Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

“I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I’m not kidding.” Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an insanely frustrating game. It's hoisted to great heights by a strong narrative and then subsequently buried by its gameplay and structure. It’s a victim of the worst parts of modern game design and has entirely too much content, taking something that would have been an excellent 20 hour experience and turning it into a decent 40 hour experience. Now I’m not saying that Banishers is a bad game - it’s actually pretty competent. But the developers made a lot of questionable decisions that really bring the experience down, and it feels like they were aiming for something far more ambitious than what their budget allowed. I mentioned before that there is a lot of content. At the end of my playthrough, I had uncovered only 54% of the map. Unfortunately, a lot of it is not very interesting. Most paths beyond the main one will just take you to dead ends with crafting materials, leading to exploration feeling like mindless busywork. You can fast travel but only between campfires, which makes getting around the map a chore. Like other adventure game contemporaries, there’s a skill tree and you can upgrade your equipment with the crafting materials that you find, but engaging with either ultimately feels inconsequential. The combat. Oh, the combat. It’s probably the most frustrating aspect in the game. It’s slow. It lacks impact. There’s low enemy variety. Enemies are damage sponges which leads to fights lasting for far too long. You also can’t skip combat encounters, which makes exploration take longer. With that said, the combat is still competent and is fun for the first dozen or so hours before the repetition really starts setting in. A common sentiment is that you should turn down the difficulty setting so that you can focus on the story. Developer Don't Nod has an interesting pedigree. Life is Strange, their most well-known game, introduced the world to their brand of emotionally resonant storytelling and influenced everything that they've created since. This game continues this streak. It follows Red and Antea, the titular banishers. They act as liaisons between the dead and the living: the dead remain on the earth because of unfinished business and haunt living persons and it’s their job to help the dead reach the afterlife. During a mission, something goes awry which results in one of them being killed. You’re confronted with the first moral quandary of the game here: will you help your partner reach the afterlife or will you sacrifice living people to resurrect them? There are 23 haunting cases in Banishers to support the decision that you make. Some of these cases are pretty binary… There are characters that are clearly bad and the game not-so-subtly tells you that you should punish them but a majority of the cases feature characters that are morally grey. This is where the game excels, as you’re forced to make difficult decisions. Another area where Banishers excels is the relationship between Red and Antea. These two characters are bound together for the entirety of the game. Their relationship feels real and it feels like they really know each other, which is further aided by stellar voicework. As with any relationship, it ebbs and flows depending on how they react to the situations that they find themselves in. They both know that their journey will inevitably end in heartbreak, a fact that they have to contend with. So… Do I recommend Banishers? Yes, though softly. It’s worth playing for the narrative. Turn down the difficulty setting, explore minimally, and do all of the haunting cases. If you don’t care about the story, then I can say that you can probably skip this one.

Once again, Don't Nod prove that they know how to craft beautiful stories, immersive atmospheres, and incredible soundtracks. And once again, they prove that they still don't really know how to create engaging gameplay. The game could have been incredible with a better combat system and a slightly more linear structure, but instead we end up with a game that's unnecessarily large and forces us to unlock shortcuts in areas we never return to. Just like with Vampyr, they really need to overhaul their gameplay design. They still struggle to balance their Souls-lite mechanics, and I think they'd be better off creating their own unique gameplay style, like they did with Remember Me.

For everyone who loves fleshed-out NPCs, manzy small stories that feel real and have meaningful choices. Cons: A lot of backtracking, repetitive fights and puzzles

Just started another playthrough. Most of the reviews here are correct - especially about the long travelling/facing respawned enemies after a fast travel. Brought back a few ugly memories reading those reviews. Luckily though, the STORY is what brought me back to the game in the first place. I still remember some of the stories till this day, because a few of them genuinely made me pause before the decision and just think about all the connections. Tl;Dr - expect long walks, respawning enemies(if you use fast travel) and one of the best stories to tell.

This was such an amazing game. The story is incredible, honestly one of the highlights. The graphics were really good, and the gameplay was a lot of fun. The haunting cases and side quests were great to do. I especially loved the haunting cases. That said, it does have some downsides. Fast travel felt like a mess at times. You’d finish a mission and then have to run back just to use it. The whole “shoot things to open doors” mechanic got annoying after a while, and seriously… can games please stop with “this door doesn’t open from this side”? It’s just frustrating at this point. Still, it’s absolutely worth playing. I’m already on my second playthrough, focusing on the main story and haunting cases to get the last couple of trophies. Would highly recommend. Great story and a really enjoyable experience overall.

I wanted to say yes, I really did, but the longer I played this game the less I enjoyed it. The main storyline and the haunting cases are fantastic, don't get me wrong. If that's the only portion of the game you want to do, then absolutely get this game. The stories will make you angry, make you laugh, make you cry. The writing in this game is fantastic. It's when you want to 100% the game that things start to fall apart. Combat gets insanely repetitive very quickly. There's encounters scattered all over the map so you'll be trying to explore and run into multiple combats that just make it annoying to explore areas. It's because of this alone that I'd recommend looking up a guide to get all the achievements in one playthrough because I can't imagine having to do this twice or more for all the endings. Quest text and hints are sometimes completely wrong in what they want you to do. You'll be told to explore an area and spend ages wandering around in the giant "explore here" circle on the map only to realize the game actually wanted you to pass through it. There will be no sign that this is the case, you'll just have to get fed up and leave the area and have the quest magically update. You'll approach a ritual circle and Antea will tell you there's a Specter nearby, so naturally you'll use the summon specter ritual, only for it to fail. Turns out you should've used the summon scourge ritual. Why? Who knows, least of all the person that's done this her whole life, apparently. Endless rifts dump you out somewhere random on the map instead of at the same place you went into them, just so the devs can put a treasure chest at the end of them so you have to complete them once in order to get an achievement. Why the chest couldn't have been put inside the rift or only appear outside it after it has been completed once, I'll never know. Meanwhile I'll be spending 10 minutes to get to the nearest campfire and back to where I just was because I needed to be in that area, not out in the middle of nowhere for no reason. So yeah, if you play this game like a linear, story-driven game it's fantastic. It's when you start to treat it like the open-world game it tries to be that it becomes more frustrating than fun. I'm 42 hours in, having finished the main storyline at around 8-10 hours, and I'm not even close to getting all the achievements yet. So, just know what you want out of the game before going in.

Exploring areas feels like a chore, too linear and boring for my taste. Also invisible walls (seriously?). Combat feels very strange, kinda souls-like (tired of this overused mechanics, btw), yet casual. Aaaaand do we really need difficulty choice? Good characters and deep dialogues, though.

I quit about halfway through. I spent quite a bit of time doing side quests, but eventually I got tired of them. The game isn't really open-world; it's quite linear, with very little meaningful exploration. If you try to explore ahead of time, you'll often run into areas that are blocked off. The game eventually leads you to all the points of interest through side quests anyway, so early exploration feels frustrating and unrewarding. Because of that, the gameplay started to feel like a chore, simply following the paths the game wanted me to take. In the end, the story wasn't compelling enough to make me come back and finish it. Got it on sale, which was fine.

Don't trust most of the reviews here. They either don't understand games or they're fake. The game is basically: go here, search for this, go back there, travel somewhere else, search again, talk to this person, then search for something else. It becomes unbearably repetitive and boring. I finished the game as fast as I possibly could because I just wanted it to be over. If you enjoy repetitive gameplay, you might like it, but it wasn't for me. Story:** 10/10 Graphics: Good Combat: Boring Honestly, almost everything about the gameplay feels painfully dull.

Banishers ghosts of new eden is a supernatural action rpg made by dont nod . first i would like to tell what i feel good about this game . the story of this game is very good and it also has a really good choice system which i cant tell more about without spoiling about it . l the music in this game is very dark and emotional . however there are some major problems with this game , the open world activities and map navigation is a nightmare in this game . u literally have to open the map every 10 seconds to see where u are going next also there is so much backtracking in this game for side activities that it becomes a slog and the pathetic fast travel system does not help with that too. u can literally fast travel only through a campfire which there are not too many present on the map . the open world aspect of this game really holds back the true potential of this game . so if you are a completionist i would warn u that u will suffer so much doing the 100 percent of this game , i would suggest to enjoy the main story and haunted cases in this game that is where is this game shines the most . overall if you ignore the side content its a really good game . 8/10