izigame.me

Banishers is a pretty great game. A story-driven action-RPG that absolutely excels at its storytelling, delivering a very powerful and emotional experience with rich characters, interesting plots and difficult choices that truly make a difference. It is, however, slightly dragged down by its mechanics - which are not bad, but I didn't really feel like they fit the story as well as they could have.

I'll start with what makes the game so great.
You play as a duo of Banishers - which are basically just.. ghostbusters, really - in colonial North America in 1695, tasked with bringing "Life to the living, death to the dead". They're not just business partners, though - they're romantic partners as well. You control both, and so there are technically 2 protagonists to the story. The scottish Ruaidhrigh "Red" mac Raith is a former-soldier turned banisher, and the cuban Antea Duarte is his mentor and lover. The story kicks off with the two arriving in New Eden town in North America, after being called by a fellow banisher to help dispel a curse.
Things obviously prove more complicated than expected, and the following events really test the couple's skills, spirits and love for each other. And it's done so well. They're both such great, well rounded characters. Their relationship feels authentic, wholesome and unconditional, and it was genuinely refreshing to see this kind of thing in a game like this. Their story, at its core, is about the difficulty of saying goodbye, and it's extremely well written and very touching.
Aside from the main story, you will spend a lot of your time helping the citizens of New Eden with their own hauntings - Ridding them of ghosts and... other things that torment them. These side quests are also (almost) all so damn good. Each one is like it's own self-contained ghost story, each one being different and having its own twist. Often times you will find it really hard to decide how to deal with the situation, as the available choices will really test your morality as well as your commitment to your oath.

Oh, right - I should talk about your oath. That's a really interesting part that I found a little confusing at first, but loved the idea when I understood why they did it.
So, early on in the game, you will be asked to make an oath - which basically comes down to: "Save everyone you can", or "Sacrifice everyone you can". It seemed confusing because it felt like it's making me choose ahead of time, before I even know any of these characters, how I want my story to play out. The game does tell you that you still get to choose on a case-by-case basis, but... if I made an oath obviously I'm gonna try to stick to it, right?
So, planning to be a "good guy" and do what's right - I swore to save everyone I can. Obvious choice, really. And then what followed was... the discovery that so many of the citizens of New Eden are just absolute f*cking monsters. I often found myself so torn between my oath and the desire to punish these a**holes. A spoiler-free made up example just so you get the idea - Say someone tells you the spoons in his house tend to fly around uncontrollably. You investigate to find out what ghost is causing this, and then you learn this guy slaughtered a whole village of natives and made the spoons from their bones. And then you somehow need to find it within yourself to help this guy. This is an exaggeration - but not by that much, and... yeah, as hard as I tried, I found myself breaking my oath several times.
There are, of course, some that were worth saving - but a lot of them really really tested me, and I actually kinda loved that.

And now, what makes the game not so great

The combat, I'll admit, is fun. Pretty early on I found a place where you can basically invoke a boss fight repeatedly, every time making it stronger and giving you greater reward - and I repeated it like 30 times just for fun. That's a strong indicator that the combat system is indeed fun.
However, there are 3 issues with it:

It outstays its welcome. There really aren't enough different enemy types to fill up the 50+ hours it took to finish this game. Excluding bosses, there are really only 4 types, with a few minor variations to each one. Anything other than the boss fights just got old pretty quickly.
It... makes no sense, really. Why am I fighting spectres with a sword and a rifle? Why does shooting a ghost destroy it? That's just so weird. While it is explained why ghosts that take the major "haunting" side-quests require a proper ritual to remove - it's not really explained why the "normal" specters you find wandering around can just be... shot in the head.
It removes any trace of fear. Ghost stories are usually scary, or at least they should be. Some of the ones here try to be. But when you're a badass that can kill ghosts with his sword, there really isn't any fear. They just become a nuisance.

I actually think the game would have been much better if combat was completely removed. If the only way to deal with ghosts was to find out how to perform the correct ritual to remove them, and until you did you'd be completely helpless. That would have made the whole thing that much more immersive.

There are also puzzles, mostly as part of exploration, and those are mostly not very good. Some were genuinely fun or creative, but those were few and far between. The majority of puzzles revolved around just finding the correct thing in an area. Just "walk around here until you see the thing you need to do in order to get the door to open" and the likes. I hate this kind of puzzles.

Those issues do get in the way of the fun at times, but not in a really significant way. The fact that the story is so good and I constantly wanted to know what happens next and resolve more hauntings completely made up for any other issue. Highly recommended for fans of story-driven RPGs.