Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden review

Recommended

by BloodScorchedSun

This is a pretty underrated game that unfortunately was somewhat targeted by the incels of gamergate because of how 'woke' it is. The audacity of having a black woman in a lead role. To be fair, there is a lot modern thinking injected into this 1690s period that just wouldn't be common. It is not entirely unbelievable though especially when you actually look at historical accounts of witch trials. I think they do a good job of balancing their messaging without it going overboard and it all serves the story. I think the story itself is good, it opens very strong with a creepy full moon set on a seaside town. The setup is good and gives you a cool dual protagonist combat system that never feels as good as it should be. There are a lot of skills that play into a certain playstyle if that is your thing. The progression can be lopsided because of how each of the characters skillpoints are gained. If you don't do haunting cases, Antea isn't earning a point to spend. She definitely has the better abilities, one of which being an AOE attack that can one shot a lot of the enemies later on. There is some good level design with some metroidvania type puzzles sprinkled in to come back to. My biggest complaint about this game is that it actively discourages exploration. A lot of the time you will come to an inpass, overpowered enemies or find you need an item that you need to return with. The fast travel system isn't great as it's point to point and not on demand and there is so much backtracking in this game. It can end up feeling like a slog despite good story beats and haunting cases. The combat go old fast because of the limited depth and how often enemies would randomly appear just to pad out your travels. It doesn't help that the gear system is pretty useless. There is so much build crafting put into the gear that it made most useless because I didn't engage with a lot of those stats or abilities. I ended up sticking with the stuff I got around the halfway point. I think the way to play this is to mainline the story and do the haunting quests, side stuff really doesn't add anything in my opinion. I wrapped up around 80 hrs so there is a lot of game.