It can be tough for a game to distinguish itself in the modern game market. If you're looking for a Metroidvania with Souls-like elements , there are probably a half- dozen released every month. It's tough for a game to stand out from the crowd, and Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree managed to do that with an extremely engaging presentation, with its massively successful Kickstarter driven by how darn good it looked. Visuals aren't everything, and you really need the gameplay to back it up. Does Mandragora succeed? Well ... kind of.

Mandragora is set in the grim and dreary world of Faelduum, which is beset almost constantly by the forces of evil. Players take on the role of an Inquisitor, one of the King Priest's chosen warriors whose task is to slay evil and heretics to keep the land safe. Unfortunately for you, a chance encounter forces you to question everything you know about the world, and you set out on a journey to discover the truth about the dangers plaguing the land and its seemingly inevitable fate.

Mandragora's plot is largely a well-told little yarn, and the narrative is probably one of the game's strongest elements. The characters are well written, the world is interesting, and it's all presented in an engaging way. I was never bored, but there were several occasions when I couldn't help but wish my player character would pick up on hints sooner. The only negative thing I can say about it is that it's a bit cliched, and you won't be hugely surprised by any of the twists.

Mandragora made a very strong first impression on me. The gameplay is familiar:  You have the now-familiar 2D-flavored Souls-style gameplay. You choose from one of multiple starting classes that range from pure melee warriors to magic-using paladins. Then you set out into the world to battle the forces of evil. The gameplay feels very familiar, with you needing to manage stamina and magic to attack and dodge enemy attacks, but there's a nice meatiness to the combat that makes it genuinely enjoyable.

There are a ton of customization options in the game. You can be a teleporting twin-sword-wielding death assassin, a fire-spewing magician, a tanky-as-heck sword and board, and more. There are massive skill trees that let you delve into one specific branch or spread out among multiple branches. While none of it is new for the genre, there's more than enough variety that you'll be able to make any character you want, whether it's a status-focused rogue or an oonga-boonga smash everything with a giant mace warrior. It's also easy to re-spec, so if you do find something you like, you can easily swap it.

In proper Metroidvania and Souls fashion, the world is huge and full of things to explore. There are a ton of secrets scattered around every area, ranging from locked chests that contain powerful equipment to hidden fights and cool secret bits of lore. Mandragora is light on the Metroid aspects, with only a few basic movement upgrades offering you reasons to return to previous areas. There are enough hidden secrets that it feels fun to wander back and see what you can find.

Mandragora is very front loaded. The further I got into the game, the less I enjoyed it. It starts to go downhill once you see recycled bosses and realize you've already seen a lot of what the game does. The level design and general gameplay design also move away from the tough-but-fair design that is usually associated with Souls games. Instant kills, poorly telegraphed attacks, checkpoint placement that made returning to areas you died at feel more like a chore, and a truly underwhelming final boss all conspire to make the second half of the game feel underbaked. It isn't even punishingly difficult, so much as everything feeling unpolished. A lot of bosses only have a very small number of attacks, and only the badly telegraphed ones are dangerous.

This also impacts the exploration, as there are a lot of enemies and pits that are placed in a way to make exploring as annoying as possible. A lot of enemies are positioned in such a way that you have to slow down to take them down. They can also knock you down a pit, or they'll prevent you from running past a trap. They also seem designed to make moving through areas more tedious than difficult. There isn't anything wrong with a first run-through demanding your focus and attention, but when you're either backtracking to find items you missed or when you're forced to return to a boss, it really drags when you can't go exactly to where you want to go.

The result is a game that didn't leave a super impression. The early parts of the game make it clear the developers absolutely have the skill and talent to make something truly special, but Mandragora feels like something that was rushed out without getting the time to truly fix the fundamentals. I mention this because there's a very good chance that patches and post-release polish could improve the game to a much better state. There are a lot of areas that would be easy to improve and would make the game more enjoyable.

One area I can't fault the game is its presentation. The environments are drop-dead gorgeous, the character models look great, and the soundtrack is fantastic. Mandragora is firing with all cylinders when it comes to being a good game to look at and experience. Even the voice acting is solid, with some standout performances. Even when I was annoyed with the game design, the game looked and sounded excellent.

Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is a game with a ton of potential that suffers from feeling half-baked. The first five to 10 hours of the game feel fantastic, and after that, it seems to suffer from being rushed and unpolished, culminating in a particularly lackluster final area and boss. The bones of a fun game are there, but there are enough flaws that it's worth waiting to see how it looks after a few patches.

Score: 7.0/10