REVIEW: ‘The First Descendant’ Is A Pale Imitation (XSX)

The First Descendant is a new free-to-play third-person looter shooter published and developed by Nexon. It puts players in control of descendants, warriors tasked with defending the last remnants of humanity. To do so players unlock different descendants with unique ability kits, equip dozens of guns, and complete missions with others to fight back. If that sounds familiar, there is good reason, as The First Descendant is intently derivative of established titles in the genre. Unfortunately, it is also much worse than the titles it replicates.

When players first start The First Descendant, they are subjected to a lore introduction that sets a loose framework for the game’s action. It is an extremely loose framework, doing the bare minimum to establish a generic setting.

The introduction explains that humans thrived on the planet of Ingris for countless years before interdimensional portals opened suddenly one day and the planet was swarmed by massive creatures known as Colossi and a malevolent faction known as the Vulgus. The First Descendant does very little to build upon this foundation of its lore, and what it does do is so toothless and predictable as to be almost imperceptible.

However, the First Descendant’s story is hardly its main attraction, so its poor quality would be easily ignored if the rest of the game surrounding it was worth playing. The game’s structure splits up its content into regions of a map. Each larger region is sequestered into three or four ordered smaller open areas that have a few missions available on them.

Players are sent to a region where they talk to a character completely void of personality that explains some meaningless plot device to “motivate” the player’s actions in the region. It usually is something like another descendant infiltrating a Vulgus base or searching for something.

With that, the player is sent out into the first area of the region, where they run through a few missions there. Each one takes approximately five minutes and is some variation of standing in an area waiting for enemies to spawn in to be killed. You could be defending some technological thing, destroying some resource, or even just killing all the enemies in an area.

Regardless of the structure, each mission is a brainless exercise thanks to the braindead AI powering each enemy. They are so poorly programmed that each wave spawns in the run straight at the players or objective, allowing them to be easily picked off before they even shoot a single time, even in the latest available regions.

After wrapping up the missions, the player travels to the next area for another small dollop of hollow plot before repeating the sequence. After finishing each area in the region, the player unlocks a final mission that functions similarly to a dungeon. These dungeons also exhibit a complete lack of creativity or challenging game design.

They are all just lengthy spruced-up hallways of enemies that even first-time groups sprint through like a Destiny 2 fireteam flying through a base dungeon for the ten-hundredth time. Even the bosses at the end of the dungeons are copy-pastes of one another that employ the same couple of boringly simplistic mechanics, like shooting little balloons floating behind them to lower their shields before shooting them.

One of The First Descendant‘s other flagship features is the Colossi fights. These fights are a matchmade activity that drops a group of players into a nondescript arena to face off against a giant boss. Each boss has a simple rotation of attacks for players to navigate and weak points that flash and can be targeted to break them and get rid of one attack in the rotation.

Doing so requires players to target the area enough to loosen it and then use their grapple hook to hang onto the piece and strike it with melee attacks until it is broken. It is a theoretically interesting foil, but the bosses are so simplistic that doing so wastes time. It is almost universally better to just spend the time laying into the boss with a gun instead.

A similar problem arises in the design of the titular descendants. At the start of the game, players can pick from one of three descendants before later unlocking up to twenty through grinding out resources to research them. Each descendant comes with a unique personality, appearance, and four abilities to use on the battlefield. However, enemies die from gunfire so quickly that there is no real need to use any of the abilities. This is exacerbated by how descendant kits lack any real synergy or cohesive design that makes using their abilities feel particularly satisfying or impactful.

Perhaps what makes the lack of quality or ingenuity in the gameplay of The First Descendant sting all the more is how comprehensive its monetization scheme is immediately at launch. There is very little in The First Descendant that is not for sale. Players can purchase characters, costumes, boosters, weapons, a battle pass, level skips, and more from an in-game store.

While the prices are not exorbitant, they are exactly what one would expect at this point. Items are sold for a premium currency at intervals slightly higher than items in the store to ensure that purchasers always have just a little left to encourage further spending. Cosmetic items completely diverge from the visual design of the game’s world, allowing players to equip massive mascot panda heads and French maid costumes. The visual design of the game is generic enough for this to not feel terrible, but it does belie where the designers’ priorities are right from launch.

From better versions of characters available for a premium to its ammo types and generic, clean science-fiction setting, there is little about The First Descendant that feels original. Every element feels like a cheap facsimile of the successes of other loot-based games without understanding what makes those systems work in their original contexts. This leaves The First Descendant feeling like an online shop with the imitation of a game built around it, with gameplay and mechanics relegated to second thoughts at best.

The First Descendant is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.