Dragonkin: The Banished - Blood Scales Edition

I went in expecting another forgettable Diablo clone and came out with more hours logged than I planned - which is about the most honest endorsement I can give a game in this lane. Dragonkin: The Banished is an isometric hack-and-slash action RPG from EKO Software, the studio behind Warhammer: Chaosbane, and it carries that pedigree in both its strengths and its limitations. Four classes - Barbarian, Oracle, Knight, and Tracker - each play genuinely differently. The melee-heavy Barbarian charges in corrupted and half-feral, the Oracle lances crowds with lightning, the Knight tanks with a fire spear, and the Tracker keeps distance with arrows, knives, traps, and poisons. The class variety is real, not cosmetic. The standout mechanic is the Ancestral Grid - a modular skill system where abilities drop as loot from enemies and get slotted into a customizable grid alongside modifiers. It replaces the usual spider-web skill tree with something that feels more like puzzle-solving than point-spending. Tweaking your grid build and watching your damage output shift is genuinely satisfying, and it gives the grind a concrete goal beyond just number-watching. The combat itself is fast and responsive - skills feel punchy, enemy packs explode with visual flair, and the moment-to-moment loop holds up across biomes that range from poisonous swamps to icy glaciers to volcanic wastelands. A symphonic original soundtrack adds real atmosphere without drawing attention to itself. On top of the combat, the game layers in city-building through the City of Montescail - a shared hub where you upgrade buildings, unlock services, and pull in new inhabitants. The concept is interesting and adds a meta-progression angle, but it paces awkwardly early on, with city upgrades dragging in the opening hours before the system properly opens up. The whole narrative side of things is similarly undercooked: the story throws names, factions, and lore terms at you faster than it earns them, the voice acting ranges from mediocre to actively bad, and certain mechanics go unexplained long enough to be annoying. Missions occasionally feel padded. None of this is genre-breaking news, but it stacks up into a game that leans heavily on its systems to carry what its writing can not. The Blood Scales Edition bundles in 10 class-specific armor pieces across all four heroes, four cosmetic packs for the City of Montescail, and 13 visual effects - cosmetic additions, but they do at least dress up the city customization system with more personality. Online co-op for up to four players is fully supported throughout the campaign and into endgame, and a shared city upgrade pool gives groups a reason to coordinate beyond just murdering things together. Solo is fine; co-op is where the loop actually stretches its legs. If your tolerance for weak narrative and occasional clunky tutorials is low, Dragonkin will test your patience. But if you can get past the rough presentation layer, there is a genuinely well-constructed ARPG underneath - one with a build system creative enough to justify the grind and combat responsive enough to make that grind feel earned.

Alex · Scout Team

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