Discover the Epic World of Dragonkin: The Banished – Preview & Early Access Insights

Rating: 0
Author: Jim Smale

by Jim Smale · Published March 6, 2025 · Updated March 6, 2025

Our Dragonkin: The Banished Preview immerses you in a dragon-blood-corrupted world, where evil creatures rise from the earth’s depths. Choose from legendary hero classes, each with a single mission: hunt and destroy draconic foes. With every battle, come closer to your ultimate quest—vanquishing the fearsome Dragon Lords. Embark on this epic adventure and forge your legacy with the blood of your conquered enemies!

Dragonkin: The Banished Preview Pros:

Decent graphics.
34.41GB Download size.
The Opening Prologue section introduces the world and story, and gives you a premade character to play just the Prologue.
Graphics settings – mode, resolution, window lock mouse, limit fps, limit idle fps, maximum idle fps, v-sync, HDR, gamma, sharpness, motion blur, upscaling method, NVIDIA DLSS super resolution, and quality preset including custom.
Handy VRAM usage bar for graphics.
Full controller support.
UI options – subtitles, subtitles size, cursor size, how loot displays, and game view type – classic or action.
Game guide that has all the info you need for reference.
ARPG gameplay.
Tutorial pop ups as you play.
11 game difficulties and you can change them in the town at any time. Difficulty affects the exp and loot earned.
Interactive or destructive elements within the world get highlighted.
It feels really good to play no matter if it’s the controller or the mouse and keyboard.
You see damage numbers and health bars going down, and it’s very satisfying to watch them go down.
Does this awesome cutscene integration, where it moves the camera around, sets up these beautiful views, and really adds a lot of cinematic flair to proceedings.
You can pause the game in single player.
Every attack, every action just looks awesome, from bright colors to the destructive powers.
It’s a dangerously addictive gameplay loop.
Full loot list.
The Prologue lets you try out every character class powered up.
Three initial character classes – Barbarian, Oracle, and a Knight. (you can see a locked fourth class)
The map fills in as you explore, and you have a big map and a smaller map that stays on the HUD.
Exp bar shows at the bottom at all times.
A glorious gothic dark 3D game world.
Think Diablo or Path Of Exile and that’s the type of game and gameplay loop you have here.
Different weather types, day and night.
Level up to get points to put into stats, the stats are done in a way where you see what you will be increasing.
Massive hex skill tree where you can unlock and drag abilities around.
You can unlock and select passive abilities.
The game world, the design, and the way they use the camera to show off so much of it, like having animated backdrops or zoomed in city sections, it’s a real visual treat.
Full voice work and narrator.
Central chest with tabs and additional slots.
Wrymling are your pets that can fight alongside you, you get to pick your first one from four choices for their elemental attacks – ice, fire, toxic, and electric. They earn their own exp and level up.
Unlock and use the easy-to-use fast travel system.
Your Wrymling is basically its own character as you can level them up, watch them grow, craft and give items and gear to them.
Upgrade the town for new buffs and services available to you.
The fast travel, upgrading the town, changing the appearance of the town, is all instant and in a 3D map that swoops in and out as you let locations.
Upon death, you can choose to respawn or return to the city.

Dragonkin: The Banished Preview Cons:

It’s a bit weird how civilians don’t always register as a thing you cannot pass through.
Early game is a lot of long running sequences as you get massive story dumps.
There is no camera control at all.
I’m not fully convinced that the game is a full Diablo or Path of Exile like as it waters down a lot of mechanics and makes all the menus confusing, that I haven’t seen like this since the slew of free to play titles dropped.
For all the details and options the menus have, they are not the easiest to read or use, many times I got lost at where to go.
The hex tree in particular is not that straightforward.
Loot needs better drop sounds and colours, it’s plain at the moment and not very exciting.
The feedback for damage you receive isn’t great, I never realized how low my health is until the screen goes black and white.
At the moment, there isn’t a huge amount of variety, so long haul missions are just move here, press attack a few times, then go here and repeat, and then repeat etc.
Never feel confident when the game last saved, you don’t have a manual save.

Dragonkin: The Banished:

Official website.

Developer: Ekosoftware

Publisher: Nacon

Store Links –

Steam Early Access