Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden - Before You Buy

(bright tones) - [Jake] Hey, and we're back with another episode of "Before You Buy," that show where we give you some straight up gameplay, and our first impressions of the latest games releasing. As usual, it's me, Jake, and today we're talking about "Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden." This is from Don't Nod, the team behind the most recent "Jusant," or "Jusant." "Life is Strange, "Remember Me," and "Vampyr," or "Vampyr," depending on how you say it. For years now, they've been making a nice blen

d, a nice variety of different games, and me personally, I really, really enjoyed what they did with "Vampyr." This game has been billed by the developers as kind of the heir to that game, you know, continuing some of those ideas, something of a similar vein, so that's why I've kept my eye on this one. Let's just jump in and talk about this adventure. I am a bit mixed on it, but there are some really interesting concepts here if you like these types of games, and just so you know, we've been pla

ying a review copy and this footage was captured on PS5 and is spoiler free. Look, if a lot of it looks the same, it's mostly within the early hours to avoid big story spoilers for you. So in this game, I'll just set up the very beginning, the back of the box thing. You are a Banisher. Well, two Banishers technically. These are kind of ghost hunters for hire in a world where ghosts just exist. They happen after people die and sometimes they linger and somebody needs to get rid of them. Otherwise

, the ghost will just hang around and the living can never fully move on from a death. Plus, the ghosts kind of feed off of the life force of the living. So Banishers are a kind of ghost witcher. They come into a town, they solve a mystery about a ghost haunting someone, and then they banish it. The Banishers here are a man, Red Mac Raith, and woman Antea Duarte, with him actually being somewhat the apprentice. So it's kind of a cool dynamic. It's the 1600s and they travel to the New World, Amer

ica, to solve a very tough ghost mystery a colleague is dealing with. They head to this place called New Eden. It's a small, fictional New England colony, and that's where things really get going. It's not a spoiler here, this is in the trailer for the game, but Antea is unfortunately killed, meaning you're playing as Red accompanied by her ghost throughout the game, and the game plays with those mechanics. So not only does this guy have a dead girlfriend, but also she was kind of like the maste

r and he was a little bit of the apprentice, so there's a lot to that, and this whole concept from the 1600s to the setting to the way ghosts are treated, I can't stress enough how cool I personally think this story and setup is. This world has really good ideas, a setting we don't see in a ton of adventure games, and plays with ideas of religion, faith, colonialism, mysticism, love, witchcraft, and it does it super well. This is in big thanks to the two leads, Red and Antea, being great, strong

characters straight up. It is really interesting because, of course, they are in love, and that brings a whole dynamic we don't see in a lot of games, but also they just do a good job unfurling them as the game goes along. You don't totally get their whole life and backstory and motivations right away. Who they are as individuals is kind of filled out over a length of time, and it works wonders for making you actually give a damn about them. That and the fact that there is just some great voice

acting going on here, the acting from the leads, of course, but even just side NPCs are all usually top notch and just engaging. The problem is the actual gameplay. A good chunk of it I just didn't really enjoy and I found it pretty dull. The combat just didn't do it for me. The idea of swapping between human and ghost mid-combat is a fun idea, and there are a few abilities you unlock that take advantage of it in some fun ways, but most of the time, in moment-to-moment encounters, it just feels

like a bit of a slog. I can't quite put my finger on why, though. It's responsive enough. It's basically melee with a quick use gun occasionally and the game has some challenge, but I still just never really enjoyed it too much. It feels like it's almost going for a "God of War: Ragnarok" type thing, but with less variety. Like I feel like it's begging for me to chain together a bunch of cool moves that don't exist in the game. And again, there is a skill tree and in it, you unlock abilities fo

r both characters, and there are some ways to chain some things and kind of swap between characters quickly, but it still all just boils down a lot of the time to switch to the most effective character for the enemy and mash away at the basic three or four attack combos over and over again with a squishy block and parry system. The highlights are usually the boss battles, though, 'cause things could be a little bit more difficult, you have to change up your tactics a little more. The lock-on sys

tem isn't the greatest, but the bosses are just cool, simple classic video game-style bosses. And this also goes for the optional side quest bosses. You can seek these out in the world and summon them for a tougher optional battle, and usually they're decently fun and just a tense time. All the enemies are either big monstrous things or they just straight up remind me of Scooby-Doo pirate ghosts, and that's not a bad thing. The combat isn't a disaster, it's playable, it's a way to kill things an

d get through an adventure, but I just wasn't totally gripped by it. The other issue is that the game just feels like it gives you a lot of video game just for the sake of it, just filler. I'd almost rather a shorter, more compact, more interesting thing that is finely tuned and not weirdly paced. Here you have big, beautiful, but empty areas filled with ledges to slowly watch the character cross, ropes to slowly climb back up, and of course, just third person game, slide through a crack in the

wall type stuff. That really slows down the pace here 'cause there's a lot of it, especially because journeying around and exploring these semi-open areas, it just didn't feel rewarding anytime it was for anything other than story. Finding a hidden chest or a secret area that had some loot, none of it really felt worth it because the loot system just isn't exciting. You have a character loot screen for both characters, which is cool, but it's really just that action game light RPG stuff you've s

een, a sword that looks almost the same with slightly better stats, and now, instead of it being a green rarity, it's a purple rarity. There are some that make some creative differences, but most of the time, I just couldn't be too bothered and just upgraded the main stuff I already had. Plus, the ingredients you're getting for crafting and upgrading stuff, just feel just as lifeless and just something to do, something to click on. I didn't really care about looking for any of it because it didn

't matter too much, until sometimes, suddenly, it matters too much and then I ended up needing an ingredient for a summoning circle and then I needed to go and get it and then that kills the pace. Again, it's not all bad, like the locations themselves, there is some cool stuff there, swamps, woods, spookier woods, there's a lot of woods in this game, but it works, and I like games that have good woods. I like games with 1600s locations, spooky graveyards, just like grim towns with depressed NPCs

, I love that type of stuff. But the combat, the loot, and the exploration is a big part of the game, and I found myself just a bit bored of a lot of it. This is despite those good aspects I said, the woods, the locations, some of the elements. I really just found myself wanting to get to the next story bit, the next investigations side quest. I wasn't super into the combat, I wasn't really into exploring so that is, to some, an indictment on how middling the elements I mentioned are, but it's a

lso a testament to how good the rest of it is that I still enjoyed my time with the game. So "Banishers" takes an element from "Vampyr" or Vampyr," whatever, that does some good RPG conversation. You spend a lot of time getting to know locals, asking them questions, piecing together the puzzles about local deaths and ghosts and who's doing what and who's doing who. All of it is fascinating. The game has a menu where you can actually track character details, like motivations and stuff. It's prett

y simple, but it's a good way of just kind of keeping up to speed. There are a lot of characters in this game and a lot of clue hunting and conversation having results in confrontations where there are decisions to be made. Say for example, a wife's husband, he was away, he went out to work and he died, but the ghost is still hanging around and she can't move on, she can't grieve properly. Maybe there was some foul play somewhere in the story, so you figure it all out. Do you banish the ghost fo

r all eternity? Do you accuse the wife of wrongdoing? There are multiple choices to be made every time you solve a ghost mystery, and they often just feel thought provoking and like they have some depth. This is thanks to interesting writing, and again, actors just really doing a great job in providing some of the fun or the subtlety required for these things. You know, and I know when this type of stuff is really good when I don't care too much about the gameplay elements here. There is element

s I'll talk about in a sec, but I really am just like moment to moment, NPC to NPC, really stopping and thinking about the choices and what I say and what I do. And there is also another element of choice here where you swear an oath to your partner that gives you more to consider with these decisions, that I won't completely spoil, but it goes along with the way "Vampyr" played around with choosing who to spare and who to let live and getting to know everybody. Ultimately, I haven't been able t

o experiment with this completely, with multiple playthroughs to really see how differently it can shake out. I did choose the darker of the options. The game kind of makes you commit to doing it one way or the other pretty early in the game, but then tries to tempt you to fall back on it. It's kind of complicated, and again, I don't know how much it changes and I don't wanna spoil where I know it does, but at the very least, it's thought provoking. And from a technical aspect, I play it on PS5

and the further I got in the game, the more I had some frame drops, nothing too bad, but I will say some of my review colleagues did play on PC and had a couple of more issue, so I'd say do some research there before you buy, especially if you're looking into it at launch. These things tend to get ironed out, but sometimes they don't very quickly. So just take a peek, but for me playing on PS5, the game looked all right and it performed decently. Really, this is one for a certain type of player.

I tend to fall into this category. I love AA publishers, I like studios around the world that are trying different things, maybe punching a little bit above their weight, trying to tell big stories, trying to do big things. And it just doesn't feel like this incredibly refined thing, but there's some charm in there. If you're looking for the next "God of War" or "Dark Souls IV," you're not getting that here. But if you like character work, if you like interesting stories, world building, if you

like playing a game where you pick up the little scraps of paper or journal entries and you find the world interesting enough to actually read them, this is the type of game for you. If you like mystery games, if you like NPC dialogue, decision driven-type games, consider this. Again, it is not perfect, it is absolutely flawed, but at the very least, "Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden" is unique, and sometimes, I personally believe that a thing that is interesting, tries different things, but make

some mistakes along the way is still way more fun to talk about and really check out than something that is by the numbers. So for all its faults, all its flaws, I naturally tend to like be easy on these games because I tend to like them. Maybe if you're listening, you're that type of player as well, so hopefully you get where I'm coming from. But this is a "Before You Buy." You know how this goes by now, I give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinion, and now I wanna hear yours down

in the comments. What are your thoughts on this game? I knew a select group of people were really looking forward to it. Now that you've read some reviews, what are you thinking? You still jumping in day one? Do you like ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts? Let's talk about anything "Banishers" down in the comments. I want to hear from you guys. You know you can always find me on social media and YouTube @JakeBaldino, but if you like this video, clicking the like button is all you gotta do. It rea

lly helps us out. And if you're new, consider subscribing, maybe hitting that notification bell because we put out new videos every single day. But as always, thanks for watching. We'll see you guys next time. - [Antea] Ready and waiting. (characters roaring and growling) That's specter's seen a corpse and it wants it for its own. (characters roaring and growling) - Piss off. (blows landing) (characters roaring and growling) That bastard. (footsteps crunching) - [Antea] Let's look for our tie wh

ile Jacob's outside.