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Kyn

Kyn

We take an exclusive first look at Tangrin Entertainment's strategy-focused action-RPG.

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If you're a big fan of tinkering and customisation, as much as you like real-time strategy and action-RPGs, then Kyn is absolutely a game you need to keep an eye on. It's a single-player title, edged with Nordic-themed fantasy, with the player controlling several characters and directing them through a series of encounters with various beasties.

It's tough, and it's very complex. The three characters we were controlling during the demo each have their own build to tinker with. There's loot aplenty; it drops from enemies and springs forth from chests. Each character can carry different equipment, and loadouts can be changed on the fly, with new and improved items selectable during a mission.

We started the demo with three characters. The build we tried offered some pre-selected parties that each pushes the player towards the different ways you can play. We immediately went with the "balanced" option that provided a melee-focused character alongside a mage and a ranged unit. There's other options and you can lean your style in one particular direction: you can go ranged, focus on close quarters, or concentrate on magic (we actually liked the ranged party the best).

The three characters require careful coordination, and several times we were sent back to the start because we hadn't been paying enough attention to our surroundings. Like Diablo each character has special attacks mapped to the keyboard, and you can also cycle through each of your characters (how this will work on DualShock 4 we're not sure). Hitting space bar doesn't quite pause the game, but it slows down the action for a finite period of time, allowing you to plan and initiate your next move.

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Kyn

The enemies we encountered forced us to change tactics. Larger adversaries require concentrated fire, while basic units were easily dealt with one-on-one. Groups of enemies often include mage characters that are able to replenish the health of their allies, so when you come across a team of opponents it's important to take them out in the right order. Even then, the number of opponents can sometimes be overwhelming, and we had to restart the demo many times because we failed to keep track of our opponents, or because we lost one character after they were swamped and the others were then quickly overrun. It felt uncompromising.

This certainly isn't going to be a game suitable for those who don't revel in a severe challenge, in trial and error, and in calculating a strategy on the fly. There's so much going on, and just from the demo it was clear that you had to make the most of every advantage you have, and that often means pausing the action mid-game so you can tinker with a loadout. One element that we really didn't have much of a chance to sample is the synergy between different characters, and we're interested to see how this manifests itself over a longer period of time. Another is the evolving and toughening of enemy AI; again we'll have to wait and see how the reality of these features stack up against the promises made by the developers.

There's an impressive amount of potential variety in there, and we barely scratched the surface. If you're the kind of player who enjoys tinkering with an ARPG build, then you'll definitely find plenty to involve yourself with here. Each individual character might not have the same depth as a single player-character in something like Diablo, but you can have up to six in your group here, all from different classes, all fulfilling different roles on the battlefield (we had three in the demo, and that was still a lot to take in). When you're starting off that might mean excessive tinkering, but we're assuming that eases once you've built your characters up and perfected your loadout. That said, it runs the risk of draining pace out of the game, we'll have to see how it plays out in the finished article.

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Visually Kyn has the unmistakable finish of a game made in Unity. It looks decent enough, and the environments are nicely decorated. There's a boldness to the graphical style, with a bright colour palette. There's a complicated menu system, but it looks fairly straightforward to navigate considering the wealth of options, and the visual language on screen is fairly clear, especially for those fluent in the ARPG genre. Audio came across as perfectly functional, and the soundtrack, from what we've heard thus far, is pleasant enough.

There was some issues with pathfinding, with characters getting stuck around corners. The difficulty and complexity is a bit confrontational at first, but we expect that to ease with time and practice. We're interested to see how this comes together in the finished build, and as we've only seen a small slice of what's coming further down the line, we'll wait until we've had the chance to play through a wider variety of scenarios and had more time building and refining our group of adventurers before drawing any further conclusions. Still, what's there thus far has potential.

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