14 DAY TRIAL // Kyn is an upcoming action role-playing game from Tangrin, a two-man independent studio based in the Netherlands. While such a presentation is enough to turn some people away from the hack and slash experience, fans of the genre and those who favor a tough challenge should stick around.
The new RPG promises to deliver an intense party-based experience, starting with just two characters and slowly extending the group to a whopping six. Throw in tough as nails enemies, pretty complex RPG mechanics, and some big environments, and Kyn looks to be quite promising.
Does Kyn's current preview version bring hope for the final product or should the RPG make some big changes? Let's find out
Expect a big challenge and a lot of death
While the bright colors and the pretty decent visuals of Kyn bring to mind a dreamy atmosphere of fantasy, you'll soon be met with some pretty challenging enemies.
You start off with two warriors who, after a lengthy endurance trial that gave them magical abilities, return to their native land. Unfortunately for them, the peace between their fellow humans and a tribe of other beings called Ashen has worn down and they must undertake a few interesting quests to get to the bottom of things.
You can control each warrior individually or both at the same time by pressing the Z key. Combat is mostly about clicking on an enemy and seeing the two characters try to defeat it with whatever weapons they have equipped, such as swords, bows, or other such things.
However, Kyn isn't afraid to offer a serious challenge, even on the Normal difficulty level. Groups of enemies will easily surround and wear down your characters, while the AI employs good tactics by ensuring that archers can bring down your health from afar with ease.
You can manually employ the spells learned by the warriors, which include healing, resurrection, or panic effects for your foes, but managing them in the heat of battle takes some time to get used to. You can also deploy a limited ability that slows down time, which is great when you have more characters and want to issue commands individually. Unfortunately, in many cases, there aren't that many things you can do besides watching your warriors get pummeled.
The RPG mechanics are pretty complex, boasting all sorts of unlockable skills and spells, not to mention a varied loot system.
The visuals look good enough for such an isometric RPG and the soundtrack is top notch, keeping an epic tone throughout your adventures.
Overall, Kyn is looking relatively good, but Tangrin needs to look a bit more into the balancing and the enemy aggro mechanics, at least to give newcomers a fighting chance. The movement system is also a bit wonky and the camera that follows the players around could move a bit more smoothly.
Check out a short video and some screenshots of Kyn below.
