Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Review Summary

Compelling story, deep characters, choices: The game features a compelling and emotionally resonant story with well-developed characters, impactful choices, and a rich atmosphere. The narrative explores mature themes and offers a deep, layered experience that often requires multiple playthroughs to fully appreciate. The game's world-building, lore, and side quests are also praised for their quality and integration with the main story.

Unique, engaging combat system: The combat system is praised for its unique character-switching mechanic, which adds depth and variety to encounters. Players enjoy experimenting with different builds and combos, and boss fights are often highlighted as engaging and well-designed. The combat is considered an improvement over the developer's previous title, Vampyr.

Endearing main characters, strong relationship: The relationship between the two main characters, Antea and Red, is a central highlight of the game. Reviewers praise their well-developed personalities, believable interactions, and the emotional depth of their connection. The voice acting for these characters is also consistently lauded.

Meaningful, well-written side quests: The game features well-written and engaging side quests that explore a range of emotions and themes. These quests often present morally grey choices with meaningful consequences, sometimes even surpassing the main storyline in terms of character development and drama. Completing side quests is worthwhile due to the interesting stories, unique rewards and their impact on the game's ending.

Visually appealing, detailed graphics: The game features beautiful and detailed graphics that create an immersive and atmospheric world. Reviewers appreciate the attention to detail in the environments, character models, and animations, which contribute to the overall sense of realism and immersion.

Repetitive and uninspired combat: Combat is frequently criticized for becoming repetitive and uninspired. This is due to a limited variety of enemy types, simplistic combat mechanics, and a lack of meaningful character progression. Many reviewers found themselves growing bored with the combat encounters, even after unlocking new skills and abilities.

Tedious, unrewarding open-world exploration: The game world suffers from tedious exploration due to a combination of factors. These include: a large but empty map, limited and poorly placed fast travel points, repetitive level design with excessive backtracking, unrewarding loot, and frequent traversal mechanics that interrupt the flow. Many reviewers found themselves frustrated by the amount of time spent running through uninteresting environments with little to show for it.

Inadequate fast travel system: The game's fast travel system is inadequate, with fast travel limited to sparsely located campfires. This forces players to spend excessive amounts of time running through the same areas repeatedly, exacerbating the issues with the game's large and empty map design.

Game length artificially padded: The game's length is artificially extended through padding, including excessive backtracking, repetitive side quests, and an overabundance of collectibles. This leads to player fatigue and a feeling that the game overstays its welcome.

Forced, unavoidable combat encounters: Players are often forced into combat encounters with no option to avoid them. This can be frustrating, especially when backtracking or simply trying to explore the world. The inability to escape combat further contributes to the game's repetitive nature.

Moral choices impact story/endings: The core gameplay revolves around investigating hauntings and making moral choices that impact the story, character relationships, and multiple endings. Players must decide the fate of spirits and settlers, choosing to banish, ascend, or blame, with consequences that shape the game world. The game avoids a 'choose your ending' selection, instead committing to the player's choices made throughout the game.

Character progression and skill upgrades: The game features character progression through skill trees, gear upgrades, and equipment. New abilities are unlocked, encouraging backtracking to previously explored areas to uncover new secrets and content. The game rewards a versatile approach, allowing free redistribution of ability points before each battle, encouraging experimentation with all mechanics.

Semi-open world, linear progression: The game features a semi-open world structure with linear paths, exploration, and environmental puzzles. The world gradually expands as the player progresses through the game. The game balances combat, map exploration, and reading/understanding lore.

Character-switching combat and exploration: The game features a combat system where players switch between two characters, Red and Antea, each with unique abilities and strengths. This mechanic is central to both combat and exploration, with certain areas and enemies being more vulnerable to one character than the other. The character switching mechanic flows quite well together.

Repetitive, shallow combat system: Combat is passable but becomes repetitive due to limited enemy types and lack of depth. The game's RPG systems feel somewhat tacked on, and side quests are often uninteresting. The game is not suitable for those who need a huge open world, consider emotions in a game unimportant, value character customization, or expect to play different classes.

Good graphics and optimization: The game generally exhibits good graphics and optimization, with many players reporting smooth performance on various PC configurations. Some users experienced initial texture loading issues or occasional lag, but these problems were often resolved or considered minor. The game leverages Unreal Engine 5, though some reviewers noted that it doesn't fully utilize all of the engine's advanced features.

Steam Deck issues reported: The game has some issues on Steam Deck, including getting stuck on the splash screen and requiring the on-screen keyboard to bypass an error. Performance on Steam Deck is described as choppy by some, while others report reasonably good performance with adjusted settings.

DLSS optimization inconsistencies reported: Some reviewers experienced inconsistent optimization with DLSS, with the technology not providing significant performance improvements. Additionally, there is no Nvidia optimization profile available for the game.

Reliable save system present: The game features a reliable auto-saving system and manual save options, which help mitigate the impact of any bugs or crashes encountered. Frequent auto-saves and multiple save slots ensure that players don't lose significant progress if an issue arises.

Variable loading time reports: Some reviewers experienced long loading times, even when respawning in the same location. Additionally, texture loading issues were noted, with textures sometimes failing to load properly or appearing suddenly. However, other reviewers reported fast loading times, indicating variability in this aspect of performance.

Worth buying on sale: A common suggestion is to wait for a sale before purchasing, indicating that while the game has merits, its full price may not be justified for all players. This recommendation often stems from concerns about the game's flaws or repetitive elements.

Focus on main story: Several reviewers suggest focusing on the main story and limiting side content to avoid tedium and pacing issues. Some also recommend adjusting the difficulty to prioritize the narrative experience over challenging combat.

Underrated, hidden gem: Some reviewers consider the game a hidden gem or an underrated title, praising its unique qualities and expressing surprise at its lack of widespread recognition. They believe it deserves more attention and stands out from other releases.

Generally positive experience: These clusters contain general positive sentiments and scores without specific details. While positive, they lack the constructive feedback and actionable insights of other points.

Hope for a sequel: Many reviewers express hope for a sequel or future installments in the same universe, indicating a strong interest in seeing the world and characters further developed. This suggests that the game has created a positive impression and a desire for more content.

17th-Century New England Setting: The game is set in 17th-century New England during the colonization of America, specifically in 1695. The story revolves around a curse affecting the fictional settlement of New Eden, blending historical events with supernatural elements like ghosts, demons, and witchcraft, reminiscent of the Salem witch trials era.

Perceived 'Agenda' Elements: Some reviewers address claims of a 'political agenda' or 'woke' elements within the game, particularly regarding diverse characters and relationships. However, many find these elements subtle, relevant to the story, and not critically problematic, while others may be more sensitive to them.

Not Very Scary: The game is not particularly scary despite being in the horror genre, lacking jump scares and intense horror elements. The soundtrack is considered adequate and fitting, but not particularly outstanding.

Game Length and Localization: The game's length varies, with some reviewers reporting around 34 hours to complete, while others estimate up to 60 hours for a full playthrough. The game is translated into multiple languages and has German and French voice acting.

Characters: Red and Antea: The game features Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte, who are banishers and lovers. Antea becomes a ghost early in the game, and the story revolves around their relationship and ghost-hunting activities.