Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a game full of ideas, creative risks, and a compelling narrative, but one that’s shackled by lackluster gameplay. 

Our protagonists, Antea Duarte and her apprentice/lover Ruaidhright “Red” mac Raith arrive in 1695 New England at the request of their friend to rid the town of New Eden of an evil force. Antea and Red, we quickly learn, are banishers—mediums who help rid the living world of demon spirits and ghosts with unfinished business. “Life to the living. Death to the dead” as the two say. But as the two begin investigating the hauntings, it’s clear that things are worse than understood, and a confrontation with the game’s main antagonistic spirit leaves Antea dead and Red alone to resolve the issue plaguing New Eden. But that’s not all. Antea’s ghost lingers in the living world, and she and Red must decide how to handle their newfound circumstance: Do they allow Antea to ascend from this state of being, or do they attempt a ritual to bring her back—one that means killing many on their journey to recover her physical body tethering her to our world. What follows is a semi-open world, action adventure through a handful of villages and encampments as Red and Antea work to stop the growing spiritual miasma threatening the region, fighting demon spirits along the way, confronting ghosts that continue to haunt those they encounter, and deciding whether to ascend spirits or blame the living person, harvesting their soul in the process.

While Red and Antea’s story is the main narrative focus, their mission is supplemented with the story of another. Without going into too much detail, the narrative deals with issues of redemption, guilt, and blame. It grapples with the question of: Who do the oppressed blame—their direct oppressors, or the world who dealt their cards? Is anger and hatred directed at an unjust world at large wrongfully pointed? It’s an interesting theme for the game to grapple with, even if it doesn’t reflect in Red and Antea’s personal story as much as it could have. There’s an element of “who dunnit?” that the pair encounter along their journey, and (unfortunately) it does always end up being the same force—kind of odd that the characters don’t really put that together until the very end of the game. 

There are good ideas in Banishers, even great ones, as there were in developer Don’t Nod’s 2018 game Vampyr—having you decide, as a vampire, who to slay and who to let live, all the while tempting you to slay the unexpected with the promise of added experience. But, like Vampyr, Banishers is bogged down by horrible combat and plenty of tedium. I almost wonder if Banishers could have survived with less (or no) emphasis on combat, and existed solely as an investigative game, or been less action orientated like an Alan Wake II (another game who’s combat is not all that great). I think something would be lost, but having what we do, I don’t think I’d mind losing it.

The combat here isn’t as crunchy as its God of War influence, and while transitioning between characters mid combat (mid-combo even) is cool, it’s never as fluid or instantaneous as you want it to be. The systems in place are intriguing ones where you need to weigh the risk and reward of certain items and abilities (you’ll do more damage here, but take more damage from this sort of thing), but they’re weighed down by the reminder that the combat is not fun. I’m glad that I played on Story Mode so I could breeze through the combat with relatively no issue, because struggling through minutes-long encounters would have been agonizing.

Banishers is the open-world series of hallways style of game that’s not particularly done well here. World layouts are confusing, I was constantly turning myself around and getting lost, even with the compass pointing me where I needed to go. The map isn’t particularly helpful either—often I wish there had just been a minimap to help me traverse the world. The game doesn’t do a good job at telegraphing what is the main path and what are side paths. I hate to think about how much I missed out on (I never even got another armor set, even though there are about fifteen slots for them in the inventory menu) simply because I accidentally went the main path when deciding between two routes, which then branched into two more routes, which then branched into two more, which then branched into…you get the picture. 

I love making choices in games, especially when they are ambiguously moral ones. Banishers has this plenty, and it’s loaded with “do you let this person die, or this person” which is cool, I liked having that choice. Unfortunately, within the game’s main missions, these choices come across a little too one-sided and forced in terms of which is the “good” or “bad” decision. Do you decide to banish the man who falsely imprisoned a person and abandoned an entire colony of people to die, or the woman who has been tricked by a mischievous ghost? One of those certainly sounds worse than the other.

I fear this ragging on Banishers makes it sound like I hated it. I didn’t. I actually like plenty about the game overall. It’s polished for what it is: It’s gorgeous, the story was intriguing, the narrative had interesting thematic tension, and I generally enjoyed the characters. It’s just frustrating to see such a unique, artistically rich game be bogged down by tedious elements of a game that should make it fun. I’m reminded of Plague Tale: Requiem, a game whose combat is not at the forefront—nobody is talking about that game because of the combat. But it’s there and it’s inoffensive. I hope Don’t Nod’s next game strikes that same balance.

Developed by Don’t Nod