Mandragora: an ARPG that sits between Castlevania Symphony of the Night and Dark Souls. Good time!
96Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree is a side-scrolling platformer, a metroidvania and souls-like all rolled into one. It may not excel at any of these things, but as a whole, it is a solid game with tight snappy real time combat, a very good story, player agency (which is is something that you don't see every day in an ARPG).
It may not be one of the best metroidvanias you are going to play but the souls like element make it stand out in the crowd. It's also one of the games with the best graphics that I've played in recent memory. The music was composed by Christos Antoniou of Septicflesh game and performed by the
Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and the story was written by Brian Mitsoda... bottom line is... you can't go wrong with this one. It's not perfect though, so stay a while and listen to see why.
0:00 - Intro
01:15 - Character Creation & Character Progression
07:13 - Gameplay
20:22 - Itemization
23:07 - Story & Lore
29:15 - Secondary Mechanics & UX
33:54 - Sound Effects & Mix
38:55 - Graphics
40:38 - Performance & Stability
41:00 - Other Considerations & Final Thoughts