The publisher Nexon Games is known for transaction heavy approach in their games. Is The First Descendant any different?
Gotta be honest with you. I’m not a looter shooter type of player. But I do like first and third-person shooters and sci-fi worlds. Plus, the popularity of The First Descendant at launch got me thinking of trying the game out.
So consider it a quick answer to a question you might be asking as a non looter shooter gamer. Is this game worth playing?
The Story
The First Descendant takes us to the planet Ingris, where 100 years ago, humanity was attacked by the races of Vulgus and Colossi. Both fractions are after The Ironheart, an infinite energy source which is said to be hidden on Ingris.
After bringing the humanity to the brink of extinction the scientific faction of Vulgus oppsed its leader and helped the humans evolve and bring The Descendants, sort of super-humans, to the world. And these are our main protagonists.
There’s nothing particularly fresh and engaging in the story of Nexon’s new title. It’s fine for a game that is supposed to be mostly „go there and shoot stuff” kind of title. But I wouldn’t mind something a bit more original and exciting storywise.
The Gameplay
At the beginning of the game you get to choose one of three Descendants to play as, Lepic, Ajax and Viessa, each with their own set of skills to help you defeat waves of enemies. Later in the game, through finishing missions you unlock more fleshed out Descendants. There are 14 characters in total at the time of the game’s launch.
There are four types of ammo in the game: general, special, impact and high-power. Each type has different weapons you can choose from. I started with an assault rifle, a sniper rifle and a shotgun. My favorite was the assault rifle. It got the job done quick and was excellent against smaller enemies. Fot bigger ones I experimented with both the sniper rifle and the shotgun. I found the sniper to be very effective against most adversaries.
Aside from weapons you get a set of special powers, which include stuff for attack, defense and movement. The are shields, granades, melee attacks and much more. But honestly, I only used a shield for defense, when things started to get a bit out of hand with the enemy numbers. At the beginning most skills are not as strong and effective as weapons. As it is a looter shooter, you loot more and more powerful weapons througout the game. You also power up your skills through looting.
There are a lot of paid customizing of visuals, skills, powers, weapons and more. After all it is a game, that’s supposed to make money through microtransactions. But more on that later.
The character movement relays pretty heavily on the hookshot. You use it a lot in the first missions and moving around the map. It’s not perfect, but can be quite fun at times.
Each time you boot up the game you are thrown into a hub, in which you can upgrade stuff, take some missions and run around with other players. You can teleport yourself from any place to one of the regions available in the game, and from there back to the hub.
When you visit one of the regions, you will find missions. There are many ranging from the very short to quite long and exhausting ones. What I liked was, each mission has an approximate time of playing. What I like is the option for the cooperative gameplay as well as for going solo into the missions. I tried both and playing with other player was not bad. You don’t feel so alienated.
Lastly there are boss fights With a variety of different big baddies. Nothing especially crazy about them. The ones I fought had small weak areas to shoot, but ther than that, they’re just a spongy big enemy you shoot enough for it to die.
World design, visuals and sound
One thing I really liked in The First Descendant is the World design. Not all of it, as it can be a bit cringy here and there. It’s especially visible in the characters. But it does have a lot of potential. The gigantic structures, machines, environments and other are beautifully crafted in some areas. I see some new Doom inspiration here and there.
Graphically the game represents a nice standard. It sports Unreal Engine 5, and some models are very detailed. Developers play with changing focus of the camera between characters in some cutscenes, and then it looks very bad and clunky, at least on the Xbox Series X. But these things look bad in every game I played in the recent years.
The music has a nice ring to it and keeps you pretty invested in the game. Soundwise it’s also a proper work from the developers. Gun sounds among others give a lot of satisfaction.
Voice acting in english is a bit cringy at times. But the whole story is quite cringy so it fits, if that makes any sense. If you don’t take it to seriously, it can be entertaining.
Microtransactions
Nexon Games is well known for their heavy transaction relaying games. The First Descendant is not to different here. While you can obtain most of the loot through lengthy grind, I presume the publisher expects you will loose your patience and spend real money on game purchases to get stuff done faster. I you won’t, you will spend hours grinding and crafting. I’m never a fan of this approach, but it is a free to play game after all. I’ll leave the judgement of this strategy to you.
Paid Character skins, weapon skins and more are here too. There is plenty to choose from if you would like for your Descendant to stand out in the crowd.
The game offers free and premium Battle Passes, which give you plenty of different perks and items.
Summary
Personally, I had fun the first few hours with the game. The missions are pretty repetitive, which will lead to many players leaving the game I assume, but I honestly didn’t mind them. I like to lay on the couch after a long day and just shoot stuff mindlessly.
You will take a long time to progress without spending real money, which is a strategy I hate in these games. I would prefer to pay like 20$ and get a game which is not so microtransaction oriented.
But you don’t need to spend any money to play it. I’ll say, give it a try. It is an enjoyable experience. At worst you will loose some time.
