Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Review – Dearly Departed

Authors like Charles Dickens and Sheridan Le Fanu often used spirits as a metaphor, and DON’T NOD does so just as effectively. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is about more than the ruin wrought by the restless dead. It’s about love, life’s fragility, and beating the snot out of possessed wolves before they eat your face. Less Phasmophobia and more Alan Wake, it’s an action RPG first and foremost. Your choices determine not only the fate of the haunted colonists of New Eden but also the Banishers who came to save them. Though it has its flaws, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden left me with warm memories no exorcism can remove.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Review

Red and Antea arrive at the New England colony of New Eden in the hopes of delivering it from the haunting that’s befallen it. What follows is a heartbreaking loss that alters the trajectory of both of their lives. Thankfully, it also sends the player on a semi-open-world adventure rife with secrets, puzzles, and angry spirits. From interrogating townsfolk and battling unquiet spirits to solving environmental puzzles and collecting bibles, Banishers delivers everything great action games should, though it’s thinner in places than I’d like. Its central plot and side quests consistently deliver, but interim activities like combat struggle to do the same.

Story: This Mortal Coil

Veteran Banisher Antea and her apprentice Red aren’t the saviors anyone expected, and not only because some colonists can’t see past their own biases. All but a few settlers abandoned New Eden after a series of supernatural occurrences threw the settlement into disarray. The few that remained were left to wonder whether touching down upon America’s shore was wise at all. Antea and Red arrive to find their would-be contact dead, a victim of the town’s woes. That only adds one horrible mystery on top of another. There’s no time to grieve, however: the Nightmare that killed their friend isn’t done. It soon claims a second victim: Antea.

Antea and Red are partners in more ways than one, and Antea’s death sends Red into a spiral of grief. The Nightmare almost succeeds in slaying him too. He awakens to learn that his fellow Banisher isn’t quite gone after all. Though the Nightmare slew her, Antea clings to the world as the same sort of spirit she spent her life ushering into the realm beyond. Reunited once more, the Banishers face an impossible choice. Should Red help Antea Ascend and leave her fellow Banisher behind or Blame the colonists, offering them as human sacrifices to resurrect Antea?

What follows is an emotionally charged journey through the wilds and settlements of New England. Red and his spirit companion use their combined powers and knowledge as Banishers to alleviate the suffering of hauntings for others. From opening notes to final refrain, the story of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden plays out like a beautiful but somber concerto. Its tempo waxes and wanes with the introduction and resolution of each new Haunting, but the chemistry between and emotional evolution of Red and Antea remains excellent throughout while you hunt achievements and resolve other business.

While video games often excel at depicting blunter emotions, Banishers handles love, grief, and regret like they were crushed velvet. Subtle moments like Antea’s spirit moving restlessly around Red’s bedside while he sleeps, equally unable to settle down beside him or tear herself away, are nothing short of perfection. The game’s best work is reserved for its main story, but its side missions are uniformly well-handled. Though the dialog occasionally falters, the performances, set pieces, and other elements always hold their own. If there’s one area in which Banishers triumphs, it’s the story.

Gameplay: Riddles from the Grave

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden divides its time between combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving while taking advantage of both the spirit and material worlds. The semi-open world smoothly guides players from one Haunting and distressed villager to the next. The handholding never becomes frustrating though. Each Haunting presents an emotionally fraught mystery, and at the end of each, you choose whether to Ascend or Banish the spirit responsible. Or you can Blame the living, a morally questionable alternative that promises Antea resurrection.

Hauntings form the game’s backbone, and they’ll feel familiar if you’ve played Vampyr. Each presents you with a person tormented in one way or another, and you’ll need to follow the trail of clues back to whatever restless spirit plagues them. After conducting a ritual to summon the dead, you’ll have to choose whether to Ascend or Banish the spirit, putting it to rest. On the other hand, you can Blame the living instead, holding them responsible for their misery. I rarely felt conflicted over what to choose, but the Hauntings consistently drew me into DON’T NOD’s world and taught me more about Antea and Red.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden does a great job of fusing gameplay and story. Each Haunting solved unlocks new skill tree nodes, and DON’T NOD meticulously pruned them to prevent bloat. You won’t find any “+3% electric damage” perks here. Everything makes a worthwhile difference, whether by buffing your attacks or rewarding you with unblockable team hits whenever you complete a combo. Few of these unlock new moves or mechanics, unfortunately. That leaves your palette of combat options missing a few colors by the end of the game. Combat is fun, but using the same kit almost the entire time drags it down.

In battle, Antea works best against possessed corpses, while Red works best against the spirits themselves. This dynamic makes for fun and fluid fights. Beat corpses to a pulp as Antea and then finish the poltergeists off as Red. Weapons and armor follow the same philosophy as skills: they’re relatively few but all feel worthwhile. Whether you’re fighting bosses or conventional enemies, fights remain well-balanced. That said, once you unlock Red’s rifle, some battles are trivialized on normal difficulty.

The game’s many puzzles provide a fair challenge of their own. They’re typical action RPG stuff, consisting mostly of environmental puzzles, but that’s not a bad thing. Shoving minecarts around to reach high places or shooting chains to drop drawbridges are perfectly fine activities if they’re done well. These ones are. Search your environment thoroughly and remember which powers you can use that might help. You likely won’t get stuck. I’m the kind of player who gets frustrated when brain teasers tease too much, but DON’T NOD struck a fine balance here.

The semi-open world of Banishers guides you through five unique biomes throughout its 16 chapters. There are just enough detours and side paths littered with treasure, collectibles, and spectral challenges. You have reasons not to just sprint toward the next quest marker, but the content stretches thin over one playthrough. You’ll need to beat the game multiple times to see every ending. There’s not enough here to sustain that. Combined with the lack of enemy diversity, the restrictive map puts a damper on Banishers‘s replay value.

Graphics & Audio: Flesh and Steel

The golden wheat stirs in the breeze, but the house beyond is a fire-blackened skeleton. As Red approaches, spirits materialize around him. The sharp crack of his rifle sends the first stumbling back. While he’s busy reloading, another spirit slips inside the body of a dead hound. Antea steps forward in Red’s place to meet it, fists cracking down on the hound over and over again until it falls free of the corpse. Red’s next bullet staggers the ghost, and before it can recover, his sword and torch lash out in a flash of steel and flame. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden brings cinematic flair to many of these moments.

Cooking a specter with Banishing fire or blasting a pack of corpses with Antea’s phantasmal powers never ceases to satisfy. After playing for 30 hours, using Antea’s abilities to blow up boulders or teleport across broken bridges still made me grin. Antea herself remarks on more than one occasion about how satisfying those powers are. DON’T NOD knows what it did. Although battles lost a bit of their rush over time due to the repetitiveness of my moves or the enemies I faced, the sights and sounds of battle remained satisfying throughout.

DON’T NOD nailed the look and feel of the setting. The haunted villages, foreboding swamps, and treacherous ravines of colonial New England could’ve come straight out of a Solomon Kane story. Moving through them is a pleasure. Stumbling across a ghost in New Eden feels as inevitable as running into Pyramid Head in Silent Hill. The stellar art and audio design are a big part of why. While there’s nothing revolutionary in either department, they’re remarkably consistent at generating an aura of unease. Even in empty meadows and down quiet forest roads, you’ll rarely feel at peace.

Russ Bain (Red Mac Raith) and Amaka Okafor (Antea Duarte) deserve particular shoutouts for their excellent voice acting. Though the facial animations are occasionally rubbery, Red and Antea deliver convincing and emotional performances throughout. Their relationship is without question the highlight of the game, and their dialog is a huge reason why. Whether Antea is chiding Red for acting like the apprentice Banisher that he is or reassuring him as they lie together at night, you can’t help but feel the love and connection between them.

Conclusion: Love Undying

I experienced few bugs and only a single crash during my time with the game. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a leap forward in storytelling compared to DON’T NOT’s previous work. If you enjoyed Vampyr or Life is Strange, you’ll probably love this one. The game would need more variety in combat and exploration, however, for the thought of a second playthrough to excite me. Still, Banishers handles the relationship between Antea and Red so well that I’ll flirt with the idea nonetheless. It’s not just a love story; it’s a story I love. DON’T NOD has room to grow when it comes to gameplay, but if it continues in this direction, departed spirits won’t be the only ones we’ll remember forever.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is available for PC (Reviewed), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

Review copy given by Publisher.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (PC Reviewed)

8 Great!

A good love story and great romance that struggles with shallow combat and exploration.

Pros

1. Emotional and satisfying relationships
2. Compelling Hauntings
3. Beautiful setting

Cons

1. Somewhat shallow combat
2. Disappointing exploration
3. Mediocre replayability