Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Review
How far would you go for love?
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Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S
Reviewed on: PC
Developer: DON’T NOD
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Release: February 13, 2024
Time Played: 22 Hours
Genre: Action-Adventure RPG
ESRB: T
Intro:
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an action-packed love story full of moral dilemmas and meaningful choices to make. Follow Red and Antea as they work together to cleanse the cursed land of New Eden and fight for their love. I’ve beat the game and am prepared to give you a good overview of what to expect if you played the game, before giving it a final rating and placing it on the shelves behind me.
Where it starts
Banishers Red and Antea have been called to New Eden, a land cursed by strong supernatural powers. Upon arrival they are met with a strong force they aren’t ready to take out yet. After their failed first attempt they must find their way back, helping people with their other curses and hopefully figuring a way to rid New Eden of its wickedness.
Can the kids watch
The language was clean, and the only fighting was against ghosts or decomposed bodies being possessed. The biggest thing to worry about would be the subjects of death, murder, and the like in most of the stories within the game. And maybe some of the enemies could be considered scary depending on whose watching. The action was entertaining and clean enough I’d let my kid’s hangout while I played.
Working Together
Red and Antea will always be together, whether in combat or traversing the world. You will need to swap between them to utilize their different skills depending on the situation. Antea can burn away specter material hiding items, open new paths to explore, and does a lot of damage to possessed enemies. While Red can talk to people, enact rituals, and is more effective when fighting spectrals. Changing between them happens immediately, and can make for some powerful fighting styles.
Learning new skills
As you progress the main story Antea will learn new skills, with these new skills will come a skill tree. Every level you achieve you gain a red skill point, used for Red’s skills, and when you complete a haunting, you receive a blue skill point for Antea. The skill tree limits you by only allowing you to select one skill in a section, but no choice in the skill tree is permanent. You can refund points and move them around however you’d like, but only in the safety of a campsite.
Hauntings
New Eden is a heavily cursed land, and because of this there is a lot of ghostly activity harming the locals. In every section of the game, you can find people being haunted and take on the case to help them. To bring closure to a haunting you will need to investigate by finding clues, listening to lost memories, and interrogating involved parties. The main story is made up of hauntings with plenty of side options you can pick up along the way. These were an excellent way to learn more about the people and what happened to make New Eden what it became.
The choices we make
You’ll find a lot of choices to be made in the game during conversations, but the important decisions are made at the closing point of a Haunting. On the surface it seems like an easy choice, blame the human, or deal with the ghost by either banishing or letting them ascend, doing what you feel would give you an ending you’d like. But there are so many variables involved with these hauntings, pushing your emotions all over the place. The person being haunted isn’t always a saint and the ghost doing the haunting isn’t always there to harm.
Performing Rituals
Red and Antea can commune with the dead or listen to their lost memories, but to do so they will need to enact a ritual at the right spot. After gathering the correct materials and finding a ritual spot you will get to select the proper ritual to accomplish what you need to do. Be careful though, you can select the wrong one and lose the materials needed. Rituals are also necessary to awaken spectral nests to destroy and some travel methods.
Battle Gear
To effectively fight the supernatural Red and Antea will need to equip themselves with the proper gear. The gear they need can be found in chests or purchased from merchants, every piece will increase some stats and give a passive buff so to speak. Depending on your playstyle some of the gear will be amazing while other pieces you want to avoid. Everything, including your healing potion, can be upgraded after you’ve found the right materials.
Grab EVERYTHING
Scattered throughout New Eden will be plants, rocks, and ghost parts you’re going to collect and hold onto for upgrading your equipment and performing rituals. Every area of the game will be home to certain materials, while some must be obtained through events, or you can find the right merchant and buy everything you need. Collecting materials was fast, a quick button press next to it and they will be in your pockets, by the end I had a lot of useless materials I could sell for a lot of money.
Side Gigs
Besides the main story and side hauntings there were plenty of things to do and discover. Collectible notes scattered about to build the world in the story, cursed chests holding some awesome gear, and spectral nests needing to be cleaned out. The nests were fun, they would make a specific action do more damage while everything else was weaker, some were challenging to finish and the rewards for beating a nest were a plus one to all attributes, definitely worth hunting down to strengthen your characters.
Outro:
I haven’t played many Don’t Nod games but from my understanding they are quite well at telling a good story, and they did not disappoint with Banishers Ghosts of New Eden. It was a love story, but it wasn’t mushy with all the action involved. The main story, and most of the side stories, were full of strong emotions, really making you think about what kind of choices you wanted to make in the end. And your choices do influence the kind of story you’ll experience, down to the small interactions between Red and Antea.
The game looked very good, and the environments felt bigger than they really were. At first, I felt confined with the huge map the game had, but only having small hallways I could travel. I got used to it and didn’t even notice I couldn’t explore every inch of the map. And it made it harder to get lost on the path. I still got lost a couple of times, but that was usually due to me not being as observant as I should have been.
The gameplay for Banishers was simple and solid. The combat sequences felt effective and weren’t hard to understand. It was important to upgrade gear and level up, so I wasn’t completely helpless, but I did beat the game with the enemies being a far higher level than I got to. The only time I started to have a poor time was when I couldn’t find what I was supposed to according to the current quest. It would tell me what to do and guide me to the general area, and then wanted me to search everywhere. It happened a couple times I was unable to find my way for a hot minute. The quest marker would guide me every step of the way for most quests, so I was quite dependent on it.
Overall, I would say my time with Banishers was excellent. I loved how the combat felt complete and wasn’t complicated, not having to min/max skill points and learn complex moves and still being able to kick butt felt good. I focused on the main story, doing very few side hauntings, and beat the game around twenty-two hours of game play. If you’ve played the game, please, let me know what you think of the whole thing.
And now it’s time to rate it and throw it on a shelf.
For visuals I’m going with a four, everything looked great and I could tell what I was looking at
Story comes out to a solid five, the game had strong emotions and forced me to have feelings for game characters, it was great.
Gameplay was good, even if it was a little bothersome at times, I’m going with a four.
A high replayability for this game coming in at four. It sucked that there was no new game plus, but I’d still really like to see some of the different outcomes, and the game was fun enough going through would be fun, trying different builds and choices.
Total fun is a four as well. It’s hard to get that perfect five, but it was close.
Giving Banishers an overall score of four point two out of five, earning it a spot on the Special Reserve shelf. Don’t Nod did an excellent job with this game, I would totally recommend checking it out.