Steam Community :: Dragonkin: The Banished

16 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny

Not Recommended

24.7 hrs on record

Posted: 26 March

I originally tried this game simply because it was something new to play in a genre that I've played just about every game in and, at first, it was really solid. The campaign was decent, the gameplay was okay, and it was pretty too. The further I made it in the campaign the worst it became. The voice acting is some of the worst I've ever heard in my 34+ years of gaming and the objectives were literally all the same.
I knew exactly when one of the many "protect this NPC" would happen or "hold this spot" for X amount of time. It was alright the first time I did it and groan inducing the 20th. This is an example of more isn't always better. The game is large and that's not a good thing. This is no Grim Dawn. It's not even a Wolcen. It was a pain to play through to the end game and when I finally did get there I just didn't want to continue playing anymore.
But I forced myself to continue just so I could say I tried it. I did a few maps and a champion hunt before I quit and uninstalled. There's just... nothing here to keep me invested like other games in the genre. Grim Dawn had it's beautifully world/lore. Last Epoch with the strong end game/character building. Path of Exile for... well... everything and even Diablo 4 had it's moments. This game though... has absolutely nothing going for it and that pains me to type because I genuinely enjoy this genre.

If you're curious like I was just wait for a deep sale.

5/10

Darth_Roxs

696 products in account

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Реликвии на картах / Relics location

Сбор всех реликвий в игре.

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ADmirAL

4 people found this review helpful

Not Recommended

11.0 hrs on record

Posted: 29 March

Dragonkin: The Banished — 7 hours, all four classes to Level 10 on Extreme difficulty.

**What's Great:**
This game punches way above $22. Graphics rival titles at triple the price — environments, spell effects, and lighting are genuinely impressive. Combat feels snappy and responsive. QoL is best-in-class: instant teleport anywhere with no loading screens, free respec, full stash from the start, build saving, difficulty changeable anytime. Cosmetic monetization done right — no power sold. These are things established franchises still haven't figured out.

**What Needs Work:**

*Passive trees are identical across all classes.* Same generic nodes on every character — flat attack, flat health, percentage damage. No class-specific specialization paths. Where's the Barbarian's Whirlwind tree? The Oracle's Lightning mastery? The Tracker's poison specialization? 10 points into a 5% damage passive gave me +3 damage. The same points into flat attack gave +25. There's no real choice here.

*Hex grid is Tetris, not theory-crafting.* You're fitting shapes to hit power thresholds, not discovering synergies. Modifier type matters less than how many power points it contributes. No emergent interactions — stacking area effect + DOT doesn't create anything new. You just maximize power to rank up skills.

*Element pigeonholing.* Oracle gets lightning drops, Knight gets fire, Barbarian gets ice, Tracker gets poison. Almost exclusively. Want to play a fire Oracle or a physical Barbarian? The drop system fights you.

*Class balance is rough early.* Oracle and Tracker melt screens instantly with unlimited energy. Barbarian's Whirlwind drains energy in seconds and his other skills feel weak. Knight's Fuel system has no early management tools — energy regen and cost reduction nodes don't affect Fuel at all.

*Difficulty scales HP, not threat.* Higher difficulty means enemies take longer to kill, not that they fight smarter or more dangerously. It's slower, not harder.

*No meaningful skill interactions.* Skills do damage. That's it. No linking, no combos that create emergent effects, no reason to think about ability ordering. This is what separates a 20-hour ARPG from a 200-hour one.

*Class-locked gear with shared stash* — most drops can't be equipped by other classes. Why have shared storage?

**Bottom Line:**
$60 foundation for $22. The graphics, combat, and QoL are legitimately impressive. But the build systems — the thing that keeps ARPG players for hundreds of hours — are the thinnest part. Passive trees need class identity. The hex grid needs emergent depth. Classes need early-game balance.

The bones are here. The depth isn't. Yet. Just hit 1.0 two weeks ago — everything here is fixable. Worth watching. I'll check back in a month.

**6/10 —Graphics in combat are great. Wait for more depth .**

Paragon

1

4 people found this review helpful

Recommended

49.2 hrs on record

Posted: 25 March

After fully experiencing the game, I have compiled some personal feedback and suggestions, hoping to provide useful reference for both future optimization and other players.

◇◇Main Story Feels Repetitive◇◇:
During the progression of the main storyline, the overall experience felt rather monotonous. The main elements that kept me engaged were the “Eternal Blessing Chest” rewards obtained after defeating mini-bosses, as well as the Dragon King boss fights.
Aside from these, whether it was regular combat drops or collectible elements, the overall feedback felt quite flat and lacked sustained appeal.

◇◇Main Story Reward System Is Too Single-Dimensional◇◇:
Currently, main story rewards are basically limited to three categories: equipment, Ancestral Network runes, and materials (which have low usefulness in the early to mid game).
The issue is that all of these rewards can also be obtained through grinding, with the main story only offering higher-quality versions. From the very first main quest to the end of the game, the reward types remain unchanged. This repetition gradually weakens the player’s sense of anticipation, eventually making the experience feel unrewarding.

◇◇Exploration Feels Repetitive◇◇:
Exploration content in the game is relatively limited, mainly consisting of relics, viewpoints, materials, and chests.
In the early stage, relics and materials are somewhat rewarding, but in the late game, material acquisition becomes limited. As for chests, they are mainly useful in the early game as a way to obtain decent gear, but in the late game, their rewards seem restricted—often dropping equipment that is always one tier below the player’s current highest quality gear. This design makes chests nearly meaningless.
Overall, exploration lacks progression and sustained engagement. As the game progresses, the rewards noticeably decline, causing players to lose motivation to explore.

◇◇Town Progression Feels Overly Tedious◇◇:
The town system itself has strong potential, and I have also noticed other players expressing dissatisfaction in reviews. I believe the current implementation feels overly tedious and somewhat restricts player progression.
In the early to mid game, the main sources of town EXP are limited to: unlocking monster codex entries through first kills, discovering viewpoints, and collecting relics.
Although crafting potions, Drake gear, and rings also grant town EXP, due to limited resources in early and mid stages, these gains are negligible and cannot serve as primary progression methods. Players who can meaningfully level up through these systems are usually already in the late game. This results in a constrained progression path early on, lacking diversity and flexibility.

◇◇Issue with the “Reveal Relics and Viewpoints on World Map” Skill◇◇:
There is a clear design issue with this town skill. When unlocking it, players would naturally expect it to mark relics or viewpoints on the minimap or provide guidance during exploration.
However, its actual effect is only showing the number of uncollected relics and undiscovered viewpoints on the world map, which is essentially just a progress tracker.
This creates a mismatch between expectation and actual functionality.

In most games, similar features are unlocked through NPCs, exploration tools, or main story progression to improve exploration efficiency. However, in this case, it requires spending valuable early- to mid-game town points while providing extremely low practical value, making it feel inefficient.
Players usually invest in this skill expecting long-term benefits such as improved exploration efficiency and time savings. Instead, it only reminds them how much content remains to be manually searched, which becomes even more frustrating given the complex map design.

◇◇Drake Gear Design Issues◇◇:
After unlocking the relevant town skills, high-tier Drake gear is indeed powerful, but its crafting cost is excessively high. The biggest issue is that gear cannot be shared between different Drake types, which feels unreasonable.
For example, upgrading a Drake gear piece from level 9 to 10 requires around 1000 materials, while each gathering node only provides about 30–40 materials and is often spread far apart. Enemy drops are rare and usually only provide one material at a time. Even with maxed exploration talents, farming enough materials remains extremely time-consuming.
And this is only part of the cost for a single piece of gear—fully upgrading an entire set is even more demanding.

Additionally, if players want to try different Drake builds, they must craft a full set of max-level gear for each type separately. This significantly increases the progression barrier and discourages build experimentation.

◇◇Equipment Design Feels Too Uniform◇◇:
From early-game drops to endgame gear, equipment feels largely the same. The main difference lies in increased affix count and stronger talents from higher quality items, but beyond that, the impact on overall build diversity is limited.
This type of progression, focused mainly on numerical improvements, can easily lead to fatigue. For example, defeating a powerful boss like a Dragon King only results in slightly better stats, without introducing new mechanics or gameplay changes, which reduces the sense of achievement and excitement.

◇◇Talents Have Highlights but Are Overall Too Flat◇◇:
There are indeed some well-designed talents. For example, control-type talents allow players to build up a control meter on elites and bosses, triggering a burst of true damage based on a percentage of max HP. This works especially well with multi-hit abilities and performs strongly in high-difficulty scenarios.
Another example is the Hunter talent “Relentless Instinct,” which converts 20% of Instinct into attack power. When combined with Poison Drake bonuses and gear affixes, players can stack around 7000 Instinct, effectively gaining about 1400 bonus attack power. This kind of synergy-driven design is excellent.

However, aside from a few standout cases, most talents—including some class-specific ones—remain simple numerical boosts without deeper mechanics or interactions.

◇◇Sacred Gear Has Low Practical Value◇◇:
From early game to endgame, I have obtained no fewer than 100 Sacred items. This quality enhances one affix by 1.5x, which sounds appealing in theory, but in practice, it has low usefulness.
The main issue is that compared to items with perfectly matched affixes, Sacred gear often suffers from mismatched stats, making it less efficient overall. In actual build optimization, I tend to prioritize correct affixes over a single boosted stat, making Sacred gear less competitive in terms of value.
As a result, Sacred items have very low usage in builds and lack a clear role or value, feeling more like a visual or rarity feature.

◇◇Ring System Lacks Identity◇◇:
Rings are a player-crafted equipment type that also require significant town point investment, yet they only provide minimal stat increases along with the same affix pool and talents as regular gear. This creates a clear imbalance between cost and benefit.
Rings are not fundamentally different from other equipment, lacking a unique identity or system role, which makes them feel insignificant.

In my view, rings should function as a more independent system—for example, allowing two rings to be equipped simultaneously, and having distinct mechanics or effects compared to standard gear, making them a more strategic component in build construction rather than just stat fillers.

JK-z

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Dragonkin: The Banished - Co-Op Gameplay (No Commentary)

Darkness

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43時間でエンドコンテンツ到達。おもしろかったー!!!

Spooky

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PandaNoja

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Мой пузатик ... И как только он взлетает при его то брюхе

ᚹᛜᛤᛟᛊᛈᛠᛒᛜ ᛕᛜᛒᛋᛟᚤ

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air strike

People == shot

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Dragonkin: The Banished - Gameplay de Primeiras Impressões

Darkness

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DRAGONKIN: The Banished | Explorando NOVAS REGIÕES | Português

twitch.tv/jplosada

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为啥我进入这个游戏看不到里面的建筑物和道路

NMG-YG

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Thousands of enemies - is this a glitch or is it supposed to be like this?

acidd

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First Look of a new ARPG - Dragonkin: The Banished!

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Dragonkin: The Banished - Découverte - Gameplay FR (No commentary)

Tucs

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Todos los puntos panorámicos + los caliz

Descubre dónde están todos los puntos panorámicos y los cáliz. Esto nos darán entre 20 a 50 puntos de experiencia para nuestra ciudad. Si mi guía te pareció de gran ayuda suscribete a mi canal

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Deiris

Guide

Dragonkin: The Banished Game Guide

This is the most complete game guide for Dragonkin: The Banished, and is meant to be a one stop place for all information about the game.

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Frat

Guide

EXP Farm - Video Guide (auch items)

Hey zusammen, in diesem Video Guide zeige ich euch wie ihr ganz easy Erfahrung und nebenbei auch Items farmen könnt. Erfahrung ist in dem Spiel essentiell für Loot da es einige Breakpoints gibt um überhaupt eine bestimmte Rarität an Items zu erhalten. Weit

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Shoninya

I Hate The Grid...

I have seen a lot of obnoxious systems int his genre, but I think this godawful Grid system takes the cake. Can't wait for a (hopeful) either modding or tooling community to provide optimal combinations...

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FireDogy

16 minutes ago

General Discussions

co op and trading ?

planning on buying the game with a friend. but when playing co op, is there a trade in the game where we can trade gear ?

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Speedy

6 hours ago

General Discussions

# Dragonkin: The Banished — Honest Review After Testing All Four Classes

# Dragonkin: The Banished — Honest Review After Testing All Four Classes **Hours Played:** 10.5 hours | **All four classes to Level 15** | **Difficulty: Extreme** --- ## What This Game Does Right Let me start here because credit where it's due — this game punches way above its $22 price tag in several areas. **Graphics are genuinely impressive.** The environmental art, the lighting, the spell effects — these rival games selling for three times the price. Loading into the city for the first time,...

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Paragon

8 hours ago

General Discussions

Guide

Chain Lightning Build 1.0

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Saf