KickStarter Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree - story-driven side-scroller action RPG with Brian Mitsoda as narrative lead

[Jinn]

This one gives me heavy Vigil: The Longest Night vibes, and I enjoyed that quite a bit.

Yeah, I agree that Vigil might be the closest comparison. Don't know why I didn't think of that initially. Though I think even Vigil had a more intriguing setting and lore than this. Gameplay wasn't as good as Mandragora's though.

 

[flushfire]

So after finishing the game twice, I changed my mind with some of the impressions I had earlier:

The crafting isn't as bad as I first thought it was. I just happened to pick up a class without buyable stuff early on. Overall, there is an okay mix of craftable, lootable & buyable equips. Unfortunately, not in the first third of the game.

The passive tree doesn't have game changing stuff, but combined with skills, there's enough for a variety of builds. Pacing's still ass though.

I still hate the level design in some parts, especially the entropy levels. They're designed like a boss: have a high chance of dying until you memorize. Bunch of disappearing ledges combined with blind jumps all under a timer. At least they're short. But outside of those there's some nice visuals here and there, and plenty of well-hidden secrets to find.

I like the responsiveness of the combat. They did a decent job with weight, stagger and poise. Although blocking is terribly balanced to the point of uselessness. A bit repetitive, there's not much outside of a 3-hit light combo and 1-2 skills but IG that's pretty much how many soulslikes are. Some mini bosses do repeat, but the actual bosses are varied and challenging enough.

One thing I wished they'd done is give the movement abilities earlier and incorporate them into bosses like other metroidvanias. They give out the movement abilities too late IMO. Overall, this game ended up being good enough for me to want more of it.

 

[Sibelius]

Been playing this a bit more, mixing in sessions when I am exhausted with Khazan.

I'm level 52, have focused on the Vanguard class and dipped into the Assassin tree for some of the easy to grab generic, non-dagger specific, melee skills. As flushfire says, there only seems to be a single weapon specific skill and 2 or 3 generic melee skills, but you can easily spec into certain magic trees and take the passive/utility skills that don't require a relic (this games' catalyst) in the offhand. The path to these skills also has universally useful stats like Endurance and Vigor, so you won't be gimping a melee build by being forced to take magic focused stats. Quite clever that, but I would still prefer to allocate stats myself rather than the POE style skill tree they went for.

I quite like the crafting system and levelling your crafters, one of the very rare games I have seen that in, I remember SWTOR 1.0 and maybe Guijan 3 having similar systems. There was a post earlier in the thread about having to craft loads of shit you don't need to level the crafters up and I agree with that criticism, at least you can sell the stuff you have just crafted (for a loss).

The game seems to have taken inspiration from Lords of the Fallen 2023 as well, you get a lamp that lets you enter rifts to another dimension. Have only done a couple of those, but they seem to have varied purposes, you have to do these sections to enter certain parts of the map to progress the main story and they are also used for timed challenges for loot and special items. The rift sections change up the gameplay a bit and keep things fresh. These sections are all hard timed, as in you die if you don't complete the objective in time, so not like LotF in that respect where it just gets progressively harder and tougher mobs spawn if you stay too long in the umbral realm.

I've been favouring mobility over protection in my playthrough so far and it seems to be working fine. Class skill trees force you into taking various class related stats to get to the skills, so for a Vanguard you will always have enough vigor to equip heavier armor if need be and stay reasonably mobile. Its decline that they don't seem to trust players to be able to build their characters themselves, there is even a respec option that looks completely free to use, so no idea why they didn't keep it more open ended.

Bosses have been pretty disappointing so far, there are repeating mini bosses as well. On the positive side, I just done the Braer Castle area and the Marionette boss fight was excellent, best so far by a distance. Beat the Tome Mistress as well, the runback was an interesting addition, have seen loads of bitches crying about it online, obviously not DS2 veterans.

Art direction and graphics are nice, nothing mind blowing but competent dark fantasy visuals. VO is serviceable, dialogue is quite sparse, but well written with no modernity I have come across so far. The jeweler seems to have had a lesbian relationship with a dryad, so some interspecies gayness like BG3 I guess. One thing that does annoy me is every set of armor and many weapons so far seem to have a purple, pink and light blue colour scheme . Thankfully there is a transmog system so you can look however you want.

 

[cvv]

This one gives me heavy Vigil: The Longest Night vibes, and I enjoyed that quite a bit.

Yeah, I agree that Vigil might be the closest comparison.

Ouch, not good. Tried Vigil a few months back and abandoned it within an hour. Same as Salt&Sanctuary.

Weirdly I've found while I absolutely love metroidvanias I don't like 2D soulslikes (with only light vania elements and basic platforming) at all. Suppose Mandragora is another one of those. Too bad.

 

[Sibelius]

This one gives me heavy Vigil: The Longest Night vibes, and I enjoyed that quite a bit.

Yeah, I agree that Vigil might be the closest comparison.

Ouch, not good. Tried Vigil a few months back and abandoned it within an hour. Same as Salt&Sanctuary.

Weirdly I've found while I absolutely love metroidvanias I don't like 2D soulslikes (with only light vania elements and basic platforming) at all. Suppose Mandragora is another one of those. Too bad.

Yeah, the platforming is very light in terms of challenge , they even have a little (non-optional) sparkle effect on ledges to indicate which are usable, kind of like this game's white paint. I've modded it out with Reshade as it annoys me quite a bit. I've lost some point lighting as a result, but the trade off is worth it for me.

 

[notpl]

This one gives me heavy Vigil: The Longest Night vibes, and I enjoyed that quite a bit.

Yeah, I agree that Vigil might be the closest comparison.

Ouch, not good. Tried Vigil a few months back and abandoned it within an hour. Same as Salt&Sanctuary.

Weirdly I've found while I absolutely love metroidvanias I don't like 2D soulslikes (with only light vania elements and basic platforming) at all. Suppose Mandragora is another one of those. Too bad.

Yeah, the platforming is very light in terms of challenge , they even have a little (non-optional) sparkle effect on ledges to indicate which are usable, kind of like this game's white paint. I've modded it out with Reshade as it annoys me quite a bit. I've lost some point lighting as a result, but the trade off is worth it for me.

The trouble is that you will occasionally find a ledge that should function the same as any other, but then you'll simply slide off of it into the abyss because it didn't have the "you can mantle here" sparkle. Everything about this game's movement is putrid - you cannot use your doublejump after a very brief window from the first jump, so you can't use it to drop off a platform and jump to a secret off to one side, for example. You can't use it to avoid fall damage. You can't double jump upward through a passable floor, you'll just hit your head. You HAVE to stop, stand beneath the passable floor, and watch the mantling animation as you climb to the next one - and of course, any popcorn enemy you're trying to ignore on a boss return can hit you and knock you out of the animation. You can't catch yourself suddenly with the grappling hook, it is only usable in a (very few) specific places and, like the double jump, if you don't trigger it in precisely the little green "you can grapple from this spot" window it will simply fail and you'll fall to your death. Platforming is supposed to be all about the player's control and spatial reasoning, and in Mandragora it is instead about trying to follow an invisible guiderail. I truly hated the game on a fundamental design level.

 

[toro]

huge patch:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Mandragora...patch_notes_mandragora_whispers_of_the_witch/

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1721060/view/534351013109301410

1.4 Patch Notes - Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree
New improvements include difficulty scaling and the return of Rhys!
Inquisitors,

We’ve just released a major update for Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree — Patch 1.4! This huge patch includes plenty of fixes, rebalancing, updated difficulty sliders, Entropy adjustments, and good news for Rhys fans.

Thank you so much if you’ve taken the time to share your feedback — we’re always listening, and we’ve got more updates on the way, so please stay tuned!

New: Difficulty Modifiers & Additional Checkpoints​

Difficulty Modifiers

• Enemy Health and Enemy Damage difficulty settings can now be adjusted between 40% and 160% (compared to the previous range of 70% to 100%). This modifier can be accessed via Accessibility (Options).
• Stamina Cost difficulty settings can now be adjusted between 40% and 100% (compared to the previous minimum of 70%). This modifier can be accessed via Accessibility (Options).

Characters

• Rhys is back for everyone and can no longer leave.

Navigation

• New Witch Stones have been added to the following areas: Gloomroot Woods Mining Outpost, Forsaken Mine Vertical Shafts (before the boss), and before the final boss.
• After reaching the boss in a Rift, a shortcut portal will become available at the start of the Rift, allowing direct access to the boss.
• Players now respawn inside the Entropy Corridor instead of outside the entrance to prevent double loading screens.
• A new shortcut is available to the Theater Witch Stone before the Marionettes boss fight.
• A new shortcut has been added to the Tome Mistress boss fight.

Game Improvements & Balance Changes​

Bosses, Enemies & Hazards

• Death Essence can now be recovered before starting a boss fight.
• Telegraph effects for the final boss encounter have been updated.
• Air stagger has been removed in Phase 2 of the final boss encounter.
• Witch Lantern recharge now begins sooner and refills faster during the final boss encounter.
• Final boss health and resistances slightly reduced in Phase 2.
• The Fang Executioner's Blood Wave and Dagger Throw will not overlap in Phase 2.
• Poison and Bleed resistance of the Marionettes and the Ferryman have been decreased.
• Poison and Bleed resistance decreased for the following minibosses: Caretakers and Mandrake Horrors.
• Banshees outside Haunted Houses will now respawn, whereas previously they did not.
• Reduced the damage of the Spring Trap.
• A few enemies have been added to Braer Castle, Drakkeden Citadel, and Crimson City.
• Poison resistance slightly decreased for the following enemies: Corrupted Dryad, Hollowplate Sentinel, and Fireplate Sentinel.
• Damage of late-game Gremlins has been reduced.
• Health of the Chthonic Stalker in the Forgotten Catacombs has been decreased.
• Explosion damage of the Rotburst Carcass has been decreased.
• The health of the following late-game enemies has been reduced: Crimson Halberdier, Nightstalker, Hollowplate Sentinel, Sanguine Assassin, Corrupted Dryad, Zealot.
• Reduced the damage and stagger effect of the Zealot.
• The Glacial Orb will no longer damage the player multiple times in close range.
• Decreased the health and damage of Skeletons at Lochmuir Village and Braer Castle.
• Decreased the damage of Sanguine Assassin, Hollowplate Sentinel, Striga, Bloodbound Archer, Magic Books, and Blood Eye at Braer Castle Right Wing.
• Draconic Scorcher Flame Breath is now affected by iframe.
• Banshee can't damage skeleton enemies anymore.
• Cave Snatchers and Zombies can't damage each other anymore.

Crafting & Vendors

• Crafting level requirements for Mana and Major Mana potions have been decreased.
• Crafting costs and shop prices for several items have been decreased.
• Vendors now offer more and stronger mana potions.
• Yrsa, Shirin, and Alannah require less experience to level up from 11 to 15.
• Rhys requires less experience to level up over level 6.
• Ulfar requires less experience to level up over level 11.

Inquisitor Attacks & Weapons

• Spending Combo Points now fills Blade Dance faster.
• The Endurance attribute now grants 5 Stamina per point between levels 10 and 15 (up from 4).
• Entropic Burst hitbox now only affects the area above platforms at the final boss encounter.
• Pepper Mace Attack hitbox has been adjusted so it no longer deals damage when the player is inside a boss or positioned very close to their back.
• Soul Lance now has an increased precursor duration during the final boss encounter.
• Pyromancer's Fire Tornado explosion duration has been decreased.
• Stamina cost of the following daggers has been decreased: Ataxia, Dragonfly, Eclipse, Frosttalon, Gremlin's Cutlass, Hechima’s Claws, Justicar's Blades, Melancholy, Nacreous Amends, Purity in Death, Sanguine Kiss, Tim's Practice Daggers.
• Stamina and Stagger values balanced (mostly buffs) for the following One-Handed Weapons: Battle Star, Pernach, Scorching Bludgeon, Byrdfrost’s Blade, Savage Broadsword, Swiftblade, Bloodweep, Duskblade, Witchclaw, Gray Cleaver, Gutrender, Scimitar.
• Stamina and Stagger values balanced (mostly buffs) for the following Two-Handed Maces: Barbaric Warhammer, Illustrious Battlehammer, Dire Crusher, Earthshaper, Endbringer, Hammer of Judgment, Jotun Hammer, Flamecracker, Royal Sceptre, Tyrannic Reaver.
• Stamina and Stagger values balanced (mostly buffs) for the following Two-Handed Swords: Claymore, Creui Nora's Bloody Hatred, Damnation of the Chosen, Lykan Dae Fury Fang of Friken, Verdant Flameblade, Serpent Tongue, Shredder.
• Strength scaling added to Purity in Death.
• Spirit requirement removed from Dragonfly.
• Frosttalon gained 5% Physical Critical Chance.
• Attribute requirements for Lykan Dae Fury Fang of Friken have been lowered.

Items & Quest Rewards

• Missing diagram: Bloodmoon (Shield) can now be found in the Dilapidated Mausoleum.
• Increased the Gold gained from several Quests.
• Gatherable Garlic has been placed on Lochmuir Village.
• Updated Garlic and Garlic Clove tooltips to include location information.
• Umbral Mushroom has been replaced with Calendula in Old Wickham.
• Significantly increased the amount of Essence in some Coalesced Essence packs.

Movement & Traversal

• Sprint, Roll, and Evade no longer consume stamina in safe zones.
• Fall damage has been significantly reduced, and the fall distance to kill has been increased.
• New grab points have been added to several areas.

User Interface (UI), Menus & Camera

• Camera distance is increased in most Entropy maps to provide better visibility.
• Boss and Miniboss levels are now visible on the user interface.
• User Interface Scale and HUD Scale can now individually be set to Normal or Large size.
• Sliders are now less sensitive in the Options menu.
• Special Materials Collected now correctly displays maximum values in the Statistics UI.
• Naceaia now has a harvested state on the map.

Visuals & Effects

• Various player ability visual effects have been updated to increase clarity of the behavior.
• Various enemy visual effects have been updated to increase clarity of the behavior.
• Multiple enemies now have more telling attack trail effects.
• Dreamfield has a new visual effect.

World

• Overall difficulty decreased in the Gloomroot Woods Entropy Corridor map.
• Dark Areas drain significantly less from the Witch Lantern.
• A new direction helper now guides the players in Entropy Rifts.
• Some disappearing platforms in Entropy have been replaced with static platforms.
• Entropic Chests now spawn farther from the opening portals after defeating the boss.
• Disappearing platforms in Entropy now have a new visual effect to make it easier to distinguish before stepping on them.
• A breakable wall has been removed before the Elevator Witch Stone in Braer Castle.

Bug Fixes​

General

• Various crash fixes.
• Improved kill statistics based achievement tracking.
• Fixed an issue where the Grand Explorer achievement doesn't unlock even when the statistics page shows 100% completion.

Bosses & Enemies

• Fixed a bug that caused a Mandrake portal to disappear while the Miniboss was still alive inside.
• Fixed an issue where the Phantom’s attack could deal damage behind its back.
• Fixed an issue where the final boss' abilities did not have matching visual effect sizes.
• Fixed an issue where the Tome Mistress and the Entropic Wyrm would become immune to various status effects.
• Fixed an issue where the Tome Mistress would become immune to Reactive Blast after she used her Teleport ability.
• Fixed an issue where some enemies could get stuck in elevators.

Inquisitor Attacks & Weapons

• Fixed an issue where the player might not get properly awarded with the Ground Slam ability.
• Fixed an issue where the player might get stuck in the Forked Lightning ability if hit during the casting.
• Fixed an issue where Dark Echo was unusable during the final boss encounter.
• Fixed an issue where Transmog-affected glove armor would reset its look after traveling.
• Fixed an issue where the Spirit Companion might target non-targetable enemies.
• Fixed an issue where compare would not work on Weapon Set #2.
• Fixed an issue where the Shadowstep ability would not always work on the Permafrost Lurker.
• Fixed an issue where the Opportunist Talent could mark the Entropic Motes.
• Fixed several issues where the Burning Blood Talent would get the player into an inescapable situation.
• Fixed an issue where the Witch Lantern would not be fully charged when entering a Rift.
• Fixed an issue where the elevator would unintentionally increase the player's velocity.
• Fixed an issue where summoned companions might not damage the Entropic Wyrm when the player is too close.
• Fixed an issue where Controlled Explosion did not count Whirlwind hits as multiple weapon attacks.
• Fixed an issue where the Blazing Weapon damage would not apply the Burn status effect.

User Interface (UI) & Camera

• Fixed an issue where the camera could become misaligned if Phoenix was used during the Darkfire Demon fight.
• Fixed an issue where triggering Hollowplate or Fireplate Sentinels early would cause unintended camera shake and controller vibration.
• Fixed an issue where nothing was selected by default in the crafting window, leading to a visual glitch.
• Fixed an issue where the sorting feature in various windows would not sort properly.
• Fixed an issue where the Large UI Scale setting would not always allow selection of saves in the load window.
• Fixed an issue where the subtitles would incorrectly show the speaker's name.
• Fixed an issue where the name of consumables would not show after reloading the game.
• Fixed an issue where the Quick-Use Slot could get stuck.

Visuals & Effects

• Fixed a rare issue where the smoke could get stuck on the screen after Pepper.

World

• Fixed a rare bug that caused one of the moving platforms at Lochmuir Village to disappear.
• Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck on some of the grab points.
• Fixed an issue where some elevators would disappear.
• Fixed an issue where some spike-trap wooden planks were not visible during the Pepper encounter.
• Fixed an issue where a hidden portal would remain blocked despite all requirements being completed.
• Fixed an issue where Lord Auberon's portrait appeared where it shouldn't have been. Sneaky.
• Fixed an issue where some small map segments were unintentionally difficult to explore.
• Fixed an issue where Death Essence was not always visible on the map.
• Fixed an issue where the Mandrake portal would permanently disappear after reloading the game.

Stay up to date by following us on Facebook, X, Bluesky, and Instagram, and join our Discord server to connect with fellow Inquisitors.

 

[Sibelius]

Finished this earlier in the week at level 76 before that nerf and QoL patch dropped. Glad I played the original intended experience, though there are a few nice changes in that list.

The last boss is a massive step up in difficulty from the rest of the game, had 4x more deaths to him than any other boss. Only managed to get my crafters to Level 12 or 13 of 20, I only found around 50 or 60% of the blueprints despite having 92% map completion. Does anyone know if you need to upgrade their wagons to get the higher level blueprints to drop, or did I just not smack enough walls?

Overall the game is a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. I played strength melee exclusively, both one hand and shield and two handed swords and the combat was quite enjoyable. World design is competent, nothing special, traversal isn't bad, I used the feather cape that increases movement speed and equip load, so didn't really feel movement to be slow, ledge hangs and slow pull up were quite annoying. You also get the MV abilities very late in the game, almost seems like the game it was meant to be bigger, the end cutscene hints at that as well.

World building is very light, they went to the effort of having a lore button and describing each item at a surface level with very few item descriptions offering lore and fleshing out the world. The story was just completely generic and devoid of creativity, hard to believe it was done by the same guy that was narrative lead on VTM: B.

 

[Roguey]

The story was just completely generic and devoid of creativity, hard to believe it was done by the same guy that was narrative lead on VTM: B.

Sounds about right for the narrative lead of Dead State though. The guy was a one-hit wonder.

 

[Ivan]

Gave this a spin. It's mostly good, but doesn't quite achieve greatness (e.g. Hollow Knight, Lost Crown, Blasphemous). Two major things that affect the fun: janky ass platforming and the sluggish movement mechanics. The combat feels good, it brings to mind Dark Souls 2's methodical combat, spacing is important. That said, the movement mechanics do bog down the traversal and exploration. You won't be zipping around the maps. The game has been patched so running doesn't consume stamina, but IDK if that's only in non-hostile maps. The major grievance I had with the game was the janky ass platforming. I'm particularly talking about when jumping off ledges, the game does a poor job of informing you if the fall will be deadly or will only cost you a bit of HP. Weapon progression left me wanting. I would have much liked acquiring unique weapons after beating bosses. Boss fights are solid, especially in the early-game where you have more paths to explore and can run up against bosses that are meant for higher level builds. Crafting system: there's too much fiddling around with different NPC inventories to get what you want to craft. Needlessly complex and tedious. I have no idea how the devs expect you to "rank" up all of the merchants to max capacity. By the time I rolled credits, I still had MULTIPLE LEVELS to go before maxing any one merchant.

Will return for the DLC.