Info about Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree: Official game description: Base and Digital Deluxe Edition Rewards ======================================= About the Game ============== **Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is a dark fantasy action RPG featuring 40+ hours of gameplay, with more to explore in New Game Plus.** Create your Inquisitor from one of six unique Classes, and wield blades and magic to battle nightmarish creatures. Craft hundreds of weapons and items, and learn powerful Talents to define your combat style. Explore a vast, interconnected world and unearth its secrets across 60 quests that will push your skills to their limits. **DEFY YOUR FATE** ------------------ Faelduum teeters on the edge of ruin. Dark forces seep into its reality through tears in the fabric of existence, unleashing monsters upon it. You are an Inquisitor. Tasked with rooting out heretics and enforcing the King Priest’s will, your devotion has never wavered… until now. One fleeting moment of defiance sets you on an irreversible path that leads to the heart of Faelduum’s unraveling fate. From the towering majesty of Crimson City, through festering darkness, and into the horrors of Entropy... what will you become at journey’s end? **SUCCUMB TO A DARK FANTASY WORLD** ----------------------------------- Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree features over 40 hours of gameplay with full English voice acting. Fall into a sinister, branching tale woven by Brian Mitsoda, set in a dark fantasy world stunningly realized in a rich painterly art style, and soundtracked by the haunting original compositions of Christos Antoniou (Septicflesh) and the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague. 75 unique locations await your discovery, with new secrets, hidden treasures, and intriguing characters hidden across Faelduum’s vast expanse. **MASTER SOULSLIKE COMBAT** --------------------------- Choose from one of six unique Classes, including the Vanguard, Flameweaver, Spellbinder, Nightshade, Wyldwarden, and Vindicator. Whether by blade or magic, master your craft in brutal battles. Combat is simple to grasp with nuanced depth—dodge, parry, and strike with perfect timing to avoid a pitiful fate. Hunt in pursuit of wild wolves, vampires, and a whole bestiary crawling with relentless creatures and nightmarish bosses. **SLAY YOUR WAY** ----------------- The road ahead is yours to pave. Create your Inquisitor and develop them through six Talent Trees, with hundreds of skill and combat upgrades available. Craft powerful weapons and gear to define your playstyle, die less, and deal death faster. If you’re new to action RPG or Soulslike games, you can also tune the difficulty to your skill level in the settings. When your journey is over, restart as a stronger, wiser, deadlier Inquisitor with more challenges that await in New Game Plus. Release date: 17 Apr, 2025 Categories: Action RPG, Soulslike Combat, Metroidvania, Exploration, Character Progression, Crafting, Resource Management, Action Platformer - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Great mix of genres (weight 0.95): The game effectively blends Metroidvania and Souls-like elements, offering a balanced and enjoyable experience. It encourages exploration, provides a lengthy adventure, and incorporates RPG depth through its skill tree and character progression systems. - Visually stunning, immersive atmosphere (weight 0.89): The game features stunning visuals, a beautiful art style, and a captivating atmosphere. Reviewers praised the high-quality graphics, well-chosen voice actors, and overall polished presentation, making it visually impressive and immersive. - Well-executed, enjoyable combat system (weight 0.78): The combat system is well-executed, responsive, and enjoyable, with a good balance of challenge and reward. Enemies and bosses are well-designed, and the controls are smooth, making combat feel satisfying and engaging. - Excellent music and audio design (weight 0.72): The game features excellent music and audio design that complements the gameplay and enhances the atmosphere. The soundtrack is praised for its quality and atmospheric contribution. - Unique and challenging bosses (weight 0.68): The game features well-designed and challenging bosses with unique mechanics. The difficulty is balanced, and players can level up to overcome challenges. - Well-optimized, runs great on SteamDeck (weight 0.64): The game is well-optimized and runs smoothly on various platforms, including Steam Deck. It maintains a stable frame rate and offers online save functionality. - Solid crafting system (weight 0.64): The game includes a solid crafting system that adds depth to the gameplay experience. The build crafting is good, allowing for further customization. - Comparable to other genre favorites (weight 0.59): The game is compared favorably to other similar titles like Salt and Sanctuary, indicating its quality and appeal to fans of the genre. It retains positive aspects from demo and preview versions. - Lives up to expectations, enjoyable (weight 0.53): The game lives up to expectations set by the demo and is enjoyable to play, especially in the early stages. Reviewers found the game to be a pleasant surprise and worth the money. - Customizable, distinct personality (weight 0.45): The game offers a decent mix of elements from various sources, allowing players to customize their characters and play in their own styles. It has a distinct personality and offers lots of great options for customization. - Deep character progression, customizable difficulty (weight 0.33): The game offers a deep and customizable character progression system with extensive skill trees and diverse classes. The difficulty is adjustable, catering to both casual and hardcore players, allowing for varied builds and playstyles. - Interesting story, voiced NPCs (weight 0.08): The game features an interesting and engaging story with well-voiced NPCs. The plot is coherent and adds to the overall experience. Common complaints: - Clunky, unintuitive control scheme (weight 0.4): The game's controls are frequently described as clunky, unresponsive, and unintuitive. Some reviewers also noted input lag and awkward button mappings, making the game difficult to play. The lack of true analog movement on controllers was also criticized. - Weak magic damage and mobility (weight 0.36): Magic damage is weak, making it inefficient against enemies. The mage's equipment is too heavy, limiting mobility and spell usage. - Uninspired and passive skill tree (weight 0.35): The skill tree is extensive but offers limited interaction and few actual skills to learn. Many perks are just stat increases, and some stats lack tooltips to indicate scaling effects. - Lacks ultrawide monitor support (weight 0.1): The game lacks ultrawide monitor support, displaying black bars on the sides instead of filling the entire screen. Some reviewers found this unacceptable in 2025, especially since the developers have stated it is a deliberate design choice. - Rare gear and limited loot (weight 0.06): Loots no longer drop from ordinary mobs, only materials. Gear is rare, with only one piece found per hour of gameplay. Materials dropped by enemies require finding specific NPCs to use, hindering progression. - Unrewarding and hindered exploration (weight 0.05): Exploration is often unrewarding, yielding mostly crafting materials and blueprints instead of immediate character power upgrades. The map design relies heavily on locked doors, hindering exploration and progression. - Excessive and jarring dialogue (weight 0.05): Excessive cutscenes and dialogue disrupt the game's flow. The protagonist's dialogue feels jarring and inconsistent, and the characters' mouths don't move during dialogues, which breaks immersion. - Localization and translation issues (weight 0.03): The game has localization issues, mainly in the system text. The Chinese localization is fragmented, with mismatched title screen fonts and machine-translated text. - Spongy enemies, fragile character (weight 0.03): Enemies become very spongy if you lack sufficient damage output. The character is very fragile, dying quickly in combat. Gameplay feedback: - Large, interconnected world, vague map (weight 0.06): The game features a large, interconnected world with a Castlevania-style map that only shows room outlines. Exploration is encouraged through Metroidvania-style map unlocks and hints about required abilities to access new areas. - Abilities gated behind bosses/quests (weight 0.04): New skills and magic abilities are primarily unlocked by defeating bosses or completing quests. This progression system ties character development to exploration and overcoming challenges within the game world. - Basic combat and platforming (weight 0.04): Some reviewers found the combat and platforming mechanics to be basic and uninspired. The limited variety in weapon types and similar move sets within the same weapon category contribute to this feeling. - Stamina management, limited resources (weight 0.03): The game incorporates stamina management, where actions like attacking and dodging consume stamina, especially challenging early on. The Estus flask system is limited, and magic usage is restricted by consumable blue flasks. - Confusing skill/weapon systems (weight 0.03): Some players found the game's skill and weapon combination systems confusing and difficult to understand. This lack of clarity can hinder character building and combat strategy. - Simple, repetitive combat (weight 0.03): Combat is described as involving basic combos, dodging, stamina management, and magic usage, primarily consisting of slashing, rolling, and using a laser ability. This suggests a relatively simple and repetitive combat system. - 2.5D perspective (weight 0.02): The game uses a 2.5D perspective, with 2D movement and 3D rendered objects. This creates a side-scrolling experience with a side-mounted camera. - Standard Soulslike elements (weight 0.02): The game includes common Soulslike elements such as shrines as respawn points, single-opening doors, bonfires, and death resulting in soul loss. These features contribute to the game's overall difficulty and sense of progression. - Limited, vague map pins (weight 0.01): The game allows players to place a limited number of vague pins on the map, requiring good memory to use effectively. This suggests a need for better map tools or more detailed pin options. - Unclear ability function (weight 0.01): One ability's function isn't immediately clear. This suggests a lack of intuitive design or insufficient explanation within the game. - Many achievements to unlock (weight 0.01): The game features 86 achievements to unlock. This provides completionists with additional goals and challenges to pursue. - Instant death gimmicks (weight 0.01): The game includes instant death gimmicks, but they are not considered unreasonable. This suggests a level of challenge that is fair and avoidable. - Specific farming strategy suggested (weight 0.01): A reviewer suggests a specific early-game farming strategy for physical classes. This indicates a potential imbalance or optimal strategy that players may want to exploit. - Long roll invincibility frames (weight 0.01): Rolling has long invincibility frames. This can make dodging easier and more forgiving. - Skills have no cooldown (weight 0.01): Skills have no cooldown. This can lead to spamming abilities and potentially unbalanced gameplay. - Unlimited potions (weight 0.01): There are unlimited health and mana potions from vendors. This can make the game easier and reduce the need for resource management. - Early-game buff items (weight 0.01): Various buff items can be crafted early in the game. This allows players to enhance their abilities and stats from the beginning. - Many tutorials available (weight 0.01): Many tutorials are available. This helps players learn the game's mechanics and features. - Pets are available (weight 0.01): Pets can be enabled in the settings. This is a minor customization option that may appeal to some players. - Transformations via tailoring (weight 0.01): Transformations can be done in tailoring. This suggests a customization option related to character appearance or abilities. - Available in 12 languages (weight 0.01): The game is available in up to 12 languages, with voices in English. This makes the game accessible to a wider audience. Performance notes: - Blurry visuals, difficult settings (weight 0.03): Some players recommend lowering post-processing settings to avoid a blurry visual effect, particularly around the screen edges. Additionally, some players found the game's settings difficult to adjust, suggesting a need for improved UI/UX in the settings menu. - No DS controller vibration (weight 0.02): Players have reported a lack of vibration feedback when using a DualShock (DS) controller. This missing feature detracts from the overall immersion and tactile experience of the game. - UI elements move erratically (weight 0.02): Some players have reported that UI elements move around the screen on their own, which can be a significant distraction and hinder the player's ability to navigate the game's menus and interface effectively. - False positive malware detection (weight 0.01): Malwarebytes flags the game's executable as a false positive. This can be alarming for users, but it does not indicate a real security threat. Recommendations: - Generally recommended, with caveats (weight 0.46): Many reviewers recommend the game, citing its solid gameplay and enjoyable experience. Some suggest it's GOTY-worthy or a must-buy, while others temper expectations due to price or technical issues. A demo is available to help players decide. - Appeals to niche genre fans (weight 0.17): The game is frequently recommended for fans of specific subgenres like Metroidvanias, Soulslikes, and 'darkness' genre games. Reviewers often draw comparisons to titles like Hollow Knight, Dark Souls, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Salt & Sanctuary to give players a sense of what to expect. - Consider waiting for patches (weight 0.01): A few reviews advise waiting for patches to address minor bugs and quality-of-life issues. This suggests the game is playable but could benefit from further polish to improve the overall experience. - Improve controller vibration (weight 0.01): One review mentions the need for better controller vibration optimization. This is a specific, actionable piece of feedback that could enhance the player experience. - Denuvo removed post-release (weight 0.01): One review praises the developers for removing Denuvo anti-tamper technology, even for those who pirate the game. This is a very specific point that is unlikely to be a major factor for most players. Other player notes: - Dark, gritty art style. (weight 0.05): The game features a dark fantasy narrative and art style reminiscent of titles like 'No Rest for the Wicked' and 'Diablo 4'. While the art style is distinctive, its darker, grittier aesthetic may not appeal to all players. - Inaccessible areas are frequent. (weight 0.02): Players frequently encounter locked doors and inaccessible areas. This can lead to frustration and impede exploration, suggesting a need for more open level design or clearer indicators of progression paths. - Frequent status effect application. (weight 0.02): The game heavily utilizes status effects, which are applied frequently. This may significantly impact combat and character progression, requiring players to adapt to constant changes in their character's condition. - Potential review bias exists. (weight 0.01): The reviewer expresses a concern about potential bias in how domestic versus foreign games are reviewed. This point is more about the reviewer's perspective on the industry rather than specific feedback on the game itself. Emotions: No emotions}