Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden Preview – If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a grim surprise

thesixthaxis.com:

Focus Home has built up a clear commitment to the supernatural. One of the highlights from their release schedule last year was their vampire-hunting title Evil West, and they’re looking to pull the same trick in 2023 with the eerie narrative-action of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden coming from the award-winning Don’t Nod studio.

Banishers is about things that go bump in the night. As a Banisher, your role is to protect the land from spirits, curses and ghosts, using both your martial skills and your supernatural ones. You take on the role of Red Mac Raith, a Scottish former mercenary who had turned his life around when he met his lover Antea. Sadly, Antea has passed away, and in turn, become a phantom. Red is caught between his love for her and his duty as a Banisher, and in our hands-on, it’s clear he’s chosen her.

In action, that means you can control both Red and Antea, shifting between the two with the push of a button. You can start a combo as one character before seamlessly switching to the other halfway through, and some of the ghostly apparitions you’re going to be facing will be easier to despatch with one of the pair than the other.

Because of the difference in their corporeal bodies, they’re also able to interact with the world in different ways. Altea’s vision of the world is hyper-coloured, seeing the world bloom in a variety of inhuman colours. She’s able to help you navigate, and can even use her ghostly powers to leap Red to inaccessible areas, with some light puzzling where you have to line up Altea’s vision of various spectral marks in order to lepa through them.

Red’s keeping quiet about Altea’s ghostly form. He should banish her, as his role demands, but he obviously can’t bring himself to do so and