Dragonkin: The Banished - Review - Xbox Series X/S
- XPN Network
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
There’s a particular kind of ambition you only see in mid‑budget action‑RPGs, the kind that isn’t afraid to swing for the fences even if it means occasionally missing them. Dragonkin: The Banished is one of those games. It arrives with the confidence of a genre heavyweight, promising sprawling regions, evolving cities, class‑driven combat, and a world drowning in draconic corruption. It’s the sort of pitch that sounds almost too large for a studio of its size, yet the moment you step into Montescail’s fractured landscape, it becomes clear that this is a project built on conviction rather than compromise.
From the opening prologue that's a playable glimpse of the power you’ll one day wield, the game establishes itself as something more than a Diablo‑like loot chase. It’s a world where dragons aren’t just bosses but environmental forces, where your hero isn’t a chosen saviour but a weapon forged out of desperation, and where every system, from the Ancestral Grid to your wyrmling companion, feeds into a broader theme of transformation. There’s a density to its ideas, a willingness to experiment, and a sense of scale that often exceeds expectations.
Yet Dragonkin is also a game of contrasts. For every moment of spectacle, there’s a rough edge; for every clever system, a quirk that needs smoothing. It’s messy, ambitious, and occasionally brilliant. It's a game that doesn’t always match the polish of its genre peers but consistently matches their heart. And in a landscape dominated by safe, iterative ARPGs, that alone makes it worth paying attention to.
Dragonkin: The Banished opens with a bold narrative swing: instead of easing you into its world, it throws you into the final‑form versions of each class, letting you taste the power you’ll eventually grow into. It’s a clever move , like a playable prophecy, and it sets the tone for a game obsessed with transformation, corruption, and the cost of power.
The world of Montescail is a land warped by dragon blood, where ancient wyrms have poisoned the soil, twisted the wildlife, and fractured entire cultures. You’re not a wandering adventurer stumbling into trouble; you’re a conscripted weapon, a “Dragon Tamer,” chosen by a fractious council who can barely agree on anything except that dragons must die.
The story is dense with names, rituals, and political tensions. It’s messy, sometimes overly so, but it’s also earnest. The world feels lived‑in, with side characters who reveal more personality and conflict than the main plot often allows. The council’s infighting, the cults worshipping draconic power, and the corrupted landscapes all contribute to a sense of a world teetering on collapse. It’s not a narrative that always lands cleanly as exposition can be heavy and pacing uneven, but it is a world with texture, history, and a sense of consequence.
On the surface, Dragonkin sits comfortably in the lineage of isometric action‑RPGs. If you’ve played Diablo, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, Chaosbane, or Titan Quest, you’ll recognise the broad strokes:
hordes of enemies
loot‑driven progression
elemental builds
big bosses
a loop of clearing zones, upgrading gear, and pushing difficulty
But Dragonkin distinguishes itself in three major ways with its class identity, its progression systems, and its city‑building layer. Where Diablo leans into gothic bombast and Path of Exile into labyrinthine complexity, Dragonkin aims for something more tactile and experimental. It wants you to feel the weight of your build decisions, the growth of your city, and the synergy between your character and your wyrmling companion. It’s not as polished as the genre’s titans, but it’s more ambitious than most mid‑budget ARPGs dare to be.
The four playable classes of Barbarian, Knight, Oracle, and Tracker aren’t just archetypes; they’re personalities with distinct rhythms and combat philosophies.
The Barbarian is a frost‑touched brute, heavy and satisfying, with a moveset that feels closer to Diablo IV’s weightier melee than the floatier action of older ARPGs.
The Knight is a fire‑lance tank, a hybrid of aggression and defence, ideal for players who like to anchor a fight.
The Oracle channels electricity and crowd control, offering a more cerebral, ability‑driven playstyle.
The Tracker is the ranged specialist, ricocheting arrows, traps, and poison‑based zoning.
The standout mechanic is the Ancestral Grid, a honeycomb‑style board where you slot abilities and modifiers. Placement matters. Adjacency matters. Higher‑tier abilities take up more space. Smaller fragments can augment damage types, cooldowns, crit rates, or elemental effects.
It’s a system that rewards experimentation rather than blind optimisation. Instead of chasing perfect gear rolls, you’re chasing fragments that reshape your build. It feels more like assembling a circuit board than climbing a traditional skill tree. Compared to Path of Exile’s sprawling passive web or Diablo IV’s streamlined trees, Dragonkin sits somewhere in the middle. It's complex enough to be interesting but just readable enough to avoid paralysis.
Every hero travels with a wyrmling, a small elemental dragon that contributes passive bonuses and occasional attacks. Fire, ice, poison, electricity wyrmling types nudges your build in a different direction. They’re not pets in the Torchlight sense; they’re more like living modifiers. But they add flavour, personality, and a sense of partnership that helps the world feel less lonely when playing solo.
One of Dragonkin’s most quietly compelling features is its evolving hub city. Montescail isn’t just a menu space because it levels up alongside you. As you explore, complete missions, and uncover relics, the city gains experience, unlocking new merchants, crafting stations, alchemy upgrades ,training yards that boost XP gain and cosmetic changes that reflect your progress. It’s not full base‑building, but it adds a sense of communal growth that most ARPGs lack. Where Diablo gives you static towns and Grim Dawn gives you bleak outposts, Dragonkin gives you a home that feels like it’s rebuilding because of you.
Combat in Dragonkin sits somewhere between weighty and explosive. Enemies come in swarms, sometimes upto dozens at a time and your abilities are designed to carve through them with style. The power fantasy is strong, especially once your build comes together.
The game shines brightest in its dragon boss fights. These multi‑phase encounters are spectacles, with serpentine ice wyrms, hulking fire beasts, and dragons whose arenas shift mid‑battle. They’re the moments where the game’s ambition pays off. The downside is repetition. Some biomes are too large for their own good, enemy variety can thin out, and certain builds can trivialise entire sections. But when the combat hits its stride, it’s exhilarating.
Once the campaign ends, Dragonkin opens up:
Hunting Maps let you pursue specific draconic targets with modifiers.
Chaos Hunts generate randomised missions with risk‑reward tuning.
Ancestor boons and talent systems deepen your build options.
Draconic Fate Cards let you customise difficulty and rewards.
It’s not as deep as Path of Exile’s endgame, but it’s more structured and varied than many mid‑tier ARPGs.
On Xbox Series X|S, the game runs smoothly even during chaotic encounters. Visuals are detailed for an isometric perspective, with strong environmental variety and striking dragon designs. Some textures and animations lack polish, and occasional crashes have been reported, but overall performance is solid.
Multiplayer in Dragonkin: The Banished feels like the game’s natural state. It's the place where its systems finally breathe. The moment another player drops into your world, the combat shifts from controlled chaos to full‑scale elemental mayhem. Abilities overlap, wyrmlings sync their bonuses, and the screen becomes a storm of fire, frost, poison, and lightning. What stands out most is how well the classes complement each other. A Knight anchoring the frontline while an Oracle chains lightning through clustered mobs feels dramatically different from a solo run, and the game’s enemy density suddenly makes more sense. Boss fights, especially the larger dragons, become set‑piece battles where coordination matters: one player drawing aggro, another managing adds, another focusing on burst windows. It’s messy, loud, and often spectacular.
The structure of multiplayer is refreshingly flexible. You can play the entire campaign in co‑op, drop in for hunts, or tackle endgame chaos missions with a full squad. Progression is shared cleanly as loot, XP, and city upgrades all carry over and the game rarely punishes players for being at different levels. That said, the experience isn’t flawless. Visual clutter can become overwhelming with multiple builds firing at once, and the netcode occasionally struggles during the most explosive encounters. But when it works, it elevates the game dramatically. Dragonkin was clearly designed with co‑op in mind, and the multiplayer transforms it from a solid solo ARPG into a genuinely exciting shared adventure.
Pros
Deep, flexible Ancestral Grid system
Distinct, satisfying class identities
Excellent dragon boss encounters
Evolving hub city adds meaningful progression
Strong power fantasy and build experimentation
Wyrmling system adds flavour and synergy
Smooth performance on Xbox Series X|S
Cons
Story pacing is uneven and exposition‑heavy
Early hours can feel slow before systems unlock
Limited character customisation
Some biomes are overly large and repetitive
Occasional technical hiccups
Combat can become visually chaotic
Dragonkin: The Banished is a fascinating entry in the action‑RPG space. It's a game that blends familiar genre comforts with bold, sometimes messy ambition. It doesn’t dethrone the giants of the genre, but it doesn’t need to. It carves out its own identity through its progression systems, its evolving city, and its commitment to making you feel powerful without drowning you in loot bloat. If you love ARPGs, there’s plenty here to sink your teeth into. If you’re burnt out on the genre, Dragonkin offers just enough fresh ideas to feel worth the journey.
XPN Rating: 4 out of 5 (GOLD)
Dragonkin: The Banished is available now!