izigame.me

Banishers is one of those games that I would give a neutral review if I could, It hits is some aspects, and misses in others. Yet, since I have to choose, it is no recommend, because it sure misses a lot more than it hits.
This game is yet another game that is just too big for its own good. There is some good in there, but it is just sooo boring and samey for way too long. If it was some 25h shorter, it would be much better. There is just SO - MUCH - PADDING. So many pointless time sinks, so much just running around. Do you like question marks on your mini map that lead to more loot that you know you are not going to use? Good, because you have a lot of that here. Wow you got 10 of these upgrade materials?Awesome, they can go to your 20000 pile because you have already upgraded all you can! Fun! Do you like choosing between 20 different weapons, armors, trinkets that have the exact same attack animations and only change your stats slightly and ultimately don't matter. Good, you will get that here.
Side quests begin interesting because they are essentially about solving a haunting. Which sounds like fun, and it is... until you realise that ALL, literally ALL of the side quests are this. And every single haunting follow the exact same pattern. After the first 3, you have seen them all:
Step 1: First investigate what is going on.
Step 2: discover one of the involved parties is not telling the entire story
Step 3: Find out what they are hiding
Step 4: Do a Sherlock Holmes where you gather everyone and explain your brilliant reasoning}
Step 5: Banish the ghost forcefully or ascend them peacefully. Or murder the person being haunted lol (because? Yes)
Even worse, almost every side quest has a cartoonishly evil character. Just text book evil. Making the decision at the end just really a no brainer unless you are trying to play evil. And even then, it is truly just so basic evil.
Do you like open world? Well this game attempts to be. And fails miserably at this. there are semi open areas with NOTHING in them until a quests send you to it. So if you explored before the quests sent you there congratulations, you just wasted your time. Do you like those ps4 games that have the "passageways" to "mask" loading screens. Jesus, this game redefines the concept. I have never seen it used to such an extent. I truly believe that out of my 50 hours played, 3 might have gone solely to this. But hey, at least it has a lot of enemy variety. Hahaha just kidding. Have fun fighting the same 9 enemy types over and over and over again.
And here is the worst part about the open world concept. The icing on the cake, the crowning jewel, le pièce de résistance. You can only fast travel between campfires, and there aren't many of those around. If you were sent to the middle of nowhere, you will have to walk your way back. Every. Single. Time. So you better like running around the same places over, and over, and over again, because you will. It is egregiously bad. And to top it all off, (Yes there is more), You cant run from combat encounters! You have to stop, kill everything, and continue. Unbelievable. The worst exploration in a game that I have seen. I Just cannot understand this reasoning except an intentional attempt in padding for time done in bad faith. It is just so amateur hour. Of these 50 hours some 30 were spent just running around.
Maybe that is the worst part, the game just seems to be trying really really hard to waste your time at every oportunity. It is exhausting.
Combat is meh. It is passable. Not great by any means, but ok. Melee is the usual assassins creed style boringness but it servers its purpose. The musket is fun to shoot, so I sure was trying to just use the musket as much as possible. If the enemy variety was better maybe the combat would be more fun, but it isnt, so, oh well. That being said, do yourself a favour and choose normal difficulty or even easy. This game uses stat bloat for harder difficulties. And scaling, Heh, it really does seems the devs took the absolutely most lazy options for a lot of the features. Another reason the game should have been 20h long instead of 50. Even in normal I was thinking of just changing to the easiest because I just couldn't take it anymore.
The story of the game is also passable. The main story is painfully predictable. Most side quests are, as I mentioned previously, very predictable as well. That being said, they are well written. You can see effort was put into it. I just wished they had shifted the time spent developing the time sinks to actually improving these side quests even more. You can really spot some shards of brilliance in some of them. 2 in particular are very good.
The characters are a mixed bag. It really does feel like most of them were created just to shoehorn the narrative and serve no other purpose. Some are comically evil or good like I said before. The only likeable character is Red, the playable character. Antea, is just so plain. She is the type of character that the writers just tried way, way to hard. She reminds me a lot of Deacon st John from Days Gone. They are both just.... an ass. They both spend the entire game making pessimistic, dismissive comments all throughout the game. At least Red is fun. You will see a lot of reviews saying that the game tries to push a narrative. I disagree with this, but I can really see where they are coming from, The devs just took such a lazy approach to write parts of the story. For instance, Antea is often quick to point out how everyone are just super evil, bigots and racists. And yet, there is not a single moment where any of the characters are racist towards her. In the 1700s... Wut? From the time period, I would assume yes, most people would indeed be racist and bigots, but the game only seems to remember this when it is convenient for the narrative. It is this type of lazy writing that makes the story feel shallow. I couldn't care less for anyone involved by the end. And the only time I really wanted an outcome, to forcefully banish the ghost of the last boss just so I could shove it in Antea's face, the game didn't let me. SMH. But otherwise, it servers its purpose.
To end on a better note, boss battles are actually quite fun. I enjoyed them. But there aren't many around. The best part about the game is the production quality, the voice actors did an exceptional job. Truly outstanding. Art direction was great as well. The setting is quite unique, the chosen time period was a refreshing to see between the plethora of modern and middle age based games. Sound direction was good, and dialogue was decent.
To be honest, I dont know why I finished it, because by the end, I was truly done with the game trying to waste my time. If I could have these 50 h back, I would.