Playtime:
2086 minutes
I really wanted to like this game. And for the first few hours of playing, I did. But the longer I played, the more issues and nonsensical gameplay choices I encountered which made the game not only not fun, but annoying. The game isn’t challenging, it’s tedious. But let’s start from the top.
To give you an idea on what I’m basing this feedback on: I played a female Flameweaver, with a Fire Relic and a 1H Mace. My playtime was roughly 35 hours and I deleted my initial save file along the way and started a new one after the last major patch came out. I reached the end boss but have not finished the game. The reasons for that can be found in this review.
IMPORTANT: THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS
[h3]What I liked:[/h3]
- The art style. I think it’s what made me spend the amount of time that I did in this game. It’s gorgeous. I liked the semi-realism and how the character portraits looked. I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of the female characters weren’t conventionally pretty or overly feminine.
- The voice acting. I didn’t expect a fully voiced game and while some actors did a better job than others, it was still pretty nice. I liked the personalities they conveyed.
- The fast travel. Considering the size of the map, it’s such a time saver to gain this ability nearly from the start. That you can teleport without standing near a travel point is also really helpful.
- The transmog feature. More games should have it.
- The Developers’ willingness to listen. They do seem to actively read reviews and discussion threads both on Steam and on Reddit and want to make their game better. I respect that and hope they won’t stop anytime soon.
[h3]What I thought was okay:[/h3]
- The music. It wasn’t bad, but it was quite forgettable in my opinion. I wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to the OST like I do with other games.
- The story. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but they made an effort to give your character at least some motivation to do what you gotta do. There were lots of little side-quests, but the payoff and character development was rather weak. We got glimpses into NPC’s past but the quests still barely told you anything.
- The accessibility settings. I always like games that don’t gatekeep their story by being really difficult to get through. But why stop at 70%? Make it truly accessible and allow the full range, not just up to 30%. Look at Nine Sols, they’ve done it right.
- The map markers. I’m glad they exist, but I think they can and should be improved upon. An exclamation mark, a magnifying glass, a diamond, a flag, and a question mark are pretty vague symbols when you have specific kinds of herbs, doors and portals across the map. Furthermore, the markers are limited to a maximum of 20, which is not enough during long parts of the game. Before getting the grappling hook, I had to exploit a bug where I could place more than 20 markers and came up to nearly 50. Once you received the double jump, they shrunk down to just above 10. This should be a red flag to the devs. Balanced exploration is key.
- The ability tree was alright. Nothing too complicated, nothing too simple. Some abilities feel unbalanced or are still bugged, though. Especially the phoenix skill can kill you more often than it saves you. Both in entropy levels (because respawning will still trigger the countdown for platforms to disappear, even though you have no control over your character during that animation), as well as the final boss fight, where it respawns you outside of the fight and you have to quit out of the game.
- The cats and that you can pet them. It’s a gimmick. Could live without it, but it was cute, I guess?
[h3]What I disliked: [/h3]
- The weapon system. It felt way too unbalanced; I ran around with the same 1H mace I got near the beginning of the game until I reached the Dragon. Every other 1H weapon up to that point did less damage than the magic scaling mace I found in the beginning. As there is no way to upgrade weapons (placing runes on them doesn’t change much and is not a true upgrade), I had to either stick to the same boring weapon all game long or basically overhaul my entire build and switch to 2H weapons, because the game showers you with them.
- Exploration didn’t feel worth it. Most loot was useless, schematics can be found in nearly every chest, but to craft them (if the stars align and they do happen to be useful to your build), chances are you have to grind first and level up your NPCs.
- Fall damage. There is really no need to have it in this kind of game.
- Your hideout. There was really no real use for your own little carriage and that obsolete training dummy, except to display the cats you collected. I visited that place literally once during the entire playtime.
- The lockpicks. Just unlock all the chests and remove them. Finding the chests in the first place should be the challenge.
- Off-screen enemies and gimmick-deaths. They feel shoe-horned in and aren’t there to make the game more difficult, but tedious. It’s not skill if you just have to know where something is going to drop down on you or kills you instantly.
- Upgrades. The upgrades you get (grappling hook, double jump and gliding) feel badly executed and poorly placed in the game. Especially the double jump and gliding are received way too late and near the end of the game, so players can’t even get full mileage out of them. You’re not happy when you get those upgrades, no, you lean back, look at the ceiling, and groan “finally” in annoyance. Also, why do we get the gliding from the Coven and not from the Dragon? The creature with wings? This feels randomised and not thought through. The double-jump should’ve been received from either the vampire lord or his keeper.
- Entropy Levels. I just can’t say anything nice about them. They’re bothersome to get through, the platforming is a disaster (and not what people look for when they install a game labelled as Soulslike and Metroidvania). Off-screen disappearing platforms, a timer running out, arbitrary fall damage and stunted camera movement do not add true difficulty to the game. They make it a chore. Games are generally played to have fun, and not to say “I’m so glad this is over!”. At least dying in them doesn’t waste all essence, but that would’ve been the cherry on top.
- Respawn point placement. In the beginning they litter the landscape, but during the end you have to spend so much time running back to bosses that it takes you out of it. This is not designed to make something hard, it’s designed to make it laborious.
- The final boss. Again, I feel like the Developers don’t quite understand the difference between difficulty and tedium.
[h3]Conclusion: [/h3]
I hope the game will receive further patches and that the Developers continue to listen to the game’s community to make it worth buying and worth playing. But with how the game is at the moment, I cannot give a positive review or recommend it. Yes, there were some parts I enjoyed, but considering how much more important the gameplay aspect is for a Metroidvania and Soulslike, I have to evaluate things differently in comparison to, say, a Visual Novel, where voice acting, music and story would’ve been so much more important. Mandragora feels like it had so much potential but the Developers seem to have forgotten what their game was supposed to be, or they never pinned that down in the first place. A lot of it feels weirdly unbalanced. It tries to be so many things poorly copied from other games and ultimately excels at none of them.
👍 : 46 |
😃 : 1