Bottom Line: A haunting, beautifully written action-RPG where the emotional weight of your choices elevates a repetitive combat loop into an unforgettable narrative journey.
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. You 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. You rarely find a simple story of a malevolent spirit and an innocent victim. Instead, you find 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, you 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, you feel the moral rot of your decisions. It forces 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. In practice, it quickly devolves into repetitive button-mashing.
The primary culprit is a severe lack of enemy variety. Over a campaign that easily stretches past thirty hours, you will fight the same three or four spectral archetypes—feral beasts, floating shades, and armored husks—hundreds of times. No matter how satisfying the impact of Red's rifle feels initially, the encounters become tedious chores by the halfway mark.
The Pacing Problem
This highlights the game's broader issue: pacing. DON'T NOD has crafted a tight, emotionally devastating fifteen-hour story, but they have stretched it across a massive, semi-open world that demands dozens of 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 absolute best when characters are talking, arguing, or grieving. When it forces you to spend forty minutes fighting identical wolves in a rocky canyon to reach the next story beat, the momentum grinds to a halt.