It’s a cool, foggy evening in June 1695 as Antea Duarte and her protege/lover Red mac Raithe approach New Eden Town for a job. They’re both practicing the vocation of banisher, a detective of sorts, to resolve a haunting in New Eden Town. As our protagonists approach the town it becomes clear that much of it has been abandoned. Have they come too late? Meeting with the pillars of the town’s leadership it seems almost certain. The three leaders are at odds with each other and not very amiable with each other. More importantly, Red and Antea’s friend Charles, who summoned them to help with New Eden Town’s haunting, is dead. Upon visiting with his widow, Esther, it’s clear Charles, a man of God, attempted to resolve the haunting on his own and was killed in the process. Hauntings, killings, and shadows in our past. These are the puzzle pieces that make up the haunting of New Eden Town and Dont Nod’s latest game, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Developer: Don’t Nod
Price: $50
Platform: PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
MonsterVine received a PS5 code for review
What initially comes off as your bog-standard AAA action-adventure game with light action-RPG elements that we’ve all grown maybe a little too accustomed to playing, ends up being a complex story about love, sacrifice, and the people we leave behind. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden doesn’t mark a new style of game for Dontnod but it’s definitely a genre they should stick with. The narrative is fun, messy, and captivating with hauntings and stories all over the region that paint an absorbing picture of what life was like in New Eden Town before the banishers arrived. An action RPG at heart, Banishers boasts an active battle system that relies on parries, dodges, and many options to deal with a variety of foes you’ll face. Along with an engaging battle system, Banishers provides multiple difficulty options including a story-only option that makes combat significantly easier. For a developer known for creating captivating narratives, it’s nice to see they know their audience isn’t one monolith and instead will attract many different types of gamers. For reference, my playthrough was completed on Normal difficulty.
Following a soulsian style of gameplay, banishers have a decoction that allows them to recover health. This decoction only has a few charges and though it can be upgraded to hold more, banishers can also recover charges by killing foes. Enemies in this game are primarily wayward spirits, lost in the abyss, caught between heaven and hell, if such places exist. Spirits can attack you head on, dance about, attack from ranged, or possess corpses strewn about. When possessed, a spirit becomes not only more powerful but is essentially provided with an extra health bar. Once you’ve killed the possessed corpse, the spirit will burst forth from the back and resume fighting you and if you’re not diligent, perhaps find another corpse. An orange banish bar exists above your health bar and, once filled, allows the player to banish a spirit either killing them outright or dealing significant damage to more powerful spirits.
Progressing through Banishers allows you to upgrade your weapons, armor, rings, and decoction providing more damage, damage reduction, and better health gains. Likewise, as you complete hauntings or level up from completing tasks or killing spirits, you’re provided with two different skill points. One skill point is merely from level ups, this affects the more corporeal aspects of your combat while the other skill point, received from completing hauntings, upgrades the spiritual side of combat. All upgrades are given to the player as an either/or option, if you accept one upgrade, it locks out another upgrade. The skill trees aren’t particularly deep either, if you’re looking at a specific upgrade, at most you’re only one upgrade away from choosing it. While upgrading your gear is completely linear and more about finding ingredients and completing challenges, the skill point system is built on completing hauntings and leveling up.
Banishers is a very dense game. I was expecting around 15 – 20 hours of game time but my time tracker says I played it for over 40 and I feel like I’ve got quite a bit left to do in the game. Along with hauntings there are points of interest to discover, cursed items to decurse, treasure to be found, and those are the non-combat related events. Upgrading equipment will require things like elite gems or scourge accretion which can be attained by completing these combat challenges where you’ll be fighting swarms of scourge or a few particularly powerful ones. The amount of gear and upgrades required for all gear is quite daunting but seems minuscule when you consider how vast Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden becomes.
I’m speaking lightly about the narrative because some story events happen fairly early on that completely change the way the game is played, as well as setting up how the game is played throughout. I’m being intentionally vague as, if you plan on playing the game, I think all the story events are rather impactful. However, it should be noted that considering the times, 1695 in the new world, the hauntings reflect a realistic or, at least a seemingly realistic, portrayal of happenings amongst colonizers of the new world. Things like murder are easier to get away with when records aren’t readily or easily available. Likewise, people aren’t particularly aware of their mental health and sometimes lose themselves after an exceptionally tragic event, even if they were witness to it. I’m not a fan of being the judge in Banishers, which is essentially what Dontnod has you do. To solve the haunting, blame must be placed and it can be done so by ascending, banishing, or blaming. But banishers are given the gift of context through communing with spirits and that makes all the difference.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden calls into question the morality of how we treat not just others but ourselves. In one particular haunting, a man, Andrew, is haunted by a spirit that doesn’t seem malevolent. Asking around, it’s clear this man is having night terrors, and speaking with him directly, he’s clearly not sleeping well. As the haunting unfolds, our heroes discover that the spirit haunting the man is actually trying to get him to forgive himself. Andrew had killed his friend on the battlefield by accident and while haunted by this, refused to speak about it. As a result, the spirit of his friend is mute and only wishes for Andrew to forgive himself. Perhaps this resonated as a feel-good approach to a not very complex problem of survivor’s guilt, but in a world of malevolent hauntings for people’s wrongs, it was nice to see the approach of a haunting of someone’s own doing. Arguably, Andrew wasn’t just haunting himself, he was haunting his friend as well.
Unfortunately, I have to discuss the performance of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. This review, as noted above, was played on a PlayStation 5. Throughout the game, I noticed the frame rate getting worse and worse, to the point that it was clear that MOST of my time in the game was below 30 frames per second. Playing around, I realized this issue could be resolved by closing the game and reopening it, at which point the game resumed playing at a buttery-smooth 60. A simple fix, yes, but one that is not resolved almost a month after release and I feel anyone intending to play Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden should be aware of this issue.
It became obvious early on that Banishers would take an emotionally driven approach to its storytelling through exploring New Eden Town. Though very little of the game actually takes place in New Eden Town, it becomes a character itself as it haunts every single person you meet throughout the game. And though I think Dontnod is best known for lovingly crafted narrative games, I don’t think they’re as well known for their action RPGs. I’m happy to say that I really loved Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Don’t Nod takes a rather complex idea and expands upon it in a very satisfying way by providing context to its tales, making interesting characters, and giving them depth. Likewise, though the combat is nothing new, enough variety has been added to keep it fresh and enjoyable throughout the game. Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden surprised me with its combat and gameplay but kept me interested throughout with its compelling narrative of love, loss, and sacrifice.
The Final Word
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden surprised me with its combat and gameplay but kept me interested throughout with its compelling narrative of love, loss, and sacrifice.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
