At this point, I’ve played The First Descendant in three or four different beta iterations, and each time I’ve been more or less sure if it’s going to be something my friends and I want to play, or just another sci-fi. -fi shooter in a sea of similar games vying for our attention. After more than 45 hours immersed in pre-build over the past week, I’m only slightly closer to answering that question – but I’m definitely not having a bad time. I still have a lot left, including the all-important endgame, for example, so right now I’m still not sure if First Descendant will be my next looter-shooter fic, or yet another one that missed out. mark.
Nexon’s free-to-play third-person multiplayer game takes place in the same space as Genshin Impact, complete with cool-looking characters to unlock and countless currencies and materials to grind, can be bypassed by those who are simply willing to cough up their hard-earned money. And like some of its polished contemporaries, it’s a pretty decent game despite a UI that requires a PhD in RPG hog to decipher and an annoying monetization model that does crazy things like forcing you to pay real money to increase inventory capacity or get consumable packs RNG dyes to change the color of your gear. Running around with friends while shooting enemies and unleashing interesting supernatural abilities on alien armies is undeniably a good time (as in Destiny, Warframe and Outriders to name a few) and the deep RPG mechanics and loot systems love the tables. a fool’s dream It’s also a pretty nice looking game that feels a lot more premium than you’d expect from a free space, despite the occasional dips or drops in frame rate (at least in its pre-release state). That said, the free-to-play model is as eyebrow-raising as it might sound, the story and dialogue are laughably bad, and much of the campaign is packed with filler that can be a real turn-off.
I split my dozens of hours running around small hubs and completing repetitive jobs between much more substantial missions and boss battles against robotic kaiju called colossi. These stand-alone missions and boss fights are exactly what I hope for in an action-packed co-op game: some seriously awesome fights that rival your peers, interesting enemies to take down, and a loot system that challenged me regularly. the latest shiny weapon I pulled from some schmuck’s corpse. If The First Descendant kept me in the lead role, we’d be on to something and my mind would be made up.
Unfortunately, so much of it is locked behind sections where you complete a series of really boring errands like defending a piece of tech from waves of enemy attacks, collecting items from fallen baddies to store in a scavenger bot, or just killing things until a miniboss appears that you you can take Even the drug fight can’t stave off the boredom of hanging around for a few minutes waiting for small groups of enemies to appear until they tell you you’ve succeeded and then you’re directed to the next spot on the map to do it. again. These sections also represent a pretty big chunk of what you do during the main story, ostensibly to fill out the adventure so you don’t burn out too quickly on more interesting activities. Worst of all, there are only a few variations of these kinds of quests, so you’ll find yourself being asked to repeat them multiple times between each boss battle or meatier story mission.
Even though I’ve only played half the campaign, it’s not really looking great so far, fam. Absolutely overflowing with nonsensical sci-fi gibberish like “dimensional walls,” “reversed data codes,” and “unleashing the Ark,” it’s one of the dumbest stories I’ve seen in a while. Most of the dialogue is absolutely appalling: I burst out laughing at one point when the villain ominously declared, “The Qliphoth will consume Ingris. The roar of Vulgus will fill this land with fear!” In another section, I shook my head when an antagonist character named Jeremy (a grown man with the voice of a whiny, spoiled teenage brat) turned out to be the most annoying person in the world and was mean to me for no reason. started quests for him. It’s truly abominable stuff, but some of it is so bad it’s quite entertaining – I eventually found myself looking forward to the cutscenes, eager for another hit of sci-fi gibberish and butchered voice acting. (To add to the absurdity, the English voices rarely come close to the speaking characters’ lips. That’s fine if you like watching anime dubs, but I find it quite distracting.)
Fortunately, the most interesting characters are the ones you can unlock and play as, like the unflappable electric speedster Bunny (my personal favorite) or the sarcastic and cunning grenade-throwing soldier Lepic. Some of the cast still seem a little sketchy, mainly because you only get a little backstory and character development for most of them, but hearing them cheer as you smash monsters to pieces and seeing their charming animations – which clearly took a lot more effort. into them than into NPCs – it’s pretty nice. Only one of these playable characters has an actual questline associated with it (with more planned for the future), but the parts of that story I played were among the better content available in The First Descendant at launch, so I’m hoping to at least deliver on that front .
Actually learning how to play them is also great, although I still have a lot more characters to unlock before I can try them all out. One character can dominate the battlefield with explosive AoE attacks, while another covers enemies with devastating ice debuffs. Bunny does insane DPS by running around as much as possible to generate electricity and then unleashing it with powerful blasts. With each of the characters having their own playstyle, switching between them offers a vastly different experience, as Ajax, a heavy tank with protective abilities, instead stands his ground. Most games with playable characters as their main pursuit live or die by how convincing those unlockable avatars are, and so far The First Descendent seems to be loaded with distinct options that are definitely worth going through the trouble.
Similarly awesome are the weapons, gear, and power-ups you get with the shotgun you make your way through the levels. Loot keeps dropping, most weapons feel different and satisfying to play and watch the numbers go up as you modify and upgrade each new toy in your arsenal, making First Descendant hard to break down… until they force you to enter about 15 separate menu juggles with dozens of materials and so many different systems, you may want to have your inhaler ready. This sort of thing is pretty typical of loot shooters, that’s for sure, but even by the genre’s already gag-inducing standards, it’s particularly annoying to learn – especially when the tutorial bot that shows you the ropes in the social area explains things. you in a series of texts that go by fast enough to challenge your speed reading skills.
Even after spending dozens of hours with this pre-launch preview build, I still have a lot to play and the final game to dive into once it launches properly next week. Check back in the coming weeks for my final, scored review.