Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Review

"Ghostbusting in Old Times"

Campaign

February 27, 2024 at 3:34pm
By Jason Stettner

It’s New Eden and the date is 1695. You’re playing as a pair of lovers that have been called to this area in order to help an old friend. The two are Antea Duarte and Red mac Raith, your profession is that of a Banisher. An apparently well known job which equates to basically being Ghostbusters but in the late 1600’s.

It’s an interesting concept and one that truly did feel unique from a lore crafted perspective. It’s also an interesting setting being that of a largely wild North America, where folks are trying to grow cities while dealing with horrid disasters. Also hence why you’ve been called into the fray.

It’s a slightly slow opening that sets the stage, the love between the two and also why you’re here. I had assumed the game was initially focused on more detective type work but it does go in a very different direction quickly which was fascinating to see play out. I both enjoyed the experience and had some elements that I did find stuck out a tad poorly.
Br>I would recommend for this one that you do tackle it at a lower difficulty setting as the narrative is the strong point as opposed to combat, but I’ll go over that a more later on as I am trying to focus on the story portion for the meantime.

As I was saying, things go horribly wrong while you’re attempting to figure out what’s been going on and you end up in the wild forest. You’re alone as Red, as the love of your life has been one shotted, real shame there as she had no plot armor. This might seem like a big spoiler but honestly it’s right at the start and is basically the entire premise of the game. Antea is now a ghostly spirit and the two are connected due to this event.

From there forth you’re working together to either help her ascend or to bring her back alive. You make an oath and continue to make choices within the moral system that impact things either way. Now, I do fundamentally believe this system loses a lot of its unique power due to that oath aspect. I’ve made a choice on where I’m headed and despite getting new moral choices I feel obligated to one choice and I wish it were more vague to create more dynamic choices that actually align with my morals as opposed to be fueling one direction.

I believe that undermines the whole concept. I wanted to bring my lover back, so every choice went in that direction regardless of what I felt was right for the story. I will also note that you must engage in all side content or you will be faced with even more shocking revelations as you work towards the end game. The strength here really is with its characters and the performances from the leads. You do get a sense of love between the two and a willingness to stick through dark situations.

The side characters are also rather well developed and you do tend to care about the situations you find themselves in. There’s a lot of terror in this New Eden land that you’ve been tossed into the middle of. It’s a lengthy story going well over fifteen hours with many side quests and other activities to venture into if you’d like to.

Gameplay

It’s very much your typical third person over the shoulder mature experience. It feels in line with Vampyr to some degree while doing its own thing as well. I found it to be visually pleasing to take in as you visit a variety of spaces from calm homes to decrepit fowl infestations and some differing biomes too climate wise. The areas you visit are linear but still open with a sense of freedom.

This creates an awkward shift towards the penultimate chapter where you do fast traveling despite having moved through it in a very linear way prior. That whole part of the game felt padded too which was weird as everything prior flows so well. The open world aspect does leave you with more to do if you want to, but as I noted that is important to the actual story and I wish that had been made more clear as I was in for a surprise.

The gameplay here is definitely mixed for me. I loved the narrative elements and the characters. I did find the lip syncing slightly off here and mostly that the combat was a cumbersome. The difficulty spikes were sporadic and I would recommend an easier than normal experience to have a better time. The combat just wasn’t good enough to have the weird challenge bumps that would randomly pop up while you’re playing.

It’s almost Dark Souls like at times minus the systems that build into that concept. You have fires for resting, so much health and need to block a ton as you get staggered cheaply by enemies which was ever so annoying. Mix that in with times where you’re decimating ghosts in a single blast of your gun but the next scene those same ghosts take tiny bits of damage. It’s weird, and all over the place. I did enjoy the elemental like impacts as you switch between two perspectives during combat. Antea bringing ghost powers and Red being firmly grounded in regular traditional combat.

It’s neat. Now, the ghost part also isn’t fully developed into giving you a vision. I was stuck at times and a simple using the ghost vision for direction would have been ever so logical. There are some accessible elements of this game that felt missing at times, odd. It’s a nice mixture of puzzles, story and combat though. I didn’t really feel as though we were retreading content aside from the penultimate portion and that is impressive.

The game does have some good scale to it. It’s got some varied environments, well developed character moments and many unique NPCs to interact with across your venture. From a technical perspective I did play this on Xbox Series X where it comes with two graphic modes to choose from. The first being a 4k resolution at 30fps and the other being 1440p at 60fps. I prefer the latter and I did notice some performance issues in both but not anything too noticeable or detrimental to what I was experiencing.

The Conclusion

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is impressive for its longevity, excellent narrative delivery and setting but alas I did find combat cumbersome with the difficulty spikes being annoying. I really enjoy DON’T NOD titles but I do wish they would refine combat more. The narrative stuff is perfect, but they could have adjusted the morality setup here slightly more.

I do believe the strength of this story also comes from the two leads here providing a believable and emotional somewhat ghostly romantic story. You understood the connection they had and were trying to improve it with the options you’re given here. There are some neat twists to this one. I liked the Ghostbusting concept and the abilities you were given to switch between.

I had fun playing it but also felt like some areas of the game were off. The initial forest area confused me in terms of setting until I played latter spots and it doesn’t all perfectly get executed here complete package wise. Still, this is an impressive offering in terms of scale and setup. I would actually really like to see this world and concept developed further as it’s unique.

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Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Sandbox Strat

Rating Overall: 8.0