REVIEW - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a supreme example of a dev team operating at peak performance
Ghostly happenings.
By Jonathan Garrett
19/02/23
Reviewed on Xbox Series X.
Review copy provided by Focus Entertainment.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden represents a satisfying confluence of Don’t Nod’s historic strengths. It boasts well defined characters, a clear narrative arc, and gameplay mechanics that further compliment those attributes. Banishers is very much in a similar vein to Vampyr, in that choices are central to your progression and the pacing deliberately skews slower to let you dig in to the world. One major difference here is that, unlike Vampyr, Banishers doesn’t attempt to throw two dozen characters at you at once and require you to somehow keep track.
You’ll find yourself invested from the off; Red and Antea’s story is immediately compelling, as their relationship is central to the plot. Performance wise, this leans closer to the top end of examples we’ve seen in this new premium era of motion capture. Backed by solid writing, these are earnest and committed portrayals that endear you in a way that ensures you’re willing to keep pushing forward. Furthermore, the facial and cutscene animation are both outstanding.
The opening prologue is perhaps a little too guided, as the drip feed of controls and mechanics are introduced in such a way that you almost wish they’d loosen the reigns. In some respects, this is probably the only main drawback with a title like Banishers; the “tell instead of show” approach is over used across the board.
The multi faceted upgrade tree is well presented but leaves you with a lot to consider. It does however feel more fleshed out than previous equivalents. There’s plenty of opportunities to tweak your move set to your playstyle, and the combat challenge ramps up considerably as you progress (particularly during boss fights). You can take a classic “memorise the pattern” approach to defeating them, and with such explicit narrative context for each encounter, you’re never left wondering why you’re fighting.
Banishers is a wonderful culmination of everything Don’t Nod has been trying to do in the RPG space. It might not be leading the pack in terms of A.I. design or combat nuance, but the writing, presentation, and overall feel more than compensate.
Beautiful design supported by even better writing.
WORTH IT?
At the bottom of every game review, we ask the question: Worth it? And the answer is either “Yeah!” or “Nah”, followed by a comment that sums up how we feel. In order to provide more information, we also have “And” or “But”, which follows up our rating with further clarification, additional context for a game we love, or perhaps a redeeming quality for a game we didn’t like.
YEAH!
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a triumphant release from Don’t Nod that builds on an already strong legacy of exploring new IP.
AND
This is easily their most polished release to date, with presentation and design matching the quality of their writing.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
