Developer – Don’t Nod

Publisher – Focus Entertainment

Platforms – PC (reviewed), Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 5

Review copy given by publisher

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a new action role playing game from Don’t Nod, the studio behind Life is Strange and Vampyr. It is set in 1695 North America, where you play as Red, a Banisher who hunts ghosts and tries to revive his dead lover, Antea. The game combines third-person combat, choice-based narrative, and supernatural powers in a dark and atmospheric world. Seen as a spiritual successor to Vampyr, this game was meant to be released back in November 2023, but was delayed to February 2024.

Don’t Nod’s newest project takes place in a fictional town known as New Eden, where two planes exist in the world: that of the living, and that of the departed. Our two main protagonists are banishers, special ghost hunters that can permanently exorcize restless spirits that are unable to leave the land of the living. During a specific mission to investigate and banish a ghost, Antea is unfortunately killed in action, leaving Red all alone to finish the job. However, she returns as a spirit of the dead and the pair continue their journey onward to banish more spirits and find a way to liberate Antea once and for all.

The main appeal here is the story, which is dictated by your decisions and their consequences. This comes as no surprise coming from a narrative-driven studio such as Don’t Nod. You can choose to blame, banish, or ascend the souls of the living and the dead, affecting the fate of the characters and the environment. The game heavily explores the themes of love, death, and sacrifice, as you face the dilemma of honoring your oath or breaking it for Antea. There are a total of 5 distinct endings to achieve, all of which depend on the choices you make throughout the game. For example, choosing to sacrifice people will contribute to Antea’s resurrection whereas sparing them will lead to her ascent. A single playthrough takes between 15-20 hours, as you explore 5 distinct regions in rural America, including villages, forests, mountains, and churches.

In terms of combat, you have access to Red’s musket and melee weapons, along with Antea’s supernatural abilities to fight against various creatures. As Red, you have a regular basic attack, a charged strong attack, along with a dodge and parry. You can also expend a charged meter to instantly banish undead ghouls. I found that enemies’ attacks track you to a questionable degree, so if you dodge too early, their attacks will still hit you. That being said, there’s a ton of difficulty options to choose from: story, easy, normal, hard, and very hard, all of which can be changed at any time. You can also switch to Antea during combat, which gives you a new suite of supernatural ghostly abilities that deal area of effect damage. Her attacks are limited though, as denoted by a blue bar, which then gets recharged by attacking with Red. Boss encounters are triggered when you perform scourge rituals and are usually a thrilling and multi-phased affair.

The RPG progression elements here are quite standard, as you collect items from exploration and defeating enemies to upgrade equipment, unlock nodes in skill trees, and craft items. You can equip Red with an outfit, amulet, wristband, brooch, ring, melee weapon, ranged weapon, and potion. Gear is denoted in rarity by color, similar to what you would find in a looter game such as Diablo. Your attributes are basic, consisting of strength, vitality, willpower, and wisdom. On Antea’s side of things, you have a tree of spirit nodes that can be used to unlock more of her abilities, such as summoning vines to root an enemy in place. This skill tree is shared with Red, with his nodes consisting of passive upgrades such as restoring health when defeating an enemy or increasing parry damage.

When you’re not busy going toe to toe with the undead, the game has you solving environmental puzzles and participating in detective-style investigations. Many new pathways and discoverable objects can be found by looking around your surroundings for clues in a semi-open world map. You’ll also gain new Metroidvania-esque abilities that allow you to reach previously inaccessible areas, revealing hidden rewards. Every mission or case can be boiled down to investigating objects and talking to townsfolk to make deductions before performing rituals to either ascend or banish spirits. Learning about a spirit’s background and history is pivotal in dictating what fate you choose for them in the end. One major element I wasn’t a fan of was that you can’t interact with any object when a person is speaking, and you don’t have the option to speed up the dialogue or skip it, meaning you have to sit through tons of slow talking before you can observe another clue or item.

Graphically speaking, the game looks alright at best. I was perhaps expecting too much given the fact that this title is built using Unreal Engine 5 and only coming to current generation consoles. The animations aren’t the smoothest and scene transitions are sometimes rigid. For example, there was a conversation sequence that had Antea’s neck jut out unnaturally just to have it pop back into place after the scene ended. That being said, the art direction is stunning and perfectly captures the harshness of the North American wilderness. The sound design is just as immersive, featuring top-tier voice acting, haunting music, and excellent sound effects.

The game runs at a solid 60 frames per second on an RTX 3080, with the option to cap it at 30 as well. Anti aliasing is available for TAA, AMD FSR, and NVidia DLSS. The game takes an impressive less than 4 seconds to load into from the main menu on PC. There’s a solid number of accessibility options too, including in depth tutorials, aim assist, auto relock, and the ability to rebind controls. Voice acting languages are available in English, German, and French, with subtitles in many more languages. Sadly there is no in-game timer to show how long you’ve played but there is an included photo mode!

I believe that Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden fills a specific niche in terms of genres, offering a unique blend of consequential story telling whilst also delivering a satisfying action role playing experience. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is a huge step forward in terms of creativity in the gaming medium and I’m all for it.