；其二關鍵技能給的過晚，遊戲的勾鎖、二段跳及滑翔皆為中後期才會取得。這兩點導致前期的跳台欠缺變化性，設計思路容易被綁死。
→重複利用小Boss的頻率過多，時機過早。
→真的會被即死陷阱氣死....

Mandragora is a Metroidvania souls-like similar to games like Salt & Sanctuary and Salt & Sacrifice, where it follows traditional souls-like core principals but adapt it into a side scrolling platfromer like the the Metroidvania genre.

There are a lot of things I like about this game but sadly there are far too many glaring issues I have with this game that I simply cannot recommend it. Lets first start off with the good things I enjoy about this game.

Pros-

Mandragora has an alright story, nothing ground breaking but still enjoyable enough. I like the theme of the player being part of the Inquisition, a holy order of elite soldiers who serve the man known as the King Priest. From the start of the game you can already tell that he is not a good guy which contradicts his title as the "King Priest". The combat of the game is not the worst I've encountered in a souls-like, but it mainly boils down to a hit and run tactic which kind of bogs down the flow of the game. Also think the 3D designers did an amazing job making cool looking armour and weapons and I love the class system in this game, Vindicator is a real blast to play.

I also appreciate the Transmogrification system as it allows you to transmog your armour so that you can look cool, that way you don't have to compromise your armour stats for fashion as now with Mandragora's transmog feature you can look cool and still have armour that fits your build. A really thoughtful part is that the transmog doesn't override the armour piece but instead overrides the slot itself, meaning when you swap to a new armour set you don't have to re-transmogrify you gear again.

Cons-

Now as to why I'm leaving a bad review. First order of business, Mandragora is probably one of the stingiest souls-likes I have ever played, Mandragora starts the player off with only 2 healing flasks, after sinking the first 2 hours of the game I was only given one extra flask. Comparing this to other souls-likes and the Dark Souls and Elden Ring games, with the same amount of time spent you should already have around 7 to 8 flasks, so in order to compensate for this, the game wants you to spend in game gold to buy healing items similar to the healing vials from Blood Borne only that it heals you for a very pethetic amount.

Other then those vials there are also bandages that you have to craft and they function similarly to the Life Gems from Dark Souls 2, and once again they regenerate your HP at a snails pace. Secondly is the placement of Witch Stones, Mandragora's version of Bonfires. Mandragora's Witch Stones face an opposite problem that Bonfires in Dark Souls 3 face, back in DS3 many players complained about how some Bonfires were placed too close to one another, a good example would be the Bonfires located at the Lothric Castle Library and the Dragon Slayer Boss arena bonfire. Mandragora's Witch Stones are placed way too far apart making many of the runs to boss arenas absolutely abysmal, this also ties in with the low amount of flasks given because if you fight your way to the boss room you are likely to run out of healing flasks by the time you reach the boss you are left with little to no more flasks left, your only option is to run past all the enemies and beeline straight to the boss.

Next problem with the game are the bosses. Mandragora has very few actual bosses, most of its bosses are just mini bosses which are either reused mini bosses or reskinned with a slightly changed move set. Many of these bosses follow the philosophy of quantity over quality, as many of these bosses love spawning a bunch of trash mobs to help them against the player. So basically a good 30% to nearly 50% are these reused mini bosses that are just gank squads, and each time u encounter them they get a bigger health bar. One great example are the Grave Tender mini bosses and the Ferryman mini boss, both of them are just reskins of one another and use similar move sets of just one scratch attack, a swing attack, a slam attack that causes a AOE wave, and lastly summoning a bunch of zombies to crowd and block the player. So to put it simply, bosses in Mandragora are lazily made and it just boils down to gank squads, even some of the actual bosses uses the gank squad mechanic, like the Necromancer boss.

Final thoughts-

I think Mandragora has the potential to be a decent souls-like, but unless some sort of major update finds a way to remedy some of these issues. Mandragora is souls-like that I would only recommend if you are prepared to deal with the frustrations I mentioned above. A souls-like that I would confidently recommend to spend your time and money on over Mandragora is No Rest For The Wicked. A much better indie souls-like that combines Souls-likes with ARPGs like Diablo, PoE, and Last Epoch.

I think the game is great. Really good atmosphere, challenging and with great music.
But after a recent patch my 60 hours save file and a 20 hours save file got corrupted and deleted.
And all I got from support was "Sorry, nothing we can do."

There is no way I am recommending this game if your progress is at risk with each update.