Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden

Developer DON’T NOD has built its reputation on narrative-driven, choice-heavy interactive dramas, most notably Life is Strange. With Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, the Parisian studio takes a deliberate and ambitious leap into the territory of high-budget action role-playing games. Set in the bleak, atmospheric wilderness of 1695 Colonial America, the game positions itself as a somber blend of tactical physical combat and agonizing moral philosophy. Players assume the roles of Red mac Raith and Antea Duarte, a pair of highly skilled spirit hunters—“Banishers”—who are also romantic partners. Their mission to lift a curse on the settlement of New Eden goes disastrously wrong when Antea is killed, returning as the very thing she swore to destroy: a lingering spirit.

From this tragic premise, the game builds its central mechanic and narrative tension. Red is bound by oath to banish ghosts, yet desperately in love with one. To resurrect Antea, he must murder living settlers; to let her go, he must ascend her spirit. DON’T NOD positions this game as a mid-tier blockbuster—a “Double-A” production that strives for the cinematic weight of Sony’s God of War while retaining the morally grey, dialogue-heavy detective work that characterizes the studio’s earlier catalog. It is a fascinating, if sometimes overextended, experiment in marrying high-concept storytelling with traditional action-adventure loops, targeting players who demand thematic maturity alongside their swordplay. By setting the story in 1695, DON’T NOD capitalizes on a historical period rife with religious paranoia, isolation, and colonial guilt, providing fertile ground for ghost stories that are as much about human cruelty as they are about the supernatural.

• Dual-Character Combat Dynamic: Swap instantly between Red’s physical weapons (saber, firebane, rifle) and Antea’s spectral powers to execute high-impact combos and manipulate the battlefield.
• Haunting Cases: Act as a seventeenth-century paranormal detective to solve mysteries, search for clues, interview settlers, and reveal the hidden motivations of the deceased.
• Agonizing Moral Decisions: Choose between sacrificing the souls of living settlers to fuel Antea’s resurrection or ascending her spirit to the afterlife, with every decision dramatically steering the narrative toward different endings.
• Atmospheric Colonial Setting: Navigate the dense, fog-covered forests, desolate swamps, and puritanical settlements of 1695 Massachusetts, rendered with a heavy sense of isolation and dread.

The Narrative Engine and Haunting Cases

The core of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden lies not in its swordplay, but in its Haunting Cases. These are not simple fetch quests; they are self-contained narrative tragedies. In each case, Red and Antea investigate a haunting within the community. Players interview terrified settlers, gather physical evidence, and step into the spectral realm to reveal the memories of the deceased. What makes these cases compelling is their persistent moral ambiguity. There is rarely a simple story of a malevolent spirit and an innocent victim. Instead, there are complex human relationships corrupted by greed, fear, or jealousy. A blacksmith might be haunted by his dead, abusive business partner; a pioneer might be haunted by the friend she left to die in the woods.

At the end of each investigation, the player must render a verdict. You can banish the ghost, ascend them peacefully, or blame the living settler. Blaming the living means executing them on the spot, harvesting their soul to bring Antea closer to resurrection. Ascending or banishing the ghost honors Red’s oath as a Banisher but dooms Antea to eternal death. This mechanical tie between narrative choice and gameplay progression is brilliant. Every time you spare a sympathetic settler, you actively choose to let your lover fade. Conversely, every time you murder a settler to save Antea, the moral rot of the decision is the point. It demands a level of roleplaying commitment that most modern RPGs shy away from.

Dual-Character Combat Mechanics

However, this brilliant narrative framework is frequently undermined by the game’s combat loop. Combat relies on swapping between Red and Antea on the fly. Red handles physical enemies with his saber and rifle, building up a spiritual meter. Once filled, you swap to Antea, who deals spectral damage, breaks enemy shields, and reveals hidden elements in the environment. In theory, this dual-character dynamic should feel kinetic and tactical. As designed, it risks devolving into repetitive button-mashing.

The primary culprit is a lack of enemy variety. Across a lengthy campaign, the same handful of spectral archetypes—feral beasts, floating shades, and armored husks—recycle endlessly. No matter how satisfying the impact of Red’s rifle is on paper, the encounters are structured to become tedious chores well before the halfway mark.

The Pacing Problem

This highlights the game’s broader issue: pacing. DON’T NOD has crafted a tight, emotionally devastating story, but stretched it across a massive, semi-open world that demands hours of traversal and backtracking. The wilderness of New Eden is gorgeously realized, but navigating its narrow, winding paths feels restrictive. The puzzle-solving elements—which usually involve finding a specific vantage point to shoot a spectral barrier or moving a cart to climb a ledge—feel like busywork designed to pad the runtime rather than genuine intellectual challenges. The game is at its best when characters are talking, arguing, or grieving. When it forces long stretches of fighting identical wolves in a rocky canyon to reach the next story beat, the momentum grinds to a halt.

Visually, Banishers punches above its weight class. DON’T NOD has successfully captured the oppressive, melancholic beauty of the American wilderness. The forest canopies filter weak, cold sunlight, and the mist-choked swamps are designed to feel genuinely hazardous. Character models, particularly Red and Antea, are highly detailed, with expressive facial animations that carry the heavy emotional load of the script. The voice acting by Amaka Okafor and Russ Bain is strong; their weary, chemistry-filled interactions prevent the heavy-handed dialogue from sliding into melodrama.

However, the game’s double-A budget shows in its environmental reuse and stiff NPC animations. While the main cast looks superb, minor settlers look generic and frequently repeat assets. On Steam, a 2D-scope game of this fidelity is demanding on hardware: maintaining high frame rates at high resolutions is built around upscaling technologies like DLSS or FSR, and asset-dense forest areas are the kind of scenes where stuttering is most likely to surface.

Banishers on Steam offers the best visual fidelity, but the control scheme requires some consideration. While the mouse and keyboard setup allows for precise aiming with Red’s rifle, the combat is clearly designed with a gamepad in mind. Swapping between Red and Antea, executing dodge-rolls, and triggering heavy attacks map far more naturally to an analog controller than to a keyboard. For PC players, a controller is the sensible choice.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a bold, admirable attempt to make an action-RPG with a soul. Its repetitive combat and padded runtime hold it back from greatness, but its strong writing, haunting atmosphere, and affecting moral choices make it a journey we recommend to the right audience. DON’T NOD has shown it can deliver cinematic maturity on a grander scale, even if it still has a few mechanical ghosts of its own to banish.