Nothing frustrates me more lately than decent games plagued with all the unnecessary bloat from those "AAA" titles, games with decent ideas, stories, settings, characters, but terrible pacing hurt by the decisions to make the game 5 times longer than it should be.

Banishers is one of those games for me, and as much as I want to like it, I just can't fully enjoy it, because it feels like it just WANTS to waste my time.
This is an obvious AA game trying to do so much, but for what.

It has a great premise, great characters, interesting story, nice visuals, atmosphere, etc. But did it really need to have a painfully weak and basic gear system, upgrades, souls-like stats, witcher-senses, gathering resources, currencies, cleansing totems, corruption, chests, having metroidvania elements at it's basic form "just teleport back later with a new ability and get some loot".

Did it really need to have, I swear to God, a THOUSAND ledges and tight spaces you slowly climb and crawl onto every few STEPS that are there just to add a couple of hours of "playtime" in the long run. Countless things to shoot on a map, collectibles to get, fetching to do, but WHY..

The devs wasted so much resources to bloat the game and it's playtime, but at the same time the core-gameplay is just.. lacking. The combat reminds of the GoW, and yet it's so clunky, and shallow. The enemy variety is non-existent, as you fight the same 4 enemies for hours and hours. There's no interesting gear or accessories. No depth.

The game isn't that bad, it's just "okay", but it could've been so much better if it was a more linear 10-15 hours experience focused on it's strengths, instead of all the bloat that we see in so many games nowadays that try to be big just for the sake of it.