The First Descendant Review

Packed with beauty, action, and loot!

Watch the review or…

Read it here!

Platform: PS5/4 PC Xbox One/X|S

Reviewed on: PC

Developer: Nexon Games Co.

Publisher: NEXON

Release: July 2^nd 2024

Time Played: 35 Hours

Genre: co-op Action RPG Looter Shooter

ESRB: M

Intro:

The latest free looter shooter is out and full of action, guns, and plenty of loot to keep you busy for a while. If you are familiar with the likes of Warframe or Destiny you could make an educated guess about what this game has in store, however there me be a couple small quirks that are unique to this game, you will just have to stick around and listen while I explain some of the ins and outs, and make sure you make it to the end where I will give this game a rating, and a home on my lovely shelves.

Where it starts:

The planet was attacked by interdimensional enemies, known as Vulgus. Shortly after the Vulgus attacked even greater enemies known as the Colossi decided to come in and destroy even more. Years later the war is still going on, you are tasked with investigating a source within an old temple. Inside you find an item of immense power but get attacked by the Vulgus and lose it, thus starting your grand adventure into the war, fighting droves of enemies and slowly increasing your own power in the process.

Can the kids watch:

There were some curse words shouted, usually out in the field when a descendant loses all their shield, and some blood splatter scenes. And violence, so much violence towards the enemies, generally entailing blasting them to smithereens with any number of guns you can find in the game. This is also an online game with random people on the internet. You can turn off voice chat, however there is a text-based chat option, there is no saying what kind of shenanigans the internet can bring into the fray.

Descendants:

When you start the game, you will have a choice between three starting descendants. Whoever you choose with be your main descendant for most of the beginning of the game, with more descendants unlocking as you find their pieces and put them together. For now, there was a total of fourteen descendants with five having ultimate versions. They will vary between elements and fighting styles. With a nice collection you may be swapping between them a lot depending on the fight.

Arche Abilities:

Every descendant will have four different arche abilities they will use in combat. Depending on what kind of descendant they are, the skills could be attacks on enemies, heals on friendlies, or even small boost to speed getting you around faster. Every descendant will have use of a specific element, with their abilities matching that element.

Guns:

Your main source of damage dealing would be your guns. You could carry up to three with you at a time, quickly swapping between them in a fight. There were a few different gun types, with each type having a lot of different choices as well. The gun types will have differing ammos used, denoted by a colored icon. As you take out waves of enemies they will drop ammo, some of it is much more common than others, the rarer ammo usually doing a lot more damage.

Inundating loot:

While beating up enemy after enemy you will find so many shiny objects dropping from their corpses. Those could be gold, health, shards, equipment, and other various loot items. Your bags do have a limit on the items you can equip, while materials seem to be endless. So, you will need to regularly clean out your main bags by selling or salvaging weapons and such. If there is space in your bag you will pick up everything you walk over automatically so you never have to slow down the action for loot.

Mods:

Your descendants and weapons will have slots to equip so many mods, adjusting stats and abilities. You will have a limited amount of capacity for the mods, and their cost will change depending on how much they help. You can also increase their power, giving them a higher cost as well. There were a ton of different mods to look through and decide what may be best for your playstyle, or you can just ask the game to automatically install what it thinks is best. A great tactic in the beginning while leveling up, but you should really investigate what you’re equipping if you want to get into the late game.

Battle Zones:

The story moves you through different zones, full of missions and enemies. Every zone has a couple areas for you to move through, offering side missions and story missions rewarding you with area specific loot. The zones usually consist of two dungeons so to speak, where you will fight your way to the end where a tough boss awaits. Once you complete all the story missions in a zone, the next one opens for more loot and baddies to play with.

Colossus:

In between some zones you may have to contend with an incoming Colossus with the intention of destroying your home base. Before you head into the fight you will have the option to read up a little about the enemy, where its weak spots are, what you can remove, and what it’s strengths and weaknesses are. You would use that knowledge to properly equip yourself before combat for maximum effectiveness. However, no matter how much you read, you may still be surprised by some of the fighting styles of these Colossus and how strong their attacks are, knocking you out very fast. With a little practice and proper tuning of gear it shouldn’t be a problem for long.

Researching:

To get new descendants and ultimate gear, you will need to find the proper materials and take them to the research center, where you will put all the pieces together and make your desired equipment. Not immediately, however, depending on what you’re trying to make, you will have to wait sometimes up to sixteen hours before research is complete. But if you really wanted to, you could put some real money into the game and speed things up.

The grind farm:

After playing for a while and having a good idea of what you want to work toward, you can identify what materials you’re looking for. The game will let you know all the areas where the items are found, like what zone and activity you must do. It may not stop there either; some descendant materials are obtained by opening special items after defeating a Colossus. So, you would look up the item you need, go farm the spot for said item, then you would farm the connected Colossus and open the item hoping it gives you what you want, rinse repeat.

Multiplayer:

This is a multiplayer game; however, you don’t have to have friends to play with because it is so easy to hop in with other people. In the wild if you happen to attack an enemy someone else is fighting for their current mission, you will automatically hop into their party where you could help them or leave. When setting up to run a dungeon or fight a Colossus, you have the option to start up a private match or join a public match in the making. The multiplayer works very well in this game.

The Shop:

The First Descendant is a free game, so naturally there were a lot of different options for purchasing with real money. A battle pass, cosmetics, and even descendants. Now before you go shouting pay to win, there wasn’t any PvP in the game, most of the items you can buy that would help you would just speed up the process of getting to endgame, generally taking away gameplay in my opinion. But to each their own, I did purchase the battle pass, I like the game enough I wanted to support it, at least a little bit.

Outro:

It has been years since I played Warframe or Destiny, and when I started The First Descendant it sucked me right into the looter shooter landscape. I am having a hard time putting this game down, it’s very enjoyable.

The visuals are phenomenal, the cut scenes are great, however there have been some minor quirks, I had one cutscene where the audio was a second behind the visual, annoying but minor. While fighting waves of enemies everything was smooth and clear, I loved the colors and designs, I’m giving visuals a five.

The story was great as well. I really enjoyed the friction between some characters and how it was played out. The world created for this game was very fascinating with the attacking of inter-dimensional enemies and how hard it was for the humans to keep pace and fight back. Every descendant had their own back story giving reasons for them to fight, and you got to fight beside the characters you can play as throughout the story, really immersing yourself in it. The story is getting a four.

I can’t get enough of the gameplay. On the outside it may seem dull with the consistency of repeating missions and enemies, but it’s so much more than that with the different builds you can create with the plethora of equipment you can find. The farming grind is real, but there is a certain charm to it. Working hard on a gamble and finally getting what you’ve been working toward is just a wonderful feeling, making all the failed attempts worth the effort. I’m giving gameplay another four.

The entire end game is based around replayability; however, it is at a higher difficulty than getting there. Everything you’ve been through already you get to enjoy again, but with enemies closer to your level, creating a challenge like no other. That is when you will start to really work on builds and min maxing everything. Replayability is getting a four.

This game is so much fun. If I didn’t have the silly need to eat and sleep, I’d have way more hours into this than I already do. I love the hunt for new descendants and ultimate weapons, staring at my stats and mods for hours on end trying to figure out the best output to move forward and really kick some butt. I think I’m going to be playing this in my off time for a while to come, fun is getting another five.

Earning The First Descendant an average score of four point four out of five. If you haven’t guessed yet, it’s going onto the Special Reserve. I would wholeheartedly recommend checking this game out. It’s free, and easy to pick up. There are aspects about the game that might make you feel like you have to put money into it, but if you have the patience you can work toward those benefits naturally. But hey, no judgement if you want to put money into the game and support the devs, it’s there for a reason. But if you’ve tried looter shooters in the past and didn’t enjoy it, you probably won’t have much fun here either. There isn’t much different about this and others like it, it’s a pretty standard formula for the genre.