Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden: Review of the new game by the authors of Life is Strange

Already on February 12 (and the 13th on consoles) Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is coming out from the French studio DON’T NOD. And I’ll say right away – this is her best game since Life is Strange . During the passage, I remembered either The Witcher 3, then God of War 2018, then The Last of Us Part II, forgot about food, tirelessly took screenshots and constantly tried to come to terms with my own conscience.

Exorcists

IN Banishers The French are trying a new setting for themselves. This is not modernity, as in the duology Life is Strange, not the future, as in Remember Me, and not Victorian London, as in Vampyr . The action takes place in 1695 in North America, in a province called New Eden. Two “exiles” come here, Red and his beloved Anthea. They were called to deal with the curse that engulfed New Eden – winter never passes here, people die like flies, see nightmares and ghosts.

Exorcists are in the business of putting to rest the ghosts that haunt the living. They are partly reminiscent of witchers – they have their own order, unique weapons, herbs, rituals and abilities that allow them to get rid of creatures (for money, of course) that no one else can handle. And this is quite normal in this version of North America – there are also demonologists, hundred-year-old witches, animated corpses and half-screen monsters assembled from a pile of bodies.

About freaks and people

However, those who are familiar with creativity DON’T NOD, should have already guessed that this is a game not about ghosts and monsters, but about people who are the main monsters. Both the curse of New Eden and the other cases of "presence" (that is, the appearance of ghosts) that our heroes encounter are caused by human sins.

But, naturally, we are not talking about religious moralizing, although the action takes place precisely when the church was especially strong. On the contrary, anti-religious motives are clearly visible here, but in general we are talking about universal morality. And of course, partly about the usual DON’T NOD agenda. One of the key characters is forced to hide her feelings for a girl. Anthea herself is dark-skinned. And upon arrival in New Eden, she is faced with an ambiguous, let’s say, attitude towards the fact that a woman is the main one in the tandem of exiles. In general, Anthea is more of a feminist, although she is madly in love with the charismatic Scot Red.

But the authors are not at all obsessed with this whole topic. This is just one of the colors in the general, rather gloomy, palette of human vices, weaknesses and prejudices shown in the game. And our heroes are the main judges of the living and the dead.

Life or death

The fact is that almost at the very beginning Anthea dies and returns to Red in the form of a ghost – and this is no longer a spoiler. Now, ironically, the exile and the ghost travel, fight and deal with the curse together. But they always remember that in the end, when they get to Anthea’s body, they will be faced with a choice – to resurrect the girl using forbidden magic or to perform an ascension ritual so that her soul can calmly leave the world of the living.

According to the code of the exiles themselves, the correct decision would, of course, be ascension. But first of all, Red and Anthea are people who also love each other very much. And love makes you do the most unpredictable things. And who knows what they will choose? More precisely, what do you choose?. Moreover, this choice arises at the very beginning, when we need to take an oath, whether the heroes will follow the path of resurrection or the path of ascension. No one is stopping you from breaking your oath, but in the end it will affect the relationship between them.

The nuance is that for the resurrection ritual it is necessary to impose as many death sentences on living people as possible when we are investigating cases of presence – this satisfies Anthea’s ghostly hunger and fills her with a living essence. And for ascension, on the contrary, it is better to expel ghosts into the Void as often as possible, dooming souls to eternal suffering, or free them, giving peace.

Initially, the most obvious choice for me was to help the lovers and resurrect the girl, especially since the ghosts themselves will disappear after the death sentence is passed. But the problem is that almost all presence cases are quite confusing, and there is no clear right and wrong – or everyone is guilty.

What to do in a situation where a woman cheated on her husband with a thief and, in a fit of rage, killed her husband, who beat and tortured his wife? At the same time, the former thief stole the name of the murdered man and his work, but he does it frankly poorly – because of the ghost of the victim terrorizing the couple. Does the woman who tricked the weakest and burdened settlers into dying deserve to die so that the rest could survive?? And the former doctor who poisoned a young rake who had syphilis and wanted to marry her sister? And this is only a small part of ambiguous situations.

All investigations are carefully recorded in a diary – first we look for information and leads on each character.

Choices that change and change

For a long time I passed a death sentence on almost everyone, often listening to curses addressed to me. I justified myself by saying that they were all deservedly punished in one way or another. I lied to myself, but I really wanted to bring Anthea back to life. But when I had to execute my father in front of my son, I gave in. I felt uneasy with the weight of the decisions I had made, and I reset my save to make a different choice. And even though that man still deserved death (under pressure from the crowd he sent an innocent woman to the stake), my soul felt better when I saw him broken, embittered, but alive, sitting next to his son.

But most importantly, at https://independentcasinosites.co.uk/review/iwinfortune-casino/ some point Red becomes uncomfortable with these decisions and sentences, and he tells Anthea that he is scared to feel who he is turning into. You and I can guess who it is – Ellie, who also initially chose her own path and walked over corpses for one goal. And Anthea gives him a chance at the last moment to change or confirm the original vow.

And for me this became the most powerful, difficult and correct moment in the game. Correct not in the sense that we are offered to move on to a clearly good path – here, as in life, there is none, and after much thought I again vowed that at any cost I would bring Anthea back to life. And in the sense that we are allowed to make and change key decisions that affect the fate of the heroes throughout the game, and not at one turning point before the denouement. After all, at that moment the finale was still far away, and who knows what will happen in the end and who Red will or will not turn into.

A comparison with Baldur’s Gate III is instructive here . There we decide once whether, for example, Astarion will follow the path of evil, becoming a high vampire, and then we are faced with the consequences, with explicit or hidden condemnation of his party members in this regard. And here, I repeat, throughout the game we are in a state of making this one most important decision, we suffer, weigh the pros and cons, make a deal with our conscience and even get the right to change our minds and act differently.

It doesn’t matter that even after changing the oath you can still do as you want, no matter how much all these throwings, actions and promises affect the final results. It is important that during these 10 minutes you sat staring at the screen and painfully thought whether you should change your promise or not. And what will happen to Red??

From this point of view Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden – a rare game where, because of your decisions, the character changes not within a couple of quests, but throughout the entire plot, and the severity of the choice is reflected on the player himself, and not just on what is happening on the other side of the screen.

Together in love and in battle

The most important thing is that all these moral torments are woven into the body of a game that is exciting and varied in terms of gameplay. Of course, we spend a lot of time investigating cases of presence – looking for traces of ghosts (in fact, an analogue of the witcher’s sense is used here), interviewing people, conducting rituals to summon phantoms or reconstruct events of the past, and in the end we pass one sentence or another. But that’s just part of the job.

Besides this, of course, there is a lot of fighting. The fights here are quite difficult, and we can rest by the fire in the shelters, replenishing our health and reserves of the local Estus (enemies, of course, will be reborn).

But this is not a typical soulslice – the combat system is its own and very interesting. Everything revolves around the ability to switch between the physical form of Red and the ghostly incarnation of Anthea on the fly. The girl spends spirit points on attacks (they serve as an analogue of health for her), and when they run out, she disappears. The spirit is replenished with potions and blows from Red.

Each has their own techniques – he uses swords and guns and can parry, she punches and relies on unique ghostly skills (called manifestations), allowing, for example, to bind opponents or cause area damage. But most importantly, each of them is more effective against a certain type of enemy. And in almost every battle there are different opponents; Moreover, the shadows, which Red fights better, strive to inhabit corpses right in battle, which Anthea can deal with more effectively. So you have to switch constantly.

Many skills that we learn in shelters for skill points are tailored to this purpose. So, one of them guarantees that after four powerful attacks from Red, Anthea herself will jump out of her dimension and hit the enemy between the eyes with an attack that ignores stability. There are bonuses, for example, for switching to a girl after three light attacks, after parrying or dodging – this is all called perfect switching.

When the enemy grabs one of our couple, you need to quickly switch to another to escape.

In general, there are a lot of skills. And they are all designed for different styles – you can rely on Red’s attacks or, conversely, on Anthea’s manifestations, on shooting from a gun or on melee attacks. Moreover, in the shelter you are free to disable one skill and enable another. Plus there are many types of equipment (everyone has their own – Anthea only uses magic jewelry), which gives not only an increase in various parameters, but also new properties – for example, they significantly increase damage to wounded enemies, but reduce damage to enemies with full health by 90%.

By selecting equipment, upgrading it to the shelter using the collected resources, and turning on/off certain skills there, we form different builds. And the differences can be quite serious. Thus, one ring gives a property in which the less the spirit scale is filled, the more damage Red deals. Another works the other way around – the more the spirit scale is filled, the more damage Anthea deals.

And, most importantly, all this is useful in the game. I was passing Ghosts of New Eden at a high level of difficulty (this is the third of four) and often experienced problems – this, of course, is not Dark Souls, but the enemies constantly keep you on your toes. They often lock us in arenas, never attack one at a time (except for the biggest bosses), teleport, summon someone. And very often hand-to-hand fighters fight in conjunction with shooters.

You have to spend the entire game managing skills and equipment, leveling up, completing quests, searching and opening chests, vacuuming the map in search of resources, and if there are not enough of them, then purchasing from merchants.

Peace for the two of us

And the game gives every opportunity to explore, grind and find new adventures. At first I thought it would be a concise, plot-driven, moral choice-oriented action RPG, but what we got is a full-fledged, fun open-world RPG.

New regions are gradually opening up, and in previously visited ones new quests and presence cases appear – in most cases you can move back and forth either on your own or through fires in shelters. The large map of New Eden is expanding with new points of interest and question marks. This could be a nest of elite monsters (if you destroy it, all characteristics will increase), an altar that increases Red’s health, entry points into the Void, where especially strong enemies and cool rewards await.

When switching to Anthea, the colors of the world change, but the main thing is that she can see traces of ghosts and objects hidden from Red.

Well, in general, here at every step there are a lot of hidden places, secret passages, closed houses, where there is clearly something to profit from – and we have to figure out how to get there. Separately noted are the so-called ghostly chests, to open which you must first learn a certain ritual and find all the necessary items. Yes, to perform various actions it is often necessary to carry out appropriate rituals, and they consume certain resources.

Finally, Anthea gradually gains new abilities that allow her to remove obstacles in order to get into previously inaccessible places, where new chests, resource drops and challenges await. Moreover, some of these methods are partly similar to the riddles that we solved in God of War 2018 – Anthea uses her skill to hit the magic vine blocking the passage, after which Red must find and destroy several spheres located nearby in the allotted time.

There is no such thing as perfect?

We can talk for a long time about what a great game this is. I haven’t yet talked about how each, even ordinary, settler has been worked out, with whom you can talk on various topics, including about changes after our actions; about how charismatic Anthea and Red are, how they quarrel, joke, or open up to each other and tell stories from their difficult lives – the characters seem alive, and you become attached to them with all your heart. In general, each character here has their own story, and some dramas are simply heartbreaking.

Of course, if you wish Banishers you can find flaws. Slightly frustrating are not the most interesting bosses, who act too predictably, not in all cases, but in many cases.

In addition, some story missions seem drawn out and throw off the rhythm. We are asked over and over again to look for points using the same pattern so that Anthea can put the scattered lines into a circle and teleport the heroes to the right place.

And using the same scheme, we are looking for points at which Red must shoot in order to free a stuck lift, block a tunnel with monsters, or something else like that. And when you want to quickly advance through the plot or return to exploring the world and quests, this search for objects begins to tire.

In addition, in the last third of the passage, friezes began to appear in some places. And once I caught a bug, because of which I had to roll back to the previous save. Although this may be a feature of the press version. In general, the game looks and sounds at the level of a full-fledged AAA release.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a great success for DON’T NOD, and for all fans of the genre. We somehow forgot that the French know how to make interesting RPGs. Their new work looks more thoughtful and balanced than Vampyr and Remember Me . Yes, just as an RPG in the big world, it’s hardly capable of surprising anything. But combined with an adult plot, serious themes and dramatic choices that force you to check your own conscience all the way, the result is a unique game about exorcising not ghosts, but your own demons. It’s like combining God of War , The Witcher 3 and The Last of Us Part II , and then add it there for good measure Trier, Zvyagintseva, Balabanova and other researchers of the dark human interior. But let us decide for ourselves whether such a world is worthy of saving or not, whether it is worth drowning Abby to the end or removing his hands from her neck at the last moment..

Pros: adult plot; superbly crafted dialogues and characters that change as you progress; a very difficult and sometimes heartbreaking choice; an unusual combat system based on switching between two heroes; a big and beautiful world with a lot of points of interest; gorgeous picture; expressive voice acting and music; high-quality translation into Russian.

Cons: I would like more interesting bosses; some story missions are tiring and slow down; there were friezes in the review version.