Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

The best art tells us something of relevance to the world around us. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a dark and intense fantasy of ghosts, vengeance, and human resilience through the bleakest of nightmares. It’s unfortunate that it offers such a strong allegory to the real world, yet it does and that makes it all the more thought-provoking, however inadvertent it was for the developers. Thankfully it’s also exceptionally good to play, even as it challenges your intellect and moral core.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is well beyond anything Don't Nod has ever done. It successfully merges their renowned knack for solid characters and great stories, engaging and enjoyable combat and a unique setting to create an experience like no other. It's a incredible fun and easily the studios most ambitious game so far. It doesn't get much better than this.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a powerful, emotional and compelling tale that shows off a side of Don’t Nod that we’ve never seen so well-lit.

After finishing it, we thought that Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is the kind of experience that only a studio like DON'T NOD can afford to make and that should be rewarded even just for the courage shown to propose such an adventure in a completely new setting, although not exactly original. A rarity these days. It is not without problems, between having to retrace one's steps too often and the lack of some useful information in the inventory, but on balance these are venial defects for an experience that has proven to be truly engaging in many ways and which grows in the end, always proposing borderline situations that test the player from different points of view.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a splendid experience crafted intricately by Don’t Nod. The game starts off strong, but a bit of the allure wears off over time as you peek behind the curtains of the various systems within the game. That said, the game’s intriguing narrative, relatively tough decisions, and overall solid gameplay elements make Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden one of the strongest gaming experiences of early 2024.

The middling world activities and RPG elements don't detract from the fact that Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a remarkably engaging story to follow. From the first moment you'll be entranced by the tale of Antea and Red and the contract they have been tasked to fulfill.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden definitely doesn't want to be a revolutionary game. Instead, it plays it safe to deliver a solid and fun experience, with an original story and gameplay that should please fans of The Witcher 3 and God of War (2018).

It's not going to be the game of the year, but it is a great example of both light RPG adventures and those games that make you crazy with their decisions. Pure Don't Nod with an extra show.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is about a moral choice regarding life and death. And its sturdy, plaintive narrative, sometimes reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romanticism, makes the decision difficult: You can’t help but be moved by the outpouring of love displayed by two ghost hunters in a haunted New England town.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is most probably the magnum opus (so far) of Don't Nod, which is a remarkable achievement, considering the great games they have developed so far. The haunting atmosphere is excellent, the writing is thoughtful and mature, and the gameplay gracefully completes the package.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a compelling tale of love and loss brought to life by phenomenal writing and performances with solid combat to boot, and it serves as a reminder that good storytelling remains a crucial element of video games.

Having completed Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, I can confidently say that it will go on as one of 2024's best games. If you are looking for a story full of tension, exciting moments and hard to make choices, as well as great animations and completely awful monsters, then you'll definitely hit the mark with Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. To sum it up: as a semi-open world RPG video game, it is with no doubt one of the best video games that Don't Nod has ever made.

Banishers: Ghost of New Eden isn't a perfect game, but a great example, why games are much more than a sum of their single components. The dual character combat is fun and just one of the aspects, where Red and Antea form an inextricable unit. The world looks nice and is worth exploring. The heroes are pleasant and there is a lot of room for experimenting in the skill and perk system. What's partly absent is the moral dilemma within the decisions, which could have intensified this unique action journey.

Despite a stiff combat system that sometimes feels imprecise, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden presents a compelling story about love, human misery and crucial social themes.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a bit disappointing with its technical problems and lack of simple features, but DON'T NOD managed to create a magnificent and addictive world that makes the player want to follow it to the end - after all, you are responsible for the fate of Red and Antea.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden proves to be a bold step for Don't Nod, combining its narrative talent with outstanding gameplay. This action-mystery title presents an immersive story, engaging mechanics and a pleasing visual presentation, promises a complete experience that will resonate with gamers.

An excellent action-RPG that follows in the footsteps of God of War and The Witcher 3 while proposing a very different but equally fascinating setting and two really cool main characters. Net of a few technical stumbles and some design naivete, Don't Nod's most ambitious project hits the mark rather well.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden surpassed my expectations thanks to its incredible sense of exploration, gripping story, and gorgeously-presented characters. Sure, it's easy but the adventure is still well-worth going on for any curious ghost hunters out there.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden boasts an amazing story with incredible voice acting. The setting, the narrative and the overall feel of the game is terrific and on par with high-budget games. However, the game has a faulty combat system, which is janky, crude, and lacks fluidity. Having said that, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is definitely one of those games I replay at least once a year.

A unique story about life and death told from the point of view of a detective duo whose love knows no bounds. An impressive evolution of the game style from a studio previously known for smaller-scale branching adventures.

Banishers delivers fun combat and a beautiful world to explore, but it's at its most engaging when it lets the player deal with ghostly mysteries, meaningful choices and the undeniable bond between its stellar main characters.

The latest release from DON’T NOD epitomizes their finest qualities: an engaging narrative seamlessly intertwined with the gameplay mechanics. Indeed, it marks a new stride for the studio in crafting action combat that is not only entertaining but also exceptionally responsive.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden throws you an interesting dilemma. Will you go after love and renounce your oath or will you do what you swore? This issue recurs throughout the game, in which you get to work as a medieval ghostbuster. The dynamic between the two main characters is top notch, the gameplay very fun and the boss fights are unique. Too bad, however, that the performance in terms of frame rate is not stable and the variety of enemies is limited. That being said, Banishers is a fine game, definitely worth considering, but with some untapped potential.

Banishers: Ghost of New Eden is a comprehensive look at loss through the eyes of its two star-crossed lovers, with a world around them to match the quality of its narrative. Don’t Nod continues to be ambitious with the game’s open-world design, combat and RPG systems, and for the most part, they work harmoniously to provide a stellar experience. However, there is still that trademark over extending Don’t Nod games have that hold it back from excellence.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a deeply emotional collection of human stories, of both the protagonists, but also the settlers of New Eden. The combat is nothing great, but the stories within certainly are. You’ll be surprised at how easily you can empathize with late 17th century colonials, which is the magic of developer Don’t Nod.

Don't Nod has taken several key lessons from Vampyr and applied them to great effect with its second action RPG. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden might not be revolutionary in anything that it does, and from a gameplay standpoint, it can sometimes feel a bit too straightforward for its own good, but with a well-realized setting, captivating story, excellent protagonists, and genuinely compelling choice-and-consequence moments, it's an easy game to recommend to fans of the genre.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden isn’t perfect, but it is a very intriguing action RPG with a moral dilemma that kept me at the edge of my seat. It tells a beautiful story about love, loss, acceptance and fear. I loved doing research on the villagers to find out the truth, walking through the beautifully crafted world and the combat kept me interested for a long time. The ending even made me want to start another playthrough, right after I finished.

While not a masterpiece, Burnishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a very solid game. And the unique dark fantasy setting is a huge advantage.

From folk horror to Scottish brogues, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden has a lot to offer, and I’m definitely going to dive back in to its deeply haunted map soon to try some of the alternative choices.

A dark adventure with space for romance and love between the main characters, in a time of ghosts and hunting spectres. There is ambition and consistency in this journey.

A strong, emotional story, a good, if not outstanding, combat system and plenty to do in terms of exploration and collecting: Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden should come as a positive surprise to most gamers, and certainly not many had it on their radar as a spring highlight.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a story full of love, spirits and sacrifices. This game has a very satisfying and challenging gameplay, as it forces players to face a series of ethical dilemmas, following DON'T NOD's usual tone. Immersive and beautiful, this experience is capable of enchanting any type of player.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is Don't Nod's most ambitious and solid game, and despite some flaws in pacing and repetition, it remains an action-adventure loaded with feeling and with a solid combat-system.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden excels thanks to the memorable narrative and complex moral decisions. Alongside a brilliant world and some of the best voice acting around, it's easy to forgive the few shortcomings.

Despite some frustrating design choices, pacing and technical issues, there is a prevailing magnetic chemistry to Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden that is felt within its narrative and mirrored in its gameplay, in large part thanks to its two brilliantly written and acted protagonists. Its thoughtful dissection and unique exploration of grief ultimately resonated with me in a way that allowed me to forgive most of its other sins.

Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden is an interesting and innovative action RPG with a few flaws here and there that stop it from being perfect. Its emotionally strong core story will keep players pushing to the end, while its key moral mechanic does have enough complexity to make players think about their decisions. It may have its clunky moments, but it's nonetheless something beefy for players to sink their teeth into.

A fantastically written and acted, dark love story sadly tarnished by a host of small issues that ruin the experience somewhat.

Banishers: Ghost of New Eden is a grim and gripping tale of two lovers coming to terms with love and sacrifice. Don’t Nod have built another beautiful world to enjoy.

Banishers: Ghost of New Eden isn’t the most polished game out there. With a love story at its heart that asks you to ponder the morality of your choices throughout, however, you can’t help but be drawn into its world. It also helps that it’s a game filled with variety; exploration is finely balanced with combat and investigation to create an experience that keeps you on your toes and stops tedium from seeping in, even though none of those three aspects are particularly impressive by themselves. Basically, it’s greater than the sum of its parts, especially if you get on board with the tale it wishes to tell.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden delivers both slick action and tough moral choices.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden heavily leans into the premise of challenging decisions with dramatic consequences, and manages to pull off an emotional and haunting love story where those choices do feel like they truly matter. Red and Antea feel like fully-fleshed out, interesting characters, forever linked to one another but struggling to let go. New Eden is full of communities plagued by supernatural creatures and dark secrets that make each of them intriguing to explore. An over-reliance on combat and a little too much hand-holding when it comes to solving cases is disappointing, but Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden can still be chalked up as yet another storytelling triumph for DON’T NOD. Life for the living. Death for the dead.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden sees developer DON'T NOD reach a new development peak, as it marries an excellent narrative with engaging and enjoyable gameplay. Poor enemy variety and technical flaws hold it back from true greatness, but its excellent, story-focused side quests on the other side make a few drab combat encounters worth pushing through. The studio's best game to date, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a new IP we hope is here to stay.

Banishers isn't going to appeal to those who demand continuous action and top-tier combat. The fact is, there are just so many games that do hacking, slashing, and shooting so much better. Banishers is for those who want to be told a scary story and face some difficult moral choices along the way…It's for those who relish the opportunity to play as a pair of seventieth-century supernatural detectives and solve some spooky mysteries while coming up with a solution to an inevitable, and much more personal problem…Banishers felt like we were living in a Washington Irving story such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, so if you think this sounds like a vibe, then we'd highly recommend it.

Don’t Nod delivers a powerful narrative adventure with complex decisions, a dark and fascinating setting, and a beautiful and complicated love story between two ghost hunters, but the combat and exploration are less polished and more repetitive than they should be, drawing too much from God of War.

Ultimately, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is configured as a solid action RPG, whose merit, however, is limited by a general lack of refinement in the fundamental mechanics. The real highlight of the production, as often happens with Don't Nod's works, is certainly to be found in the writing, full of brilliant ideas and generally very inspired. If you are looking for a title that knows how to correctly combine a dark atmosphere setting with a passionate (and at times heartbreaking) love story, you are in the right place. The horrors of New Eden await you.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden aims high, attempting to reach the level of AAA titles. It borrows the combat system and exploration from God of War, side quests from The Witcher, and a whole lot from some slightly worse high-budget games. The result is really good and the storyline in particular shines through – even if it could have been more emotional, it puts emphasis on not-so-easy decisions.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is an enjoyable adventure, with a strong narrative focused on emotions and personal grief, and combat that is both fun to play and customizable to your liking. Sadly, an unstable frame rate and issues in both pacing and choice impact, do take away a bit from that shine.

Banishers is definitely better than Don’t Nod’s previous action efforts, and if they decide to revisit this world again, they’ll be starting from a very solid base.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a great example of less being more. What it does well, it does very well, but those elements are bogged down in a needlessly large, open world that's been padded out with thin gameplay. When you reach the meat of the game, it's usually worth the effort, but there's so much dilution that it has difficulty shining through. The poor performance also makes the tedious elements feel more so. Like its main characters, Banishers is stuck in limbo between excellence and blandness, and I can only hope that any sequel will focus on quality over quantity.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden intertwines fantasy and romance in a narrative-driven adventure set in 1695. As Banishers Red and Antea, players tackle spirits in New Eden, facing moral choices between duty and love, especially when Antea becomes a ghost. Despite a combat system needing refinement and initial weak portrayal of the protagonists' relationship, the game shines in storytelling, offering a deep cinematic experience influenced by player decisions. Exploration and investigation add gameplay variety, though combat and navigation aspects could be smoother. This title reflects Dontnod's successful venture into combining engaging narratives with action and investigative elements.

Generous in its narration as in its gameplay, Banishers firstly offers a level of writing which without any harm maintains the good reputation of Don'tnod in the matter, offering multiple narrative arcs with striking choices which consolidate all the coherence of the 'universe. At first a little summary, the clashes benefit from an exhilarating evolution, enabled by a concise skill tree and a natural progression of the characters, very complementary on the ground. We also retain certain lengths, marked by dispensable intrigues, a slow increase in the power of the gameplay and a somewhat frustrating research part.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a new step forward from Don't Nod. The creators of Life is Strange continue to demonstrate that they make many more than narrative proposals and give us a complete and competent action RPG, although with a large room for improvement in all its sections.

Melancholy adventure with strong stories and good ideas, which often gets in its own way.

Executes all common elements of open- world RPGs with confidence, but it falls short of the games it emulates and is weakened by its bland protagonists. [Issue#38, p.84]

Yet there is heart in Banishers, and it beats strongest in the doomed romance at its centre. There's emotional heft in its ending, too. [Issue#395, p.110]

Banishers is not quite the unqualified win I wanted it to be, but it’s easy to appreciate on its merits. While the combat overstays its welcome and the exploration leaves a lot to be desired, there’s enough here to like for those who like strong narratives with great characters. For all its faults, the game is entirely confident in what it’s attempting to do. What’s more, with the foundation laid there’s plenty of potential for its faults to be addressed in future works. And it will be interesting to see what this team does next.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden really could have been a great game that could have made its mark on the narrative RPG genre. With an innovative concept, a poignant story and choices that make the player think and affect, there was enough to satisfy, not to mention some sumptuous landscapes, successful immersion and a well-thought-out combat system that could have been developed further. All these good ideas are ravaged by poor technique, NPCs from another decade, boringly repetitive gameplay and exploration, and uninvolving combat that deserved better. The whole RPG aspect of the game is unfortunately far too superficial and obsolete, and we're simply content to move forward in the story to find out what's good about it.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden will undoubtedly hold players with its emotional and diverse stories, but the game unfortunately falls short when it comes to combat and RPG elements. On the one hand, you want to learn more about New Eden's lore and about Red and Antea themselves. At the same time, this is somewhat hindered by the boring combat, fairly monotonous game world and the lack of valuable upgrades. Maybe an action RPG wasn't the best genre for Banishers, but this narrative adventure certainly deserves a place of honor in Don't Nod's portfolio.

Ultimately, Banishers Ghosts of New Eden satisfied my Vampyr expectations, which is a compliment in and of itself.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden offers an interesting twist on tried and true RPGs mechanics. A form of a morality system is implemented, but instead of being simply good or evil, it's based one what Red wants to do with Antea's soul which adds a sense of personal investment to one's choices beyond choosing which side with which to align. The mix of detective work to remove hauntings blended with the action-oriented combat elements helps make the role of Banisher seem more complete, as they have to rely on several different skill sets in order to accomplish their goals. This was further enhanced by the interplay between Red and Antea. The biggest stumbling block in Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is the pacing, as there are many fantastic moments in the game that are spread too far apart by uneventful travel. But even with the overall experience being uneven, the good qualities greatly outweigh the bad.

A sprawling action RPG with a poignant love affair at its heart, whose enjoyable combat and supernatural detective work is all in pursuit of a morally ambiguous goal of your own choosing.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the heartbreaking, immersive story. Except the creators have tried to push two games into one, and the action-RPG portion leaves much to be desired. With a little more focus, this game would not have ended up in the mid-range.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden presented me with a choice: engage with what little there was that would excite me in the game, or make my own fun. I chose the latter, and like the choices offered in the game, I suspect it wouldn’t have mattered much either way.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden does not seem to be able to support the developer's ambitions. The combat system is fun, but not exploited enough. Exploring the game world is incredibly limited and keeps you on your toes too much. On top of that there are technical imperfections, such as long loading times. Graphically it's all okay, but not brilliant. Characters look nice standing still, but when they start talking it's as if actors are wearing thick rubber masks and the animations are awkward. But the biggest problem is that the game doesn't actually do anything new. Everything you encounter you have seen before and better. Ironically, this game about a ghost and a ghost hunter is a bit soulless.

Banishers is a game I’m going to be thinking about for a long time, for better or worse. You’ll likely not find a better story than it any time soon, but there are plenty other better ways you could be spending your time.

The later stages of the game do sharpen the experience somewhat, at least. A full suite of powers gives you more to balance in combat, and some barriers require a modicum of acumen and skill to remove. But this isn't enough to stop Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden's from feeling leaden-paced. Its open world remains in the shadow of renowned predecessors, with few of the testing puzzles, fascinating landmarks or riveting combat situations that built their reputations. Having forged my way through to its ending, I doubt Banishers will haunt my thoughts for long.