Dragonkin: The Banished Early Access ARPG Preview – Slay Dragon Lords & Shape Your Legacy

Dragonkin: The Banished early access ARPG preview throws you headfirst into a corrupted world where dragon-blooded horrors rise from the depths. With four distinct hero classes and a dangerously addictive gameplay loop, this gothic action RPG blends cinematic flair with crunchy combat satisfaction. Whether you’re slashing through dungeons, upgrading your town, or unleashing your Wrymling’s elemental fury, every moment feels like a step toward legend. Gert Lush Gaming dives deep into the chaos, the loot, and the legacy you’re destined to forge.

Dragonkin: The Banished Preview Pros:

• Decent graphics.
• 34.41GB Download size.
• 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.
• Accessibility options – Colourblind mode, highlighting for allies, highlighting for the player character, and screen shake intensity.
• The audio options are – mute when minimised, mute, master volume, music, effects, bark, ambient, voice, UI, cinematic volume, and audio filters.
• Handy VRAM usage bar for graphics.
• Full controller support.
• UI options – subtitles, subtitles size, cursor size, how long loot displays for, loot display (when spawned/always/never), you can filter what rarity level loot shows, and game view type – classic or action (action is closer than classic).
• More for the stat nerds out there but you have a set of stats on the side of the screen that shows attack, fps, etc and it is an interesting little tid bit.
• The Opening Prologue section introduces the world and story, and gives you a premade character to play just the Prologue.
• ARPG gameplay.
• Tutorial pop ups as you play amd going to the end game will bring up a list of activities now available to you. The gane guide is your central menu system for all things tutorial and help with text and images.
• 11 game difficulties and you can change them in the town at any time. Difficulty affects the exp and loot earned. When using the board and events you will get told what difficulties are available.
• Interactive or destructive elements within the world get highlighted.
• When creating a character you can select to do the story or skip straight to the end game.
• 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.
• The game 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.
• The game uses the full inventory drag and drop system, you can bulk mark items for junk and favourite items and gear.
• High end gear is divine and draconic tiers that have massive buffs and abilities attached to them. Divine is usually always good things for you whilst Draconic will have better bonuses but also have negatives attached.
• Four character classes – Barbarian, Oracle, a Knight, and the newly added Tracker class.
• Character class playstyles – the Knight is a bit of everything, The Oracle is a magic are of effect character, barbarian is you up in your face melee, and the Tracker is a ranged projectile 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.
• You can refund all the skill points at anytime to respec.
• Its daunting I’m not gonna lie but the town building, customising it all and adding to it is absolutely fascinating and is a real cool over arching progress and it’s one you can see.
• 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.
• It’s a fast and brutal game but it really gets it’s hooks in.
• Activities in the end game –
  • Dungeon purification – eliminate enemies to open the breach and enter the realm to close it.
  • Test of Will – wave based time attack game mode.
  • Hunting board – it’s a huge board of events that are replay ale and offer many different event types and can add modifiers and difficulties.
  • Chaos hunt – randomly generated hubt and you can set the parameters of the fight.
  • Augmentations – these are powerful bonuses and you can have upto 2 equipped and these last the rest of the hunt.
• The hub ting board is a fantastic idea for end game activities and really mixes it all up, it also varies the action so it feels fresh and less monotonous.
• Find panoramic points to get a cool fly over of the land ahead.
• Map wise you can have a small mini map in the corner, you can bring it up bigger, then there’s area map and the overall world map which shows just how huge the world is.
• The new Tracker class is a lot of fun! They play like the Demon Hunter or Rogue in Diablo but to mix it up the have what is considered level up abilities in Diablo as startin abilities here like rain if arrows.
• Having a dodge roll on the right stick is an absolute godsend.
• Every update feels substantial to the game as it isn’t just gameplay tweaks and content it’s the settings and accessibility which is refreshing to see.
• Any earned activities or requirements for the town will pop up as you earn them amd bestiary entries.
• The tracker uses auto targeting but changing target is simply a case of moving the cursor, you stay still when shooting.
• This is totally a personal thing but the game clicked with me alot more with the Tracker class but it’s purely because it’s more my jam than the other classes.
• Full credit deserved for how quick and easy it is to show if a piece of gear is good or bad.
• It is the lighting mixed with the level design that just excels in every way.

Dragonkin: The Banished Preview Cons:

• It’s a bit weird how civilians don’t always register as a thing you cannot pass through.
• You cannot remap the controls.
• Text size varies in it’s usefulness and can alot of the time be too small.
• Shaders initilising can take a while amd they are on a lot of screens.
• When choosing end gane you don’t start with a ton of skill points and gear which is a bit disappointing.
• I still feel they need to try and make all the many mechanics flow together so you can get into the routine of where to go for adventures then the loop you take when you get back and they need to establish that early on.
• Early game is a lot of long running sequences as you get massive story dumps.
• It can be a hard gane to come back to as there is just so much going on.
• 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.
• You have to click to pick up loot with no auto pick up option.
• Never feel confident when the game last saved, you don’t have a manual save.

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Dragonkin: The Banished:

Official website.

Developer: Ekosoftware

Publisher: Nacon

Store Links –

Steam Early Access