I wrote 2 reviews: a short TL; DR review and a long Full-Length Review. Skip to whichever one suits your fancy.
TL; DR Review
The best way that I can describe Banishers is that it’s a great story trapped in a mediocre game. If there ever were a time for Steam to offer a “mixed” review option, this would be it. However, if forced to make a binary choice, I’ll pick “recommend”. This is because the mediocre gameplay was saved, not only by a great story, but also by top-notch voice acting. I firmly believe that—given the directorial talents of these developers, they could’ve just as easily made Banishers into a miniseries comparable to Chernobyl. (The voice acting was so good that I often forgot to save my game after long spells of dialogue. Banishers’ acting rivaled many BBC dramas, IMO.)
However, in the interest of transparency, I can only recommend buying Banishers on a deep discount. In short, combat and traversal (i.e., the most common moment-to-moment activities in the game) were mediocre at best. (If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details, see my Full-Length Review below.) Anyway, I bought Banishers on sale for $20—which seemed fair to me given the gameplay’s limitations. For reference, Banishers at full price is typically around $40—which is comparable to the on-sale prices of bigger studio games like God of War: Ragnarok or Ghost of Tsushima. Both games are admittedly better than Banishers. So, if you have $40 to spend, save it for something better like those latter games on sale. However, if you have only $20, get Banishers on sale.
Nonetheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that the quality of Banishers’ story and voice acting left an indelible impression on me. (I’ll remember this game’s story for the rest of my life.) One could even argue that the journey of the main characters, Red and Antea, serves as a lesson on the importance of learning to let go. Considering that my best friend died 3 months ago, that lesson struck a chord with me that resonated quite loudly. In a sense, the game’s story was oddly therapeutic. For that, I’m thankful. Therefore, at $20, the game is a steal.
Full-Length Review
The GOOD
To be fair to the developers, I recognize that their studio probably doesn’t have large coffers like Bioware, Santa Monica Studios, or CD Project Red. The Banisher devs probably had to make tough choices about how to allocate their time and budget. Which is why I guess I’m glad they prioritized the story and voice acting above all else. For me, trying to ignore sub-par stories or acting is about as easy as trying to ignore a fly in your soup.
I also loved how realistic the social dynamics were. For example, the main characters, (Red and Antea) exhibited one of the most realistic depictions of love I’ve ever seen. Around each other, they were comfortable, calm, and tender (with some occasional teasing peppered in). They weren’t the dramatic, adolescent, saccharine depiction of love we see too often in fantasy. It was quite a breath of fresh air to see a game depict a psychologically realistic loving relationship.
As far as the quests go, your choices actually carried significant consequences, but change didn’t happen overnight. For example, if you banished a ghost haunting a drunk, that drunk would eventually get better. However, they wouldn’t sober up completely overnight. Also—they wouldn’t thank you right away. In fact, they would initially admonish you for bursting their bubble of self-indulgence and self-deception. However, with time, they would learn to appreciate what you did for them. I respected these sorts of quest design choices because they added another layer of psychological realism. If you’ve ever had to work with addicts, you quickly learn that recovery is possible for many, but progress is always sluggish. Moreover, counseling can be a thankless profession some days.
With regards to quests, Banishers also required always thinking carefully about your verdict for each haunting case. Personally, I thought that—while the right choice wasn’t always obvious—it was always fair (so long as you thought through the broader implications of sparing or killing someone). In other words, deciding between mercy and punishment always required circumspection. For some hauntings, mercy was the right solution; for others, punishment.
The final cherry-on-top for the quests were the unmarked consequences of your actions. While Banishers makes generous use of quest markers, it doesn’t indicate every consequence of your actions with them. Often times, you can discover a bit of additional (hidden?) dialogue if you follow up with an NPC after completing a quest. I loved little details like these because they rewarded curiosity.
The BAD
My personal biggest pet peeve was the bad lip-sync. The lip-sync with the voice track was always off. It was incredibly distracting for the first few hours of the game until I learned to ignore it. (Why didn’t the developers do motion capture to get actual lip-sync? They put SO much work into the other cinematic details.) I’m guessing that the lip motions were procedurally generated in the hopes of creating the illusion of realistic articulations. Suffice it to say, the illusion failed to materialize. To cope, I had to force myself to learn to watch the NPC’s faces from the nose up. It felt like trying to ignore subtitles that were always wrong.
I’m also sad to say that Banishers taught me an important lesson: While I personally believe that a quality story conveyed through quality voice acting are paramount to making a great game, they’re apparently not enough to carry it. The moment-to-moment activities between episodes of story and dialogue have to be fun as well. After all, things like combat and traversal will often take up the majority of your time in a game. Traversal and combat in Banishers were unmistakenly not fun. Here’s why:
Traversal
Traversal (i.e., getting from one objective to the next) was hands-down the worst part of the game. While the map is quite large, it’s also mostly empty. To add insult to injury, there weren’t many visually-stunning vistas in the game to make all of the traversal worthwhile. For comparison, both of the new God of War games require a great deal of traversal, but at least their out-of-this-world visuals always made the journey worthwhile. Banishers, however, is a map mostly populated with dreary New England landscapes (which were frequently re-used, BTW). It didn’t look much better than the wilderness regions of Fallout 4.
However, the absolute worst part was just how tedious traversal was. For starters, you can only fast-travel between campfires peppered throughout the map (and there weren’t many campfires). As a result, I spent an inordinate amount of time sprinting from one objective to the next. If I had to make a pie chart of how my time was spent in game, the biggest slice by far would be time spent sprinting (or climbing a cliff, or shimmying between rocks)—which, again, I could tolerate if the game had more stunning vistas like the new God of War games or Ghost of Tsushima.
It’s also aggravating to remember that even older games like Dark Souls 2 had a better fast travel system. In that game, you eventually unlocked an ability to recall back to the last campfire you used—thereby cutting out some of the time tediously spent sprinting back-and-forth. (I hope that the Banisher devs are alarmed by the fact that a Dark Souls game had less tedious fast travel than theirs.)
Combat
I never once looked forward to combat. It wasn’t particularly difficult; it was just a chore. I learned to approach it like Thanksgiving dinner with my family: I knew I wasn’t going to die, but I wasn’t going to enjoy it either. I had a lot more to say about this, but apparently I've nearly reached the character limit. The End.
