The First Descendant Review – The Fun Descendant That Needs To Ascend

The looter shooter genre isn’t exactly “crowded.” With only two big live-service titles competing for the top spot, it’s a genre that sorely needs more competition. So far, that’s what The First Descendant is poised to be. At its current state, it looks promising, but whether it will fulfill that promise remains to be seen.

While The First Descendant might have played it safe by being Warframe and Destiny 2‘s wayward lovechild, it’s a bit of a shallow pool once you’ve peered past the shiny surface. What it is at the moment, however, is a fun but repetitive loot treadmill. And the thing about treadmills is that you don’t get rewarded if you have neither patience nor perseverance.

What It Is & What It Isn’t

The First Descendant is developed by online game veterans from Nexon Games, a South Korean studio. They’re responsible for titles like Maple Story, and Mabinogi. If you haven’t heard of those, that’s because they were initially made for a South Korean or Asian audience.

Still, The First Descendant is somewhat of a new horizon for Nexon Games, especially with the large Western appeal that it currently enjoys.

The First Descendant is a sci-fi and post-apocalyptic title where you control the titular Descendants. They are humanity’s last bastion of hope against the Vulgus and the Colossi, invaders from another dimension. The story in the game’s current timeline is a race for an artifact that grants infinite energy, which the Vulgus want in order to complete their conquest.

Yet, none of this matters. You’ll start to zone out a few hours within the game after listening to The First Descendant’s clunky exposition and forced storytelling. To be fair, that’s fairly standard for looter shooters. Still, The First Descendant’s story is neither interesting nor original, and as a context, it barely holds the lore together.

If The First Descendant‘s graphics wasn’t so good, there wouldn’t be any incentive to watch the cutscenes.

Gameplay & Gunplay Do the Heavy Lifting

The First Descendant‘s strength (apart from its graphics) lies in its moment-to-moment gameplay and the overall game structure. You drop into either large maps and search for activities while running and gunning with other players or team up with others in dungeon-based boss fights and arenas. There’s no PvP here, which might limit your options.

Multiplayer is only co-op, and The First Descendant plays well with its strengths. Such is the case since it copied half of its DNA from Warframe. From missions, you collect components and craft the weapons and Descendants you want through an RNG reward system. You then strengthen your new toys with similarly gained loot and powerups. It’s a hypnotic cycle.

At the same time, The Descendant splices that Warframe DNA with Destiny 2‘s frenetic and twitchy gunplay (minus the PvP part). The result is a fast-paced hybrid with multiple layers of action RPG systems despite the seemingly simple shooter facade.

Those two are the glue that holds The First Descendant together– and a pretty strong one too. The Descendants here are the class-like characters (similar to Warframes in Warframe), and each one of them offers differing playstyles.

It’s a compelling rabbit hole of variety. If you get bored of one Descendant, you can always try out another. Refreshingly, changing Descendants can feel like you’re playing a new game every time. That system isn’t a well-oiled machine, however. The First Descendant is notoriously ‘low-effort’ in ushering you to its endgame, which is the meat of the game.

40-Hour Tutorial First, Fun Afterward

That sums up what I think the experience would be while you’re slogging through the main quest. The repetition would have been fine if they weren’t so predictable chores.

In the first few hours, The First Descendant makes a decent impression. Soon after getting through the first three regions, you begin to realize that you’re doing the same boring mission structures over and over again. The main quest also does a poor job of introducing you to the game’s most game-changing action RPG mechanics– the tutorials for which are hidden in the side quests!

The mandatory main quest is a jumble of semi-open-world missions, and dungeon boss fights with the occasional cutscene after finishing a whole region, none of which are rewarding. That said, I had to force myself to finish the main quest. This was the only way I could unlock the game’s Hard mode, which gave me more resources and let me do the missions I wanted to progress.

Prior to that, you have to suffer through the 40-hour noob boot camp even if you’ve already grasped the general gameplay after the first 5-10 hours. Everything is a copy of the previous stuff you did. In a rather poetic meta-narrative moment, The First Descendant even keeps throwing bosses named “Greg” at you (Greg clones included), as though to rub it in.

They Copied Even the Wrong Answers

I had hoped that The First Descendant would break free from the outdated action RPG mold of monotonous early to mid-game sections and uninspired main quests. However, even The First Descendant copied one of its competitors’ shortcomings.

You see, in Warframe, you’d have to go through dozens, if not hundreds of repeated, predictable missions. All that to unlock its endgame and its latest content. The First Descendant modeled its progression after that.

However, Warframe is a decade old. It’s filled with archaic systems and mechanics that even its developers are aware of and are starting to change gradually. The First Descendant copied the exact outdated progression Warframe started fixing years ago.

It’s only fair to expect something more or something different from a 2024 game, but instead, The First Descendant mired itself in an old progression system and dragged its players along. The silver lining is that you only have to go through this forced monotony once.

All the ARPG Goodies are Back-Loaded

As I said earlier, The First Descendant (or looter shooters, in general) is akin to a treadmill. It’s exciting at first, but eventually, the reward is only there once you’ve put in the work and invested your patience and perseverance.

Once you get to the endgame, the action is faster-paced, and your time is better spent there. You’ll get more drops for crafting, and the game will open up more rewarding content. More importantly, you’re not forcibly funneled through monotonous missions. You have more freedom in how you approach the game for progress.

The First Descendant‘s endgame and boss fight loops are a fitting payoff once you’ve gotten through the main quest or story. Similarly, weapon and Descendant min-maxing can be just as engaging even with all the grind. Speaking of which…

You Grind or You Pay

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t spoiled by Warframe’s generous monetization, which allows you to earn premium currency in-game through player trading. That’s why The First Descendant’s monetization scheme leaves a bad taste for me. It’s worth a warning and a deduction in its overall score.

The prices are quite exorbitant, be it from cosmetics to gameplay-boosting enhancements. Yes, the game doesn’t force you to pay for anything. Also, it still has to earn money, of course. But the monetization is quite obviously modeled around player frustration.

Drop rates for the items you grind are low and chaotic. Hence, if your grind becomes miserable enough, you might feel emotionally compelled to skip it by just buying that Ultimate Descendant with real money or just buying multiple Catalysts or Activators to make your gear stronger right away so you can actually play instead of doing ‘work’ in-game.

Regardless, you either grind or purchase in The First Descendant. There’s no middle ground, unlike the player-run trading economy in Warframe. That’s not a bad suggestion, considering The First Descendant already copied some of the bad parts in Warframe. Why not copy the good parts?

On a more positive note, despite the high prices on the in-game store, the game won’t push it in your face, unlike other online titles. You can earn every gameplay-enhancing material or Descendant without spending anything. It’s not pay-to-win. Just don’t expect to get through that grind without frustration and wasted days.

The only stuff you can’t grind for is the cosmetics (minus the Battle Pass rewards).

It’s Pretty, Pretty Pricey Too

If you’re into fashion as an endgame (like I am), look somewhere else. The game’s fashion system is an expensive– but alluring bait. The Dye and skin customization system is awful since you need to purchase individual colors (dyes) for each skin. Even worse, your dyes get locked to each skin upon use. So, you have to buy multiple copies of dyes if you have lots of skins.

Moreover, you can’t customize default skins even with your hard-earned dyes. It’s a system that discourages creativity and spending on fashion, similar to games like Black Desert Online, where almost every element of aesthetic customization is nickeled-and-dimed.

In The First Descendant, aesthetic customization is a luxury. That’s ironic, considering one of its strengths is its pretty character design and graphics.

A Clone That Could Be More

For all its faults, there are many other ways you can enjoy The First Descendant. The core gameplay loop should be enough to keep both new and old looter shooter fans sated until the developers reinforce it with seasonal content.

The First Descendant holds much promise, especially once it starts showing what more it can do after borrowing from both Warfame and Destiny 2. Already, The First Descendant’s boss fights are somewhat more engaging than Warframe’s old bosses.

The First Descendant already has the bones to become something more or something better. It’s fun for what it is right now, thanks to its two chief inspirations. But it’s going to need to improve on several aspects and either introduce its own thing or borrow the fundamentals of what worked for others instead of copying them at face value.

But even if it doesn’t, The First Descendant is free and, more importantly, fun once you’ve endured its shallow and low-effort early-game.