Stalker meets early 17th century America? I've read that the game is a very atmospheric , surreal FPS game, with what seems to me like an interesting premise. But some people think the gameplay is the weak point of the game. So what do you guys think? I'll buy either Betrayer or Banished so I'd really appreciate some input on Betrayer.

Also, pretty fucking awesome name. *whispers* Betrayer!

Really disappointed with it. For clarification, STALKER: Call of Pripyat and Fallout: New Vegas count amount some of my favourite games, so "not a fan of open-world FPSRPGs" is not the problem. The problem is that there was such a fantastic atmosphere and mystery to the game, such a potentially interesting world... and then the second zone rolls around and it's just a really unforgiving stealth-game where enemies never forget where you are if they ever spot you, and random NPCs spot you from miles away and obnoxiously shoot you with arrows.

People have been billing it as Dark Souls FPS but I think that's disingenuous; Dark Souls is all about options and exploring the world to see what areas you can push into. Betrayer ends up just dragging you along with far too little resources to be able to give yourself many options, and filtering you through specific chokepoints so you don't really have a lot of ways to approach situations apart from "try to pick off as many dudes as you can until they spot you and chase you forever".

By all means, check it out, because that first hour was really atmospheric and tense in a very interesting way, but that shine came off pretty quick.

Honestly the difficulty is a plus for me. No hand holding is always a good thing. But at the same time, the concept of just letting the player wander around the world with little to no objective while shooting arrows at zombie Spaniards doesn't seem like it can carry a an entire game. At least Dark Souls has a shit ton of weapons and leveling so there's a clear sense of progression that can last for dozens of hours.

And after a little more searching around the interwebz apparently it takes around 6 hours to beat the game. I guess exploring every bit of the game and doing everything, 15? 20? Banished it is. I'll probably also end up picking up Betrayer at some point though. Both games seem kind of unfinished though.

The game has it's problems but overall I like it. Let me put on my reviewer hat though, to say: 20$ seems a bit much for it. 10-15? Good price. Feel like the biggest problem of the game is, that it gets rather repetitive and a particular enemy type is just fucking annoying.

The story of the game is intriguing I guess, but the game kinda forgets about it pretty soon (as in: immediately) and focuses on telling some smaller stories about the people who lived and died here which is fine. I'm just afraid that the final payoff will be disappointing (haven't finished it yet, though I'm pretty sure I'm at the end). Also, I really hate it in mystery games, when there is another character around but you never, ever talk to him/her about all the weirdness. Combat is nothing special (but not broken either) and you spend a lot of time in the game just running around the environment which can be pretty boring if you are in the "dark world" cause the enemies pose no threat and you barley see anything. So you just end up running till you hear a clue, then run straight at it and do that until you get a message that you are done. The game has some quasi detective stuff in it which sounds cool, but it's pretty much just "run around, collect clues and the game will put it all together for you" which is disappointing. I wish they focused more on that instead of the combat. But as I said, I like the game. It has a very cool style and atmosphere, and the combat, while not particularly fantastic, is solid enough to not be annoying. Still, I feel this game would have been better if it wasn't an FPS but an adventure game with some fights in it.

All in all I think it is, at the very least, a really interesting game, with some very, very cool ideas but also some flaws. I'd like to see a Betrayer 2 cause as I said the game has some really good ideas and I'd like to see them expand it. Can't really tell you anything about Banished but Betrayer is good but nothing more, I'd give it a B or a B+ if I'm very generous. Not fantastic, not terrible. Good ideas, flawed execution. If you don't buy it now, wait for a sale, then pick it up.

Edit: One last thing: While I agree that the second zone isn't great, I never played the game as a stealth game like @lackingsaint. When running into a large group of enemies I usually just tried to find a good position, kill one guy and then try to kill the rest running at me. I actually really liked that, cause you need to be super aware of the environement and pick a good spot to fight. Since you die pretty fast these situations can be pretty tense, cause you loose all (or at least a lot) of your money if you die and have to retrive it (that's why a lot of people compare it to Dark Souls, which is a bit weird). You can turn that off though, but I wouldn't recommand it. Though this only happens at certan points in the zones and then never again.