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Developer (Platform): Don’t Nod (PlayStation 5)
Publisher (Release): Focus Entertainment (2024)
Length: 25-50 hours
Genres: Adult; Historical; Fantasy; Action; Adventure
❗️Disclaimers❗️:
uncomfortable (but worthwhile) explorations of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a whole range of painful bigotry
this review contains low-level spoilers
recommendation: must play
👍 Pros 👍
Gothic atmosphere lifts haunting stories high
Gorgeous world to explore
Love in the face of overwhelming bigotry
👎 Cons 👎
Clunky controls and traversal
Overstays its welcome by quite a bit
Messy upgrade mechanics
👀 Synopsis & Trailer 👀
New Eden, 1695. Antea Duarte and Red mac Raith are lovers and Banishers, ghost-hunters who vowed to protect the living from the threat of lingering ghosts and specters. Following a disastrous last mission, Antea is fatally wounded, becoming one of the spirits she loathes. In the haunted wilds of North America, the couple desperately searches for a way to liberate Antea from her new plight.
🛎️ Introduction 🛎️
Banishers – Ghosts of New Eden lulled me in with a promise of narrative focus only to surprise with a vast ancient world full of hope, despair, and bigotry. It’s a testament to the game that a quick jaunt from me while looking for something to play turned into 80+ hours of painstaking exploration through a familiar yet fantastical historical supernatural drama with a pristinely built world and compelling characters to love and hate in equal measure.
It by far overstays its welcome, with simple, repetitive mechanics and underbaked gameplay progression, but the atmospherically dense new old world is a glory to behold and built with such understated passion that each building block can’t help but be marvelled at.
🧩 Plots 🧩
Banishers says so much with so little and with so much nuance that its dissections of life, death, and the injustices inevitable in between convey an incredibly sad progression for the human race. It’s hard not to realise that, for every step we take forward, we take so many back, determined to live in the familiar desperation of ignorance, especially if it doesn’t quite line up with the narrow world we see as we grow.
It’s steeped in history…yet horrifyingly topical even today (just take a look at any social media site).
Something wicked this way comes…
Billed as an action-RPG, the roleplaying is primarily formed of binary choices that, while add a nice touch of flavour to the experience, really only provide one of two paths (and roles depending on those paths are fixed rather than fluid). Those paths, however, tell a compelling love story that really puts weight on player choice. Neither feels completely ‘good’ or ‘bad’, showcasing that, regardless of our actions and intentions, what we do will always come at the expense of others.
This is highlighted by the side quests or ‘Haunting Cases’ the player can take part in, telling the stories of the common man and woman of the time in a world assaulted by supernatural and natural forces, and it’s even more amazing and relevent how often one is confused for the other.
Trauma transcends even death
Either path chosen by the player contains a satisfying and thoughtful conclusion. Everything progresses largely the same but character development and dialogues change the environment meaningfully. For completionists, getting to that finale can turn into quite the slog, with a suprisingly expansive world filled with side activities that clash with the urgency of the core story. The pace itself feels quite lackadaisical, allowing for the player’s exploration without ever really focusing itself to get them moving.
‘It’s steeped in history…yet horrifyingly topical even today…’
🎭 Characters 🎭
Banishers bestows the player with a compelling pair of lovers to journey with in the form of ghost-hunters Antea and Red. The clash of cultures formed by Antea’s Cuban-born upbringing and Red’s Scottish origins contrasts nicely with the largely English presence pushing into a burgeoning America, with old and new traditions shaping a chaotic and fearful environment only compounded by the returning and often vengeful dead.
Fear forms an ever present demon within the eclectic cast of characters, and watching as it shapes their decisions, good and bad, is a hollowing experience that comes with a fair share of disbelief. Humanity really is a messy mistress and its tendency to cause its own pain is so poignantly shown in Banishers that I recommend it for that alone.
Forever and Always
Above all, Banishers is a gothic and mystical love story, using the slim RPG-elements it does contain to explore the dual protagonists hearts and what they’re willing to do to keep them together. It’s beautiful, bittersweet, and puts control of the outcome directly into the player’s hands, deftly allowing them to insert themselves and explore what they’re capable of when it comes to matters of the heart.
Who you gonna call?
As Antea’s defences soften and Red’s compassion meets some discipline, the developer’s do an exceptional job of navigating various forms of bigotry through both our protagonists and the people they meet on the way. Antea is often denigrated and underestimated just by the colour of her skin while Red faces the disbelief and ostracism of loving her anyway. Mental health, sexuality, and more is explored with a thoughtful hand, unafraid to show the devastating reality caused by ignorance, both inadvertent and willing.
It’s compelling, complex, and cuttingly topical, an uncomfortable but worthwhile look at the opinions we might hold and why we might hold them.
‘Humanity really is a messy mistress…’
👾 Gameplay and Graphics 👾
From moody marshes and sunny vistas to frosty heights and demonic dimensions, Banishers is a varied visual showcase that, no matter the environment, carries a suffocating weight of darkness that keeps the tone bleak and the hopeful sparks sharp. Exploration is rewarding, with a vast array of challenges and collectibles to enjoy…well, up until you might not. The sheer array of things to do don’t quite combat their repetitive nature while limited fast travelling means you’re going to be doing a lot of running and a lot of backtracking.
Movement itself is fine as long as the player continues forward, but I found the clunky turn/strafe difficult to adapt to in the beginning, making changes in direction a stop and start kind of frustration. Level design makes up for it quite a bit and discovering hidden secrets proves to be thrilling, even if the reward doesn’t always justify it.
Not in Kansas anymore…
Combat slots itself in to break up the long stretches of traversal with a simple and mostly fluid set of systems that mostly work. Hack, slash, dodge, and parry your way through a limited variety of ghostly spectres with a haphazard array of supernatural powers to add some spice. Red’s soldierly skills don’t always harmonise with Antea’s ghostly abilities, with the slack causing a complete standstill in the combat. One minute you could be trying to pull of a slick combo only for said combo to never materialise, despite following the steps to the letter. Timings have strange pauses to them that eventually you’ll just follow a flow that works but doesn’t utilise all the game offers.
Upgrading abilities doesn’t help much, with a strange, tacked on system that tries flirting with giving the player the opportunity of styling their combat but isn’t worth much exploration. Equipment, on the otherhand, feels a bit more useful, with more streamlined upgrades that keep the player moving without having to needlessly scrutinise.
Dead’s a pretty picture
Sound design and overall performance are both solid, with the former delivering some incredibly haunting tracks and the latter ensuring those moments get the smooth experience they deserve. Performance, for me at least, became very inconsistent during the latter half of the game, becoming uncomfortably choppy especially during heavy weather conditions and all the running required to get from fast-travel point to fast-travel point.
Replayability also leaves a lot to be desired. After a full, completionist playthrough, even contemplating running through to explore other choices on different difficulty levels felt like an unjustified slog…and was one when I did it. Lack of a New Game+ of any kind kills the buzz of working so hard initially, leaving Banishers in a one-and-done conundrum.
‘Hack, slash, dodge, and parry your way through a limited variety of ghostly spectres with a haphazard array of supernatural powers to add some spice.’
💭 Final Thoughts 💭
Banishers – Ghosts of New Eden is a beautifully bittersweet gothic love story set on the American frontier. Mystical, haunting, and utterly unafraid to explore the facets of human cruelty and ingenuity, players are in for an emotionally charged adventure from decrepit marshy lows to soaring frosty heights and everything in between.
So much is packed in to explore, with a variety of challenges and collectibles to find, but a restrictive fast-travel system and far too much backtracking eventually turns these extras into repetitive slogs, compounded by jagged movement.
Combat struggles to master a balance of Red’s living abilities and Antea’s ghostly powers, delivering a simple, mostly fluid, but flawed experience that renders a lot of upgrading mechanics inconsequential.
All-in-all, Banishers delivers a wicked narrative dripping in prejudice both old and new, crafting a complex dive into love, loss, and what you’re willing to do when faced with both.
The Phoenix Project 