Dragonkin is an ARPG where you take on the role of a hero trying to stop the dragonkin from corrupting the land. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the early access release, and more.

Everything We Know About Dragonkin: The Banished

Dragonkin: The Banished Plot

In Dragonkin: The Banished, players take on the role of legendary heroes seeking to cleanse a world tainted by dragon blood. Their ultimate goal is to hunt down and eliminate the Dragon Lords, the source of the corruption, while uncovering the history and cultures of the regions they traverse.

The heroes, transformed by dragon blood themselves, gain unique abilities that aid them in their quest. As they journey across diverse biomes, they encounter societies struggling against draconic corruption. Through alliances and battles, they strive to unite these fractured regions against the common enemy.

Dragonkin: The Banished Gameplay

Dragonkin: The Banished is an ARPG where players choose from four hero classes—Barbarian, Oracle, Knight, or Archer—each with unique abilities. The Ancestral Grid serves as the game’s skill system, allowing players to acquire abilities as loot and strategically place them alongside modifiers. Each class has a unique grid, enabling deep customization and ensuring no two players have identical builds.

Dragonkin: The Banished Release Date

Dragonkin: The Banished will be released on Early Access via Steam on March 6, 2025.

Digital Storefronts
Steam			PlayStation
Price		Wishlist Only

Dragonkin: The Banished Review (Early Access)

Bold Yet Baffling

When I first heard of the game, I couldn’t help but think of the bandaged badasses from Elden Ring and, to a lesser extent, the Dragonborn from D&D. As someone who regularly writes fantasy fiction, I’ve always been fascinated by hybrid races—or rather, animalian creatures that walk on two legs.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that Dragonkin: The Banished’s take on the draconic lineage looks more like sahuagins. You could say I was bitterly disappointed—betrayed, even. But anyway, that has nothing to do with the story, so let’s move on.

Dragonkin: The Banished (just Dragonkin from here on, for my fingers’ sake) is an ARPG similar in many ways to the prestigious (or infamous, depending on your experience) Diablo series, as well as the wildly popular Path of Exile. In fact, at least in terms of core gameplay, there’s barely any difference between Dragonkin and the two aforementioned titles.

That being said, what does it offer that other ARPGs don’t? Well…

Cool Skill Management Scheme

RPGs have experimented with countless ways for players to develop their characters. In the ARPG space, the latest Diablo entry blends skill trees (if you can even call them that) with the Paragon Boards to specialize characters further, offering both guidance for new players and deep customization for veterans. Meanwhile, Path of Exile 2 features its sprawling Passive and Atlas trees, providing an absurd level of customization at every stage of the game.

Dragonkin introduces its own take: the Ancestral Grid, a hex-based puzzle-like system where placing skills next to each other allows their properties to interact. For example, you can modify abilities to gain extra area-of-effect damage or entirely new elemental properties. With clever placement, you can create multiple powerful skills or concentrate everything into a single, overpowered ability.

The game also features the Talents system, which offers passive and active skills to further specialize your character. You could build your knight into an unstoppable tank, impervious to most attacks. Alternatively, you could make him a shining beacon on the battlefield, leading a horde of summoned soldiers. Or, you could do both. That works.

Unfortunately, this barely matters in the grand scheme of things because—

Combat Feels Weightless

ARPGs typically follow a familiar power progression: you start weak, barely able to fend off a goblin, but eventually become a force of nature… that can still die if a few attacks connect with your face. The main limiter on this journey is usually your level, which not only improves stats but also unlocks more of the Ancestral Grid.

But what’s your reward in Dragonkin? There aren’t many skills to begin with, so you just end up spamming the same moves with slightly different effects. Worse yet, combat lacks any real impact. Combine that with some of the most lifeless audiovisuals I’ve encountered—on par with my digital alarm clock beeping through a single computer speaker—and you have a battle system that just feels empty. Instead of a hardened warrior fighting for humanity, you’re just pushing pixels on a screen.

City Management? In My ARPG?

Well, okay, calling it "city management" is a bit of a stretch. You can upgrade Montescail, your main hub, to improve its support functions. For example, upgrading the Apothecary lets it brew potions, and expanding the Pythia unlocks a larger Ancestral Grid.

In other words, the so-called "city management" is just another RPG progression system—not the base-building or resource-management feature the name might imply.

Which is kind of unfortunate, really. However, it does seem like this feature will be receiving more content later on, so fingers crossed for perhaps base defense mechanics to be added. Or, really, anything to give this feature more flavor.

Character Customization? Try Elsewhere

Now, if you ever feel the need to dive into Dragonkin, let me make this clear: character customization is nearly non-existent. Unlike Diablo, which lets you tweak your character’s gender, hairstyle, skin tone, and tattoos, Dragonkin offers… class selection. And that’s it. Heck, one of the classes isn’t even available at launch.

Yep. No bells and whistles here. That wouldn’t necessarily be a dealbreaker, especially for single player-focused games, but at the very least, the devs could have given us characters worth showing off in screenshots. Instead, they look like generic designs pulled from Mob Design 101.

World Needs More Flesh

I actually enjoyed experimenting with skills, but getting to that point? Not so much. The issue isn’t just the floaty combat—hours of grinding tend to numb the senses anyway (and I should know, I’m a Disgaea completionist). The real problem is the worldbuilding—or rather, the baffling directions it took.

One of my biggest whiplash moments came early in the prologue. I found it immediately hard to immerse myself when the setting felt so alien to the narrative. Why are there pulsating veins sprouting from the ground? Why does the enemy have flesh-and-teeth artillery batteries? Why am I fighting the "Damned" and flaming bats? Aren’t my enemies dragons?

It seems that in Dragonkin: The Banished, Dragons are evil creatures from the depths and not the typical mountain-dwelling, livestock-stealing, gold-hoarding territorial lizards that many fantasy stories tend to depict. Maybe if the game replaced all the gore with classic draconic imagery—gold, bones, abandoned weapons—it could have worked. Or, at the very least, the game could have eased you into its version of the legendary winged beasts over the course of a single story chapter or so. Instead, it feels like a generic "Hell’s invasion" story with "demon" swapped for "dragon."

The environmental storytelling gets even worse after the prologue. Gone are the castle ruins, scattered corpses, and lava-lit altars. Instead, you’re left with bland fields of grass, unremarkable houses, and more inexplicable visceral imagery.

To make things worse, the level design is painfully linear and empty, made even worse by the inconveniently massive size of every map. Big maps are fine, mind you, as long as it’s not just straight stretches of nearly vacant wasteland. Maybe if there were more interactable elements, exploration wouldn’t feel like a chore. But alas, that’s not what we get.

Its Potential Needs to be Pulled Out of a Stone

Saying Dragonkin has a long way to go is an understatement. Sure, it’s launching in Early Access, and I’ve certainly seen worse in that state. But at the end of the day, being grouped with "worse" isn’t a good thing.

I actually held back a bit in this review, precisely because it’s in Early Access. There are plenty of other issues—uninspired sound design, an empty endgame, and more—but these things can be fixed.

Simply put, Dragonkin has the potential to be a great ARPG in the future—but not right now. And if the devs don’t address its core issues, that future might never come.

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Alfonso Majarucon

Writer of things from game, anime and manga reviews to news and webnovels. Hopelessly addicted to story-driven games, especially cross-platform ones. Favorite games include Punishing Gray Raven, Arknights, Limbus Company, Elden Ring, Touhou, Soul Nomad and the Disgaea series (except 3 and 6). Avid..