Banishers: Ghost of New Eden is an emotional, semi open-world game with a heavy focus on story-telling. Adding to developer studio DON’T NOD’s already impressive catalogue, it is no surprise that Banishers has a focus on its narrative, with their other games being Life is Strange, Jusant, Twin Mirror, and many, many more. I have played all of their titles and Banishers is by far, their most ambitious and lengthy title yet. Many of this game’s aspects are impressive, but others are just mediocre. Combine this with a lengthy 40 hour runtime (or more) and the cracks in Banishers framework begin to become a little more apparent.


Pros

• Immense world-building lore with both environmental storytelling and notes galore
  
• Exceptional voice-acting for every line of dialogue
  
• Abundance of side quests & activities to do (note that this can also be a con)
  
• Well-developed and realistic characters
  
• Diverse skilltree

Cons

• Traversal system becomes slow and clunky
  
• Non-skippable combat segments when just trying to go from A to B (you cannot run past them)
  
• Bad pacing towards the latter half of the game

Firstly to make it clear, this game is really a love story. If you do not care for love stories, this may not have the same emotional impact as intended.

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3393172024

It’s 1695 and Banishers Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte set sail to New Eden to unveil a curse that is plaguing the settlers. Just another day in the job for the two, except this time, it proves more powerful than they’ve ever seen. The pair of Banishers are also lovers, from different walks of life. Their differences and their connection felt raw, believable and imperfect. I absolutely loved hearing their little bits of dialogue on everything. The jabs they give each other. Especially when the game tells you what the ending will be right from the very start of the game (dependent on your choice). Can you live with your oath to your partner? Can you go through with it, knowing what it will entail?

A Banishers role is essentially a spirit hunter, to assist the living by performing rituals to ascend or banish the dead, or to blame the living (if they choose). You, as the player, get to choose from these options. This creates for a very interesting experience and why the side quests (hauntings) were so important. Test your morality with unique situations that I cannot describe due to fear of spoilers. But these hauntings, alongside the main story, is where the game shines the most.

Now to the somewhat mediocre sections.

The first 30 hours of the game, I was enamoured. I absolutely loved every scrap the game gave me and I was determined to 100% my way to the end, to collect all bits and bobs, do everything the game threw at me. Yet, after slowly slugging away at the main story, more and more side options will start opening up. Ok, no problem, I’ll do those too. But… the pacing of the game proves difficult. You are running all over the large open map, with sparse fast travel points and to make matters worse, you will be slowed down by random combat encounters that you cannot skip. I was extremely overpowered by this point and did not need to fight, it just felt like a waste of time. Combine this with unintuitive gameplay sections like the ivy, where you must track down specific hotspots within a short time frame to unveil an area. It all started to feel cumbersome. The gameplay formula began to feel lacklustre and I was itching to get to the next area, despite the stories themselves feeling so rewarding, the journey thouugh, was not.

If you just stick to the main story, you will miss out on most of the content of the game. The haunting quests were by far the highlight, and are also the only way to level up Antea’s abilities. Even parts of the main story felt like a slog, particularly the “Love Finds a Way” quest that just seems to exist to drag out the ending.

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3395626183

Combat I found similar to God of War with very simple light and heavy attacks, but you can switch to the other character to perform spiritual attacks and do different types of damage. I see many comments on this aspect being the most cumbersome, and yes, things are a bit finicky in terms of selecting targets, but I actually liked the overall simplicity. What I didn’t like, was that many combat sections were forced, due to random encounters and were completely unavoidable when travelling.

Overall, the gameplay loop is good. At least for the first 30 or so hours. Then it becomes a bit of a drag, held down by pacing issues. Want to inspect something? Then you must wait for the characters to finish talking about that item until you can inspect the next. Forced to be idle and just wait for them to finish before you click on the next item (or to leave). Repeat, for 40-60 hours. The dialogue itself is GOOD but with an overabundance of quests, it starts to take its toll. In other games, these dialogue sections can be paused, skipped or are saved for areas where the player is forced to wait like elevators or rowing between locations. Many times, when taking an elevator in Banishers, there is just complete silence, or the dialogue exchange ends too early, leaving you just standing there. These pacing issues are minor, but with a beefy game, they start to become glaringly obvious


Banishers is beautiful. The cloudy open fields, pristine waterways combined with the squalor of many of the settlers camps was done so well. I was surprised at the facial detail on characters faces, making their anguish known when tough decisions had to be made.

Voice acting was also spectacular. Reds light Scottish accent with some banter here and there helped lighten the tone, but his despair was also prominent in more emotional scenes. Not only Red, but the entire cast was fantastic, with every line of dialogue being fantastically voiced.

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3398760579

This game was played using a controller, and with the following PC specs.:
AMD Ryzen R5 7600x 5.4 GHz
32GB DDR5 5200 CL36 RAM
Radeon RX 6800 XT
2560x1440 resolution
NVMe 3.0 SSD
Windows 10

Playtime: 40 hours – I had about 4 haunting quests left remaining when I finished.

Replayability value: Yes, to receive other endings or to mop up remaining quests, combat challenges etc. There is an overabundance to do.


Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a title I did not expect from DON’T NOD. Perhaps most similar in style to their game, Vampyr, but with a whole new take. What DON’T NOD are best at, is their story-telling. Banishers, is no different. Its thought-provoking, evocative and heart-wrenching stories were brilliantly done, and this is perhaps their best work yet, at least in my opinion. Yet, similar to the critiques of Vampyr, the gameplay loop is still not on the same level as the narrative. It’s good, it’s simple, but the pacing is off, things begin to feel like a drag and too many things are thrown at the player, seemingly just trying to expand game time. DON’T NOD are one of my favourite studios and I love that they are ambitious and are not afraid of trying something new. Despite my critiques, I am looking forward to their next project and hope these criticisms will be improved upon, for their narratives are always worth it.

I tend to review wholesome, puzzle, horror and narrative-driven games. If that sounds up your alley, please feel free to check out my curator page Cookie Reviews.

14 hours in and I've only discovered 12% of the map.
At last, I'm in a long, love relationship.

I'm really starting to believe that game critics these days are being unnecessarily harsh on games that try new things. I was deterred for a long time from buying this game because of the number of negatives I saw pointed out on game reviews. And now I'm so happy I got it, the game is a true gem.

I believe I'm about halfway through it at the time of this review. Here's my two cents:

Story:
Absolutely fantastic! This is one of the most well written games ever. All characters have a lot of depth, and the grim story is very responsive to your choices. I'd say its written better than even Vampyr, and that's a pretty high bar.

Combat:
I agree with the critics that it's a bit rough around the edges. Do not compare it to something like God of War. But I think people are being a little too harsh on it. If you're played Vampyr, you know what to expect. It's smoother than Vampyr, and switching between the two protagonists is very very satisfying. I got the skill the allows Red to reload while Antea lands a hit. And now I constantly switch. Every hit followed by a shot to the face followed by another hit then another shot to the face. So damn satisfying!

The world:
It's sufficiently dense. There are enough activities around the world. Any more and it'll feel to crammed, and any less it'll feel empty. Nice sweet spot. Semi-open world, with small explorable areas in an otherwise linear path in the grand scale. Kinda like the maps in Dragon Age; The Veilguard, or Dishonored, or Thief.

If you're like me where you liked Vampyr and were on the fence about this, just get it!!