‘The First Descendant’ First Impressions: Not Great, Could Be Worse

 

The First Descendant NEXON

I am always down to try any new looter shooter that hits the market, so I booted up the (thankfully) free-to-play First Descendant yesterday, the new sci-fi entry from Nexon. That studio alone raises some eyebrows, due to its past work and often relentless focus on monetization. But is it fun? Is it good? Kind of, and not especially, respectively.

After playing all of yesterday, I have some early impressions of the game and they’re pretty mixed so far. Granted, I do know the perils of trying to “review” a sprawling looter like this before you’ve gotten a chance to really dive deep into its systems, but nevertheless, there’s enough to at least comment on early here.

It has to be stated up front here that this game is…Warframe. I’ve heard comparisons to other looter shooters from Anthem to Outriders to Destiny, but it is not really close to any of those. It’s just flat-out Warframe down to its character purchase/unlock system, its gearing up and module arrangement, just…all of it. Albeit Warframe has many more years of content built up, though honestly that may work to its detriment. The First Descendant, if nothing else, is a fresh start.

I actually like the feel of shooting in the game. It feels “crunchy,” as they say, across a variety of weapon types that I’ve enjoyed testing out so far. When gunplay starts to feel bad are larger-scale “strike” bosses that absorb bullets in a way that makes them take longer than the entire rest of the mission. The better boss fights are against singular Colossi which do indeed have some amount of strategy involved in taking them down. They’re spongy, yes, but as they’re mini raid bosses, that makes some amount of sense.

I can’t really comment on buildcrafting at this point. I only have two Warframes, sorry Descendants, accessible right now, a girl who freezes things and an electric, fast bunny named “Bunny.” I prefer the ice girl, for now. I have not been able to alter their character kits in any meaningful way yet, it’s just numbers-go-up for now. But it’s just to early for it to be fleshed out.

What is not good so far is…any actual mission I’ve run. So far, about 80% of the game is what I’ll just call “patrol missions,” echoing their counterparts in Destiny. But these are like, the things supposedly connecting story dots and they’re just so dull. Kill enemies in a zone, capture a zone, defend a zone. I think I did one escort mission in eight hours. None of these are good. That’s also true for the “strikes” which you do again, probably one capture zone thing, then fight a massively bullet-spongy boss. I’ve genuinely not played a well-designed or interesting mission in this game outside of maybe a Colossus fight.

The aesthetic and vibe of this whole game is also just off. It feels like it has no identity, whereas Warframe, the game it’s clearly aping, absolutely does. This is just sexy ladies and jacked guys with some cyberpunk stuff thrown on them and as of now, rather uncreative character kits. The environment design is impossibly bland, and while I am not confused about the plot, I have not found any aspect of it particularly interesting.

Finally there’s just layers and layers of…stuff. Yes, the game has loads of microtransactions but technically they can all be “earned” through extremely lengthy grind. But then to craft them you need to spend hours and hours even waiting for the “projects” to be done, unless you spend currency to speed it up. You can tell me “that’s just like Warframe!” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying. When I saw I had to increase a legendary gun’s level to my current max by crafting yet another material made out of a bunch of other materials at a vendor I rolled my eyes. There are just too many roadblocks and too much herding you into seemingly insane grinds for many things, or just throwing down your wallet. It’s all going way beyond cosmetic skins here.

The First Descendant is okay enough for me to press on, but if I expand my roster and head to the endgame and it’s still not picking up, I don’t know how long I’ll stick with it. For now, I’m still on board.

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