Disappointing overall.

The conclusion was touching, and the overall story was pretty good, but the gameplay didn't work for me. Combat felt repetitive and pretty easy most of the time - more like a chore to get out of the way.

The "open-world" wasn't fun to explore or even move through. Felt pointless. Just 2-3 activities to do in the world and most of them were boring and not fun. Liked some of the side-missions and how they change depending on your choices throughout them.

There's replayability here, but I doubt I'll play it again to see the outcome of different choices...

6.5/10

Good story with well connected side-quests, combat is allright once you get the hang of it.

Didnt liked the walking-simulator part of the game and terrible puzzles, other than that its an allright game if you get it on discount.

Banishers is an ambitious action/adventure game that combines the mechanics of God of War with the morally ambiguous narrative choices of The Witcher. This is spiced up by the fact that you can switch between two characters at any point, each with their own attacks and abilities. This is used to great extent when it comes to exploration, puzzle-solving and combat and helps keep things interesting. I typically get burned out doing all the side-content in open-world games but I never got bored of it in Banishers. Exploring the world and doing side-quests was consistently engaging throughout my 60+ hour playthrough. Enemy variety is a bit limited, though it can be dynamic because of how the specters work. Basically, different specters have different abilities and can possess different corpses, resulting in a good mix of enemy behaviors. For example, a specter that can teleport might possess the corpse of a sniper, resulting in a sniper that can teleport. This keeps you on your toes and prevents you from getting too complacent. I recommend playing on the highest difficulty for the most engaging experience, as your characters get pretty overpowered if you do all the side content.

Banisher's presentation is great and in many ways rivals that of AAA games. The graphics are very nice, the music, sfx and VO are great and the game just feels really polished. This is easily Don't Nod's biggest and slickest game yet. The writing is good too, with a lot of poignant, believable dialogue and meaningful character development. I think the writing's biggest flaw is that the "right" decision in any given situation is usually pretty obvious. I would have preferred more moral ambiguity.

Overall, I enjoyed Banishers a lot. The setting wasn't all that interesting to me but the game's writing, presentation and gameplay kept me hooked. Don't Nod clearly put a ton of work into this and it's well worth a playthrough if you enjoyed God of War and The Witcher.