With so many Diablo-inspired ARPGs around these days, anyone looking to muscle into the territory needs to do something new. Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Torchlight, and Titan Quest are just some of the games that offer an alternative to Blizzard’s seminal dungeon crawler, so we’ve already got a lot of choices. An upcoming contender for the crown is Dragonkin: The Banished, and after spending a few hours playing a brand new preview, I can safely say that this ARPG is one for the true build freaks out there.
Before I dive in, my Dragonkin: The Banished preview was split into two halves. First, I explore the prologue with the three classes: the oracle, knight, and barbarian. Each plays wildly different, with magical ranged attacks, or up close and personal hacking and slashing. After this introduction, I’m thrown into the game’s hub city of Montescail, where I explore some of the features on offer and dive into an endgame dungeon. I was given a small slice of Dragonkin’s core experience, and it left me feeling pretty impressed.
After playing around with the three classes I landed on the barbarian, who thrives on getting right into the action and jumping around the battlefield. I was leaping, spinning, and swinging my weapons at hordes of enemies, while simultaneously picking up any new gear and precious loot. At its core, Dragonkin’s combat is weighty and easy to follow, rewarding you for coming up with your own combos based on your abilities. My time with the game showed me that developer Eko Software clearly understands what makes action RPG games so unique and special, but this isn’t where I spent most of the preview.
Instead, I was in my home office slowly morphing into a crafting gremlin, tinkering away with all my loot and abilities to create some truly monstrous combinations. You’ve got a wide range of equipment, skills, and wyrmling moves (they’re the little dragon-like creature that follows you around and spews elemental attacks) to choose from, all of which can be enhanced with the Ancestral Grid.
As you can see above, the Ancestral Grid is made up of connected hexagons, and to unlock usable skills for you and your wyrmling, alongside a slew of passive modifiers, you need to place Fragments wherever you have space. These Fragments can contain either abilities or modifiers, but there’s a catch: some Fragments can work in concert when placed next to each other, giving you extra buffs and powering up some skills to be even stronger than before. I’ve already done a deep dive into this system, but in practice, it’s even more like an addictive puzzle game than I first realized.
The Ancestral Grid gets bigger the more you play, but my lack of space in the preview made placing Fragments even more engaging. I was actively rebuilding my grid to squeeze in all the abilities and modifiers I wanted, moving each around to enhance and transform my favorite skills. It’s a system that has a lot of hidden complexity; that spare Fragment could be the difference between one weak skill, or a whole suite of overpowered abilities.
Finally satisfied with my built, I headed into the endgame dungeon, farming enemies for new equipment and any fragments I could find. Maybe I’d get a new modifier for one of my skills, or a wyrmling enhancement that made my abilities even stronger than before.
Your little dragon friend’s own attacks are also placed on the Grid, giving your builds another layer of complexity. Wyrmlings can possess one of four ‘elements’: Fire, Electric, Toxic, and Ice, each of which activates alongside a skill it’s connected too. When placed right, this means both you and your wyrmling are working together, stacking multiple elements and decimating your opponents.
From this preview alone it’s pretty clear to me that Dragonkin has a huge level of variety. Between the multiple heroes, wyrmling elements, and nigh-endless possibilities with the Ancestral Grid, you’ve got so much choice when it comes to the art of smashing creatures into a fine mist.
If you’re as much of a build-crafting sicko as I am, and enjoy solving a puzzle to make your character as strong as possible, you’re going to love Dragonkin: The Banished. Chipping away at the Ancestral Grid and testing combinations at the main hub’s training area is immensely satisfying, and I cannot wait to see how these systems expand post-launch.
Nacon and Eko Software are launching Dragonkin: The Banished into Steam Early Access on Thursday March 6. You can pick it up on Valve’s platform right now.