Don't Nod, a French developer. Unlike Ubisoft with so much easy money that came from the blood, sweat, and tears of their developers, these guys started their narrative focused journey from 2013. And they've always have been the guys that did the one thing better than Quantic Dreams.
The other thing, not so much. I've had gripes with the way they designed the mechanics and core gameplay for each of their titles. I wish I've understood why I keep coming back to playing them. One would think Jusant would have been the step to the right direction, it didn't seem to be the case for this one either. Still, I was willing to give this one a chance.
Taking place in the fictional town of New Eden in 17th century Boston, two banishers are brought in expectation of expelling a malignant curse plaguing the town. Not everything works out the way they planned, and one of them dies. Now, that one has to carry the burden with the other present in spirit.
And by spirit, I mean she is a companion that can be switched for both investigating and during combat. The main theme of the story is about what people would do to get their love ones back, but there's also the choice of doing the right thing. Thus creating different story branches.
It's the same thing they did with Vampyr, but I can't complain much about that because they did it right in that game and in here, there's so much of it helping me to get invested into it. While granted that the shortcomings of gameplay and progression are also present, often times either frustrating or boring me out, its intriguing story, characters, and exploration kept me going nonetheless.
I guess the best way to see its narrative prowess is through the opening, at first I played as Antea, who along with her partner Red came to New Eden to help the townsfolk while visiting their old friend, the reverend Charles Davenport. Unfortunately they came too late.
She died, a very dangerous threat looms about, and now Red must take over for his partner/lover. There's a lot of interesting concepts introduced like witches and their helpers assisting the banishers into doing their jobs. Lore like that fleshes out a lot and adds so much substance.
If you've noticed by now, the dialogues really carries the conversations and each story exposition. Heck, majority of the characters you meet are dealing with the plague in their own ways, some are more afflicted, leading to terrible decisions. Some like malice intent, murder, betrayal, revenge, etc. The grey area around it is pretty well established alongside the themes of the story.
And it did a great job of introducing major aspects of it while leading me to my goals. What the game is actually about. After his second haunting case, revolving around two trappers, he has to make a decision whether to ascend/banish the spirit or blame the living.
Solving these cases help with bringing closure to Antea's spirit. There's a chance of reviving her, but she needs human sacrifices which by blame, takes their essence and kills them in the process. Or doing the right thing, ascending her in other to move on to the afterlife.
The other is partaking this "Heart of Darkness" kind of experience, not that it's the best narrative story, world building, and character writing that a game has ever given, but it is leagues above most games out there. I did morally contemplate on taking lives, since I was curious enough to take the resurrection route. Nothing is free, and there are consequences that follow as well.
And it's not easy either, majority of the characters do terrible things and you scale them up, while also acting as judge and executioner. Those gravely afflicted by the curse, take pity on them as well. And it doesn't mean I have to follow the one specific goal, I can always make the other choice.
Investigations are also part of the banisher's gameplay, where I see circles to summon, I have to pick the right option out of the three basing it on situational context. Talking to the townsfolks with multiple dialogue choices lead to key information. Important to solve haunting cases.
Some circles are farming zones for loot, though these often require fighting onslaught of specters, some even having higher ranks, it kind of incentivizes upgrading, and practicing the combat. Often times finishing these grant great rewards, also makes finding them even more fun.
The land based around New Eden is a worthwhile place to explore, it's an open world map that has amazing environment design I've seen. I've taken a lot of shots from photo mode for this reason alone. Which is why it makes it easier to look around, looking for loot and areas of interest.
It's a visually amazing looking game, and seemingly doesn't chew up my hardware a lot, even though am seeing mostly around 80-90% usage of it. Small nitpicks could be the facial animations, and some lip syncing, but this obviously doesn't seem highly budgeted, and considering what is presented on top of good level design, helps a lot with being immersed.
Now, let's talk about the gameplay. The part am sort of dreading to open about. I don't enjoy it much, I also feel it's a waste of time going around hours fighting specters, possessed ones, and bigger malignant threats. The enemy design isn't the issue, nor how they fight.
The big problem comes from how it's fundamentally designed. Combat plays janky, it's kind of a mix God of War and Senna's Sacrifice. Fast-paced fighting but also methodical. Mixing Red's melee attacks, gadgets, rifle, and his gauntlet with Antea's spirit abilities which are unlocked later on.
Problem lies in how it works, it's hard to tell how enemies are attacking based on their telegraphy, so I missed out on either dodging or parrying attacks. I can't properly cancel my attacks, changing target lock is very fickle, and my character gets stuck sometimes. It's missing nuances, proper intuitive response, and comes as this bad knock off hack n slash type.
And that does suck, considering it gets more interesting to play as they start having protective casts, the enemies also need to be stopped before they possess a carcass nearby, which changes the battle quite a lot, but the controls feel I am just button mashing more often times.
Progression is basic, Red's weapon and equipment can be upgraded, but he can equip multiple of them, and each needing to be upgraded needs items to be found and scavenged. I actually enjoyed unlocking and upgrading some of Antea's abilities in Evolution, she has killer moves.
It took me 10hrs of time before I unlocked the musket gun, like progressing through the game and having more combat options take their time, maybe a little too much. Other nitpicks I can give are item upgrading border on looting and grinding a lot, and me not being a fan of Antea.
She's too stone cold for an FMC, makes it harder to emotionally relate to her cause. I'll say this much though, there's more to extrapolate here compared to other single player games, Don't Nod kind of did it again. But you have to be specific about what you want in order to enjoy this one. It takes its time, maybe till the 30hr mark. If I played 1/3 of that so far, that means it might be worth checking.
Disclaimer: I have decided to select certain games that will have HDR links, I can't do this on all of them unfortunately because it's not easy to keep a drive folder of them without losing storage