The First Descendant, Nexon’s new free-to-play looter shooter, desperately wants to live on your console. It’s endlessly replayable and incredibly content-rich, even at launch. The First Descendant has numerous things to do, from simple story missions to epic boss-like raids. All while searching for new player characters and leveling up your current ones.
The First Descendant opens with a character selection screen. There are three Descendants available for selection, each with different unique characteristics. Once you choose your character, you’re dropped headfirst into the story and lore of the game.
The Lore of The First Descendant
The story in The First Descendant is pretty much nonsense. Early on, you’re bombarded with proper nouns and McGuffins that never enhance your game experience. It’s not that the story is terrible; just unessential to your enjoyment of the game.
The game takes place on Ingris, a futuristic planet. Descendants are humanity’s last hope from the Vulgus, a race of alien beings determined to get the Ironheart, a source of infinite energy. There is an invisible guide that helps you throughout the game, spunky side characters, and a traitor who goes after the Ironheart for himself. If you just looked at the game’s key art for a while, you could probably guess its entire plot.
Look, I’m sure there are going to be some nuts who really enjoy the story and world-building in The First Descendant. But most of us are probably going to be holding that B button through the cutscenes. And that’s fine. The meat of this game is fast gunplay, grinding for XP, and unlocking Descendants.
Unlocking Descendants
You’re told right from the start that after you choose your Descendant, you can unlock the other two and plenty more during the game. Rather than something like Diablo or Destiny that forces you to make multiple characters and saves, in The First Descendant, all the character classes can be unlocked in one save file. It’s more like Pokemon; you can build a team of Descendants ready and waiting to be used whenever you want. Unlike Pokemon, all the Descendants you built sans Bunny, the first one unlocked, will all be at level 1.
It’s a bit of a baffling payoff, as you keep the same guns and modifiers for each Descendant regardless of their level. Once you unlock a new Descendant, you can play with them immediately, running head-first into the most challenging stages you’ve unlocked. Your guns may be powerful, but your character will be so under-leveled that you get one-shotted by every enemy around you. You can brave through higher levels, leveling up quickly but surely annoying your teammates, who must constantly revive you. Or you can return to lower-level stages and clean your enemy’s clock with overpowered guns.
It’s a fair tradeoff, considering the multiple different Descendants available and their relative lack of differences. At the time of this review, 14 different Descendants are available, and five are ultimate variants. Each Descendant can be unlocked through in-game grinding or purchased with real-world money. While they all have unique abilities and strong aesthetic differences, they ultimately do not play that differently. Most of the time, you’re just going to be running and gunning, using your unique abilities as needed.
Micro-Transactions in The First Descendant
On the topic of microtransactions, I should mention that I’ve currently spent no money on The First Descendant. I’ve unlocked three additional Descendants with about an hour of grinding for each through previous missions to get their required crafting materials. After you obtain the correct materials, the game forces you to wait 15 to 20 hours in real time before the Descendant is available. Caliber, the game’s premium currency, can be used to build these Descendants and speed up their building time.
The First Descendant is surprisingly generous with its free-to-play mechanics. The game is in no way pay-to-win, as almost everything can be obtained via grinding. The game is also wise to leave things like weapons out of the premium currency model. Players may want to spend money on skins to make your Descendant look a bit cooler as you run and gun through Ingris.
Mission Styles
Even early in this free-to-play game’s life cycle, there is a good variety of mission types. The primary mission structure takes you to different biomes in Ingris. Here, you unlock missions through terminals that give clear objectives for missions that can be completed in around 5 minutes. After all the terminals are completed, a small strike-type mission is typically available to close out the biome.
Also available are void intercept missions, which are just boss raids and special operations. Both of which can be done solo or with a team. The boss raids get increasingly complex and, at higher levels, demand a strategic approach. Special operations start easy and progressively get more complicated with multiple waves of increasingly powerful enemies. If you plan to collect and level up all the Descendants, you’ll become very familiar with the special operations, as they are the quickest way to level up your characters.
Luckily, The First Descendant has nailed the most critical aspect of a looter shooter. It’s damn fun to play. The shooting feels great, the Descendant’s abilities all feel unique, and there is enough mission variety that you won’t easily get bored.
On the flip side, The First Descendant is not a masterpiece. The story is forgettable, the areas can become bland after an hour or so, and the Descendant’s abilities while all unique, never feel powerful enough to justify their existence. And that is just fine.
Final Thoughts on The First Descendant
Not every game needs to be a 10/10 masterpiece. The First Descendant finds itself in an overcrowded market, but they do enough things well to justify its existence. If you’re hoping for an epic space opera or a genre-defining title, this isn’t it. But if you want a fun looter shooter to play with friends, an enjoyable way to waste a few hours while listening to a podcast, then you can do much worse than The First Descendant.
The combat is tight, the microtransactions are scarce, and the roadmap looks promising. I’ve enjoyed my time with The First Descendant, and I’ll keep putting in more hours. At least until the next Destiny, Division, or Warframe pulls me away.