After scrolling through Mandragora’s dark fantasy dystopia for about six hours, and then whispering the witch tree, I find myself in the equal parts fascinated by the detailed world I’m just beginning to understand, worrying that the battles that take place within it will become thin and thin throughout the 40-hour runtime. This story is so far truly persuasive and filled with body horror monsters, a very dark society controlled by the most eerie people imaginable, and decisions designed to wear you. But between visits to the nearest town, while chatting with growing parties in camp, I have blown away a fight that is neither too novel nor challenging.
Ah, yes. ol”Question: “Is this something like soul?” Are all the games in 2025 technically like souls? I’m dunno – probably at this point. Is the labels for genres even a little important? It’s definitely not. Anyway, Mandragora definitely borrows certain ideas that you recognize. However, each of the six character classes has a 2D platform and exploration, a dense skill tree, and a rather detailed equipment and craft system that places it fairly straight up in action RPG space. (No, not ARPGs, because they… don’t care what you know.) It’s a good mix that stands out as a kind of its own, but the key part is swinging melee weapons, getting away from attacks, filling up spells, and swinging gaps with Grapel hooks.
If you do so, you will know Faerdumu, the pessimistic and eerie world of Mandelagora, overrun by evil creatures who have embraced humanity behind the walls of the city. You were caught up in a witch’s hunt, sent to the world for evil to kill, and the eerie voices of monsters you sympathize with have killed whispers in your head (long story). I don’t know where this is yet heading, but I’m intrigued by the setup.
This should be like my 30th soul in the last few years. Many of them really love the whole creepy fantasy vibe, so I was worried that Mandragora was the same, but the fear was unfair. I was impressed by the depths of Faerduum, the cast of characters that occupy it, and the nasty choices I was asked to make within it. It seems like the reason why this universe witch exchanges a pointy hat and a broom to appear as an overly large body monster, or why the whole world is being consumed by evil creatures, but humans are ruined and hidden in a deeply unjust city, or my character is absorbing dark energy called entropy in his body.
While the environment can certainly look a bit more common on the surface when running from place to place, Mandragora uses a truly neat artist’s art style with animated portraits that appear to be hanging in the halls of Hogwarts during cutscenes and when talking to other characters. I’m also really interested in the characters I’ve come across. They could be reckless treasure hunters, the wrong female guy making maps for me, or the heartfelt blacksmith who creates heartless weapons that use themselves. Their dialogue is pretty decent and I look forward to where the bigger story goes as a result.
But as far as the action itself, I’ve been fighting most of the slow soldiers and pushoverrats. Not only does it seem like it’s not that much in combat, but I’ve seen boss fights over and over again just a few hours later. It is not usually a great sign of enemy diversity. That said, I’ve only played as one of six classes so far (a warrior focused on dual bladed agility). Perhaps I’m not hit points that aren’t just picking one of the Milketoast characters or starting to get interesting. With densely skilled trees filled with unlocking powers and plenty of equipment left for looting and crafting, there’s plenty of time for me to fall in love with these 2D matches.
As a side scroller, there is also a considerable platform and secret hunting, but those sections serve as the most minor breaks among most combat sequences. There was little intrusiveness to solve puzzles, evacuation traps and dangerous pitfalls that solved little of these memorable sections that were central to these early hours. Of course, there is a clear narrative in the Metroidvania style. It tells you that you need to get special tools and abilities to unlock more options, like grapple hooks.
PlayStation dashboards are estimated only 20% throughout the campaign, as they were unable to obtain review codes until the launch approaches. The description of the StimeStore page claims that the story is over 40 hours, so only time can tell if the platform and combat can rise to the same level as the story or art. For now, I certainly keep pushing myself and enjoying myself enough to at least see how things develop. If Mandelagora’s RPG menu is filled with an insane number of possibilities, it’s pretty much left before the final review next week.
