Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Reviews

The main story and side quests are great ... very interesting with lots of decisions / moral dilemmas. Combat is okay. Visuals are fantastic. Characters are well written and interesting.

This game has ruined finding another game after it that can match its quality. Combat wasn't the greatest ever but satisfactory to move the story on and enough to keep me entertained while 100%ing the collectibles. Now I'm searching for a new game to play and I'm not finding anything good to come after its emotionally packed ending. If anyone has a good suggestion of a game that can get me that emotionally attached i'd be grateful.

The design of the combat is truly awful. The sound design during combat is especially awful; the sounds all muffle/fade out when you get low health making it hard to tell what the fuck is going on. I found the pre-attack animations of the enemies often not comprehensible so reacting to enemies is just not happening. There is a lock on feature, but the game removes all camera controls while you are locked on so you are constantly fighting the game because the auto targeting while you are not locked on will never target the enemy you want but the lock on prevents you from seeing anything else; also the lock on keeps your character and enemy directly in front of the camera in a line, so your character is often covering the majority of your target so you can't see your fucking target. Your health items are restored at fires like Dark Souls, but the frequency of fires can be very inconsistent; one area may have fires everywhere while another area doesn't have any; this is a problem because numerous people have effectively soft locked themselves on a quest called "The Beast" because they run out of healing items but also cannot return to their last resting point. There is no minimap. You have to open the menu every time you want to see it. There are waypoints and a compass, but there are a lot of nooks and crannies in the maps so a minimap would have helped so much. Also make sure you disable the "dynamic compass" setting in the menu. That is all sad because I love the story, settings, and general graphics of the game, but the gameplay just really, really sucks.

Amazing story, writing, performances and environment. Loved the combat mechanic and the exploration.

The combat system of this game is incredible! I don't usually like switching between characters but it's so seamless and cinematic it makes combat incredibly fun. I really enjoy the relationship between the two main characters but I don't find the story of the game incredibly endearing, I think the combination of boring npc's and the grey barren environment make me not want to play the game beyond fighting enemies. Lots of potential though.

Quality writing and solid world building more than makes up for somewhat bland combat. The NPCs all felt like unique individuals with their own flaws and character, and the world itself was one I wanted to interact with. This was one of the few games where I took the time to read all the notes and in-universe books to learn more about all of it's inner workings. The combat however can be a bit tedious especially at higher levels where the game uses bigger and bigger health bars as a means of balance. Even with the faults, Banishers is still a very enjoyable game.

This game has a great story. Now, if only the tedious and unnecessary bloat of the rest of semi-open world didn't get in the way...

The writing is pretty great, the main characters have such a terrific relationship and are excellently acted (especially Rory who I could listen to read the phone book). The combat is really only 'okay' and the open-world has quite a lot to discover but is not particularly visually appealing (lots of running through muddy fields, so many muddy fields). If you can put up with all the backtracking and padding, it's a really quite interesting and vibe-y story about why America will always be cursed.

After the first few hours with this game, I thought that’s just how it was - imagine The Witcher 3 as an inspiration for the storyline, God of War for the gameplay, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice for the puzzles, all wrapped in an AA production. And there you have it – Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Unfortunately, after completing the main story, I have to say that this game had great ambitions to be something special, but it was completely ruined by boring side quests and additional activities that are forced into the middle of the story, completely destroying its pacing. I really like open-world games and, for example, in The Witcher 3 I enjoyed clearing all the question marks on the map. But here, after just a few of them, I was so bored that I could barely push myself to finish the main story. Unfortunately, the clunky combat doesn’t help either. The enemies keep repeating, and being constantly forced into exactly the same looking fights makes the gameplay feel tedious and exhausting. On top of that, the level design is somewhat flawed - there are plenty of areas with activities that are impossible to reach intuitively, forcing you to check the map multiple times just to figure out how to get there. Luckily, the ending was really interesting and absolutely worth it, so I’d still recommend giving Banishers a try at least for a main storyline - but maybe not at full price.

It's ok. Kind of overstays it's welcome though. If you do play it, I would highly recommend not focusing too too much on gear collecting and do the haunting cases needed per ending you are trying to achieve (13 to ascend/bring back). Took me 52hrs to do all hauntings and get most of the gear. I was waaaay to burnt out by the final mission. Combat gets a bit stale after around 30hrs and I found myself dreading every encounter in the open world. Fast travel from any point to campfires already visited would have increased my enjoyment level drastically. I will do another playthrough if this mod is created. Glad I played it, recommend it on sale, 6.8/10.