Dragonkin: The Banished
ARPGs aren't hard. Make skills fun. Lots of enemies. Have solid progression. For people who want end game, have that (I don't care, personally, though I don't find the content here especially interesting). I didn't mention it in the mini review but there's also a city-building aspect which is exciting at first too.
To elaborate on why it became a 60. I actually hate when games have a shit ton of loot but most of it sucks. They don't drop as much loot in this game, and at first, a good percentage of it felt worthwhile. I was satisfied. Then I got some legendary gear and I rarely got anything exciting afterwards. I played on normal. Now, the end game obviously ups the gear you can get, but I'm talking within the story. So that was a drag.
And then you hit level 50 and progression drops off a cliff. Furthermore, you end up just kind of using the same skills because there's not that many to experiment with. And that would be fine but the hex grid system gets in the way. Some people might find piecing it all together exciting, but I always dreaded it so I ended up just leaving my skills mostly as they were because I was like, "fuck it, we're already wiping the floor with enemies and bosses."
But that wasn't really what brought it down to a 60. It dropped to a 70 at one point, still solid, but then the last few hours happened. The game already recycled a lot of the same elements (defend thing for [insert amount of time here] for example), but the dragons followed the same format, and everything felt like padding. We had to follow a sprite for way too long. Then we got to the final area where each section had a new gimmick (lightning coming down, annoying beam things that knock you around, having to push an object around so you can move through, etc) and I just got annoyed. I was already bored by that point and that almost made me quit, but then I pushed through.
Fortunately it's not full price, but just because you add more doesn't mean it's good. It's also important to respect our time, and the attempts at diversity hurt because they weren't inventive or intuitive, they were annoying.
As for the story, it didn't matter to me. When I play co-op games I have a hard time focusing on it so I'm not taking points away for the middling voice acting or the plot. From what I paid attention to, the plot is just generic.
To elaborate on why it became a 60. I actually hate when games have a shit ton of loot but most of it sucks. They don't drop as much loot in this game, and at first, a good percentage of it felt worthwhile. I was satisfied. Then I got some legendary gear and I rarely got anything exciting afterwards. I played on normal. Now, the end game obviously ups the gear you can get, but I'm talking within the story. So that was a drag.
And then you hit level 50 and progression drops off a cliff. Furthermore, you end up just kind of using the same skills because there's not that many to experiment with. And that would be fine but the hex grid system gets in the way. Some people might find piecing it all together exciting, but I always dreaded it so I ended up just leaving my skills mostly as they were because I was like, "fuck it, we're already wiping the floor with enemies and bosses."
But that wasn't really what brought it down to a 60. It dropped to a 70 at one point, still solid, but then the last few hours happened. The game already recycled a lot of the same elements (defend thing for [insert amount of time here] for example), but the dragons followed the same format, and everything felt like padding. We had to follow a sprite for way too long. Then we got to the final area where each section had a new gimmick (lightning coming down, annoying beam things that knock you around, having to push an object around so you can move through, etc) and I just got annoyed. I was already bored by that point and that almost made me quit, but then I pushed through.
Fortunately it's not full price, but just because you add more doesn't mean it's good. It's also important to respect our time, and the attempts at diversity hurt because they weren't inventive or intuitive, they were annoying.
As for the story, it didn't matter to me. When I play co-op games I have a hard time focusing on it so I'm not taking points away for the middling voice acting or the plot. From what I paid attention to, the plot is just generic.
Mini Review: This game got worse as it went on. At first this was about an 80. Good amount of enemies to fight, graphics are good, loot dropping at a good rate (not too much junk). Progression was fine. Enjoy the skill system and how you can modify it. Then as I continued through, the hex grid annoyed me more, I stopped getting loot that mattered most of the time, and in the final couple hours it shows that it was going for a "more = good" approach but really it got boring.
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