Action RPGs have been quite popular over the last decade, thanks in large part to the success of major industry heavyweights like Diablo 4 and Path of Exile, and even smaller-scale indie titles like Grim Dawn. Since then, we’ve seen several indie studios take a shot at the genre, and while some may have chosen to refine the kind of gameplay and mechanics we’ve seen since the elements of the genre were codified years ago, many others have come up with their own unique spins. Dragonkin: The Banished belongs in that second camp. While it has many of the hallmarks of the genre you would expect, it also brings plenty of new ideas to the table such as the Ancestral Grid which we will talk about in a bit.
Right when you start playing, the first thing you’ll notice is that Dragonkin: The Banished places quite a bit of emphasis on its world and story. The prologue chapter kicks things off by letting you play through an important point of the game’s fictional history, when several heroes banded together to help human armies take on the corrupting influences of an evil dragon. This prologue also serves as an interesting take on the tutorial formula, allowing players to play as multiple distinct heroes that you will then play for the rest of the game.
“Dragonkin: The Banished places quite a bit of emphasis on its world and story.”
It’s important to note just how great of an idea it is to let the player experience the various heroes before you have to make the decision to pick one for the rest of the game. You get to experience multiple heroes: the Knight, the Barbarian, and the Ranger at the height of their power. You get to use their most powerful abilities as you take down hordes of the dragon’s underlings. Sure, it’s not a lengthy prologue, clocking in at around thirty minutes, but it gives you just enough information to let you make an informed decision so that you don’t end up regretting your choice two dozen hours later.
Dragonkin: The Banished makes one hell of a first impression thanks to the scale of the epic story being told. There are no punches pulled when you’re thrown against massive hordes of demons and dragonkins to take on. Starting things off in the shoes of the Knight, you get to feel immensely powerful. The prologue’s zones are also visually impressive, with plenty of debris flying all over the place and enemy corpses ragdolling away as you run through them with your shield raised.
On finishing the prologue, however, things slow down to an absolute crawl. After picking out your hero, you’re going to be spending the next several hours taking on small scale villains like bandits before you get to fight more intimidating enemies and bosses. There is also a surprising amount of time spent in mundane activities where you’re just running around and talking to various NPCs without any combat to break up the flow. While I’m not against the idea of trying to tell a story in an otherwise action-heavy genre like the RPG, things do start getting monotonous until you’re given your first real mission.
The core gameplay in Dragonkin: The Banished is a standard affair; movement is handled by left-clicking where you want to go, and can have five different abilities that can be used for a range of things, from shooting lightning bolts to teleporting around, and even getting defensive buffs. There is also an option for an alternate control scheme, where every aspect of your character aside from aiming abilities is handled by the WASD cluster of keys. The minute-to-minute gameplay where you’re just going on a rampage, slaughtering enemies by the dozens, is definitely quite fun.
“However, the Ancestral Grid does take a fair bit of time to actually start being fun.”
There is also a great amount of customization allowed through the game’s Ancestral Grid system, which is also one of the core methods of progression in the game. Skills aren’t innate to your character, and are instead obtained through finding specific hexes, which can then be equipped into the Ancestral Grid. Skill hexes are available in different shapes and sizes, taking up varying amounts of space on the grid, and you are encouraged to mix and match various skills to find your ideal way to kill enemies.
Skill hexes come in two varieties: active skills, which are what you use to attack your enemies, and passive skills, which can buff up nearby active skills on the grid in interesting ways. For example, if Chain Lightning is an example of an active skill, a passive skill could improve its damage, reduce its costs, or even increase its area of effect. While it’s possible to find individual hexes for these skills, you will also eventually start finding combination hexes that can take up two, three, or even six spots on the grid. And while these combinations are always fun to find and try out, mixing and matching your own sets of actives and passives tends to be a lot more interesting and fun.
However, the Ancestral Grid does take a fair bit of time to actually start being fun. You don’t have access to the whole grid when you start out, and more parts of it open up as you level up. While this is fine in the long run, it definitely causes more frustration with the whole system in the earlier parts of the game since you don’t really have the room to equip the hexes you get early on. Considering the nature of the game, this isn’t too much of a problem; you can simply level up far enough to stop feeling those unnecessary early constraints.
“All things considered, Dragonkin: The Banished’s early access feels like a great first step.”
Another unique aspect of Dragonkin: The Banished is that, along with your character’s abilities and gear, you also get to level up a city. Dubbed Montescail, the city has several spots where you can get new buildings built and upgraded. While an interesting concept, the city upgrading aspects unfortunately don’t do much to affect gameplay. Just about every building you erect or upgrade tends to offer at best minor buffs to things like your stats or how much experience you can get from killing things. Since it is an Early Access title and more city features are slated for future updates in the roadmap, however, this feels like an issue that will get ironed out over time.
There’s also a small baby dragon you get that can occasionally help your fight against draconic enemies, and as adorable as it may sound, when it comes to gameplay, your dragon companion doesn’t contribute much in these battles. You can get skill hexes that improve your dragon’s attacks, but unfortunately, all of these skills are surprisingly dull, doing little more than giving the dragon a chance to deal damage every time you do.
All things considered, Dragonkin: The Banished’s early access feels like a great first step. There are plenty of interesting ideas in the game, and its core combat is certainly fun enough to warrant at least one playthrough through its early access offerings. It’s too early to judge how the story will pan out, but the prologue feels appropriately epic and sets the stage quite well for what you can expect later in the game.
This game was reviewed on PC.
