“You are heard, and free to go…”
I perform a ritual in a cemetery in the thick of night. Or at least, I believe it to be night. A curse has caused a dreadful fog to blanket the town of New Eden, blocking out the sun and causing the remaining population to experience terrifying nightmares. The ritual, as mentioned, has me carving into the ground, shapes and lines taught to me by my master, the very ghost whom I am attempting to summon. I’ve seen his death and what follows is deeply emotional, a goodbye for those present, but as it stands, so many questions remain unanswered. What caused this curse, what supernatural forces have taken over this small settlement, and how can we have any chance of stopping it?
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is Don’t Nod’s follow-up to 2018’s Vampyr, a game that while it had its own share of issues, was nonetheless a pretty great adventure. Banishers certainly shows the improvements the team has made since then, improving upon their capability to not only convey a powerful and emotional love story, but a gorgeous action-adventure title with a massive world to explore that is far more ambitious than I was expecting. I knew I was going to enjoy Banishers’ but I ended up absolutely loving it.
While you’ll begin the game as Antea Duarte, lover and mentor to another Banisher in Red mac Raith, you’ll eventually take over as Red once a certain event sees Antea killed, becoming a ghost, the very thing she despises. As their connection is strong, Antea’s ghost then seeks out Red, joining him to complete the task set before them. This allows Antea to assist Red in exploration and combat, learning new skills and abilities that make the pair nearly unstoppable. Because of how you’ll earn these skills, Banishers has a very Metroidvania approach in blocking off key areas of the map until you have obtained certain skills, such as cutting through webbing, destroying blockades, or leaping across great distances. What makes these abilities so worthwhile is that each of them can also be used in combat, complementing Red’s mixture of some basic melee attacks and his rifle.
What works well towards this dynamic is that as a Banisher, ghosts are meant to be ascended or banished, not to linger alongside the living. “Life to living, death to the dead” is their creed and this causes Antea’s current predicament to be at odds with the role of a Banisher. What holds up this choice of whether to ascend Antea or allow her to continue on with Red is that her body remains at the place of her death, a location that is at the heart of this curse, a land rich with death and fear. While you’ll eventually return to set things right, the journey will test their relationship in ways they could never have imagined. Banishers may be an action-adventure game built around a curse that would see the world burn, but it’s also an emotional love story that is expertly crafted and beautifully executed.
Throughout that story, you’ll encounter an assortment of souls who are haunted by loved ones, strangers, and family. These stories are all deeply personal to these characters, and several of them are extensions of the main story, allowing you to learn more about just what exactly is going on and why so many of its cast are connected to one another. These stories also contribute to how your playthrough will go, which of the game’s endings you’ll receive, and the eventual fate of Antea.
Each haunted case will see one of a few ways to solve it. You can ascend the spirit if you deem them worthy, banish them if you feel they are incapable of redemption or sacrifice the host, should they be more harmful to the world than the ghost that stalks them. Each choice will factor into how you wrap up your story, do you attempt to save Antea, or allow her to ascend. As I preferred to see Red and Antea get their happy ending, I chose to sacrifice everyone I came into contact with, even if the tale being told didn’t exactly feel open to it.
If I had to knock Banishers of anything apart from its technical blemishes, it would be that each haunting case has a clear idea of how it wants to end and not how it could. This causes the choice you have to not feel as natural in most cases. One particular case has you tracking down the cash box of a previous store’s owner as the young man watching the store has done so out of an oath. While you’ll learn more about him and the previous owner, I never found that story to convey anything substantial that would entice me to then murder him. Did I end up doing it regardless? Well yes, I was going for a full sacrifice playthrough. Now, one point to add is that you can play both sides, your ending is merely chosen through the largest number of how you’ve chosen to deal with these cases, but I wanted to see if each story would make my choice a difficult one to make, and sadly, most do not.
What I do like about these choices is seeing both Red and Antea struggle with them and how it at times can cause them to fight. While this can cause friction between the couple, much of this stems from the fact that Antea’s death has had a different meaning to each of them. How and when they reconcile that, at least in their own way, is the heart of much of this story. Even the conversations they have about their past, learning about Antea’s family, or the effects that war has had on Red; these stories are the heart of Banishers and when the game’s events have direct parallels to its protagonists, it makes these stories mean and feel something.
As Red and Antea explore this land to solve these haunting cases and get to the bottom of the curse that is at the center of it all, the map itself is staggeringly huge. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting such a spacious location to explore, assuming at first that Banishers would be largely linear, maybe shooting for a 10-15 hour campaign. However, to complete all the haunting cases and reach credits, with having 60% world completion at the time of this review, which is more about tracking down every secret than unlocking a new area, I clocked in over 50 hours for a single playthrough. While PR had told me to expect 25-30 hours, I don’t see that being possible without leaving a lot left on the table before you hit the point of no return, especially as each haunting case then offers a side quest of its own.
From the Harrows to the Mire Marshes, to the snow-capped peaks of Mount Pleasent and the Dark Woods, the explorable space is littered with areas that you’ll return to again and again, especially once you have unlocked a key ability to progress through an otherwise blocked path. These abilities are story-locked, so it’s not just a matter of going off to find that particular ability. You’ll discover firepits to use as both fast travel points and upgrade stations, void breaches to travel between two points as you traverse the realm of the veil, to countless combat challenges that will improve your stats should you be victorious. Many of these activities require you to perform rituals that require resources, and yes, you can consume those resources should you perform the incorrect ritual. Despite the vast space given to you, Banishers is not open world, but more of a massive map in the style of Monster Hunter’s open zones. Narrow paths and cliffs, and valleys await you, across the aesthetics of swamps, forests, beaches, and freezing mountain terrain.
Exploring this location is met with numerous dead ends where you’ll notice an exit point but no way to progress forward. The map will illustrate if you have the option to enter and exit, making it fairly clear if you can move from one area to the next, all without a loading screen. That said, there are plenty of transition moments of squeezing between a thin entryway to crawling under a low entrance, motions known to be the result of needing the game to load in the background. There are also areas where you’ll unlock the passageway back, such as letting down a rope or shooting your rifle, or using your powers to remove a blockade that previously had stopped you. There are also areas across the game where Antea will need to quell an object from dispersing an ominous fog blanketing an area, forcing you to swap to Antea to track it down. I also have to point out that the compass gives you the information on how to navigate turns instead of just hard-locking the objective in a central direction. It will move as you move, informing you to continue straight ahead before moving the objective marker to then show you the next direction to take. It’s smart, but I would have loved a mini-map nonetheless.
As you progress through this journey, combat will always be a steadfast companion, a constantly evolving series of abilities as you swap between Red and Antea with a single button, often having one come to the rescue should you be grabbed by your foe. Seeing Antea drop-kick your rifle’s target was always fun to see. Red’s melee options are a tad limited, especially given the game’s substantial length. He has a basic strike, a charged heavy, as well as his rifle, which can sometimes have a weird tugging to the right when aiming after a reload. It’s not constant, but I had it happen a few dozen times, causing me to miss a crucial shot. He can dodge or roll depending on how you apply the button, as well as block and parry. He also has a banishing attack that is a meter that builds up as combat progresses, allowing him to pull off a pretty flashy attack that can consume a good deal of any enemy’s health bar. All this is pretty standard stuff, and while a series of skill trees will evolve some aspects of these skills, it is working in tandem with Antea where this combat system truly succeeds.
Antea has a few moves that she will learn throughout the story. These are the same abilities I mentioned before that translate into exploration mechanics as well. Firstly, you’ll earn Unveil. This allows Red to see the world from the other side of the Veil and uncover ethereal elements such as spectral stains or webs. This comes in handy when you need to track down supernatural objects, or parts of the story that lurk within the Veil. Next, you’ll learn to leap, allowing Antea and Red to cross ethereal portals that act like shortcuts. In combat, you can use this to leap towards your foe, dealing a modest amount of damage. Later, you’ll earn a powerful blast to destroy blockades or use that power in combat to perform an area-of-effect blast. The last two abilities you’ll earn are both the ability to ensnare your foes in ethereal webbing as well as a special attack that combines the forces of both Red and Antea, making for some powerful strikes. This attack essentially serves as Antea’s meter attack.
Each of these abilities has its own skill tree as seen below, which you’ll earn points towards as you level up. Each node has switches that will allow you to learn one upgrade but not the other. It provides a bit of choice such as Outburt having an upgrade to trigger an area of effect skill for bonus damage or allowing Red’s rifle strikes to reduce Manifestation cooldowns by 25%. These choices allow you to create mini-builds of sorts to get the most out of either Red’s abilities or Antea’s or a mixture of both. It’s an interesting system that allows a certain degree of replayability, especially given the choice of different endings.
Taking in everything you can do benefits combat from feeling too plain, especially given the game’s pretty substantial length. Red on his own doesn’t quite have what it takes, but when you start to swap between the two, pulling off leaping lunges and explosions, then swapping back to banish ghosts with Red or fire off a well-placed bullet, combat starts to get a much-needed layer of depth. Personally, I do wish Red had a bit more going on, but it’s not enough to really sour my opinion on the options you have available to you. And as you can tailor a lot of the combat offerings via the five skill trees, you do end up having a decent amount to work with, even if on a surface level, it can feel like not a whole lot to work with.
Between Red and Antea, Red is the only one of the two that can be outfitted with gear and a change in weaponry. I’m not sure about the total number of outfits, but during my playthrough, and only exploring about 60% of the entire map, I was able to track down six additional outfits, each sporting their own unique look and series of stats. Additionally, you’ll have a combination set of a Saber and Firebane which act as Red’s method of melee. And with your rifle, each of these discovered weapons will have its own series of stats as well as a visual change. All of these weapons can be upgraded as well as you track down resources often dropped by ghosts, combat challenges, and found in numerous chests and vendors across the map. Fleshing out Red’s equipment will be a series of amulets, wristbands, a brooch and bane ring, and his healing decoctions, all of which have their own variety of options, stats, and upgrades.
The various threats you’ll encounter largely boil down to the more real creatures such as wolves, to an assortment of ghosts and ethereal abominations that can rise out of the ground. After a while, you won’t really see too many new monsters and begin to see a rinse and repeat of certain combinations. From melee attackers to those with a rifle themselves, the foes you vanquish here are really well designed, especially the more elaborate boss fights and the mini-bosses that are larger than life, but I would have loved to have seen a variety within each type especially some 40 hours in.
Banishers is a very good-looking game, especially when compared to Vampyr and the other works of Don’t Nod. It takes advantage of a really great aesthetic, with some jaw-dropping vistas and its heavily detailed settlements. That said, you will see some moments where the game’s budget is in play, especially in some of the climbing animations and lip-syncing stuttering. Still, I don’t feel anything is even remotely bad and the world Don’t Nod has made here, the character designs and style are fantastic with only a few small issues that popped up in the form of a few glitches, but should hopefully be ironed out for release. I will stress that during my time, I had some significant framerate drops when transitioning to new areas where the game would absolutely chug. I do hope that these issues are not present during the final release as they are beyond noticeable.
While most games have some impeccable voice acting, few pull it off that well when it comes to portraying a couple. Amaka Okafor and Russ Bain, who play our Banishers have substantial chemistry when conveying their lines, their lives, and their love. While the folk you’ll encounter are all over the place, it was Okafor and Bain who have standout performances, especially Bain, who plays Red, a man who is attempting to come to grips with Antea’s death, as well as trying to keep it together to aid the folk attempting to live their lives. Ildiko Preszly also succeeds in a very great performance, but I’ll leave her identity within the game as a secret, given her ties to the central plot. I couldn’t find the actress’s name who played Seeker, a young witch who aids the Banishers in their quest, but I was rather impressed with her role, but would have loved a bigger involvement from her following a key point in the story, especially given the last line we get from her.
Overall, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is marvelous, a wonderfully crafted love story by a team that has elevated their game to new heights. Its central cast is remarkable with lives that felt truly lived, their pasts that really define them as people. The world here is well crafted with folk allowed to play to their personalities to let the story truly shine. It’s also a game that continues to show how fear can be a weapon often wielded in ways that can cause incredible destruction. And, with two distinct playthroughs via the haunting cases, you have a game that really gives you a great deal for the money. This is easily Don’t Nod’s finest work, despite my undying love for Life is Strange. Simply put, Banishers is a true work of art; a love most spiritual.
Developer - Don’t Nod. Publisher - Focus Home Entertainment. Released - February 13th, 2024. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC. Rated - (T) Blood and Gore, Language, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code for the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.