Choosing from a pool of heroes, you (and up to one other player locally, or up to three more if playing online) are challenged with defeating a world being overcome with the corruption of banished dragons. Beginning in the one remaining city as yet untouched by corruption, you start your quest.
A game full of various options to customise your experience in terms of accessibility and camera zoom – you can choose whether to be closer to the action, or see more of the landscape – it’s here you’ll get to grips with the games mechanics and systems.
Dragonkin The Banished features a hexagonal upgrade system in which you can put tiles together to boost your powers, not to mention those of your wyrmling; a small dragon that accompanies you on your quest and primarily features elemental powers in a bid to aid your combat finesse, these can eventually be armoured and powered up alongside you. The city also gains its own experience points as you explore in your journey and you’ll find new areas such as stores and features cropping up with each level. 
Combat is naturally a huge part of the ARPG genre, and I found the abilities and attacks quite fun here, with the overall smoothness of the game adding to the sense of flowing combat, and a suitably epic orchestral score accompanies you as you hack and slash your way around the land.
A touch that really stood out for me were the areas in which you get a panoramic zoom of the location into which you are about to explore, your wyrmling flies out, the music soars, and you get a taste of the landscape and what you are about to embark on – as well as a cheeky experience boost for your city. It’s a nice touch that adds flavour to the game, and gives context to the endless forking roads and paths you are bludgeoning your way through.
Combat is naturally a huge part of the ARPG genre, and I found the abilities and attacks quite fun here, with the overall smoothness of the game adding to the sense of flowing combat, and a suitably epic orchestral score accompanies you as you hack and slash your way around the land.
Whilst the moment-to-moment combat is fun and you feel like a hero churning through enemies, the truth is that the sheer number of foes thrown at you and mown down just doesn’t have enough variety, and your awesome little wyrmling ends up feeling like a floating orb with no personality, which is something that affects a lot of the game.
The city levels up, yes - but you have no real control or design over it beyond selecting which bit levels up, the wyrmling has no personality, your character just moves blindly through the story with no personality, and everything feels just a tad generic.
As with most games, this is a lot more fun in co-op, but the endless loot – most of which seems junk-ish and far below your current level in practicality - isn't exciting and ends up making you feel like you are constantly trying to clear out the shash from your inventory as opposed to setting up a character and style to battle the way you want.
SUMMARY
A decent enough story and great visuals with solid combat unfortunately isn't enough to overcome the myriad bland systems and mechanics that make up the rest of the action.
A decent enough story and great visuals with solid combat unfortunately isn't enough to overcome the myriad bland systems and mechanics that make up the rest of the action.
If this was the first ARPG that someone gets into, I can imagine they’d have a blast for a few hours, but when you’ve played a fair few in the genre, you may end up feeling like there are too many facets of the game that lack charisma and subtlety to make this a recommended purchase, and in a game such as this, that can really be make or break.
7/10
🆒COOL🆒
(also available on PC, Xbox Series X/S)
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