The First Descendant Review - Slave to the Grind
The First Descendant, a grand new free-to-play PvE shooter from Nexon has landed and lived for a couple of weeks now. It has attracted millions of players and by all accounts is a huge success for publisher Nexon. It features an array of great (if a little sexualised) characters, cool powers, more loot than you can poke a stick at and some great mechanics. But I am torn. All of these things make the good times great, but one major problem is hanging over The First Descendant, a devil in the background manipulating players and progression. That demon is monetisation and its shadow looms over every part of the game. But does it matter?
Well, sort of.
The game starts in a fairly safe manner. Players get to choose from one of three heroes (called Descendants) each with their own set of special abilities and elemental power. They are then thrust into the action to try and locate an Ironheart, some sort of McGuffin that will save humanity from the nasty Vulgis, an invading species from god knows where. From here players will run through a fairly stock standard sci/fi tale that neither excites nor disappoints, it simply exists to give people a narrative excuse to run around shooting things. Players progress through a range of different environments, each progressively harder than the last, tackling a range of activities, missions and sidequests as they level up, get better gear and basically revel in the chaos.
Because it is chaos, joyful chaos. I actually love the moment-to-moment. What the First Descendant does well is link players with each other. You join others in missions, everything is better with a group and powers often complement each other. It really feels like a community of people all working towards the same goal. There have been some problems with AFK gear farming (which Nexon is cracking down on) but for the most part, the community seems really invested in helping each other out and that improves the game immensely. Everything is designed to be played in a group and the game does everything in its power to make sure that happens. It does this better than either Warframe or Destiny and is something the development team should hang their hat on.
Every now and then players will get the chance to battle a giant Colossi, some sort of invading beast that is literally multiple stories high. These battles are the game at its best. Players running around everywhere, shooting parts off the enemy, and saving each other while dodging attacks. It is a thing of beauty. But, no matter how good these battles are, they do get old when you have to complete them over and over again to unlock new Descendants and gear. The gear system is quite similar to Warframe in that players need to grab certain gear to fulfil a blueprint and then research that blueprint to unlock something new. It leads to a big old grind. Players will need to repeat missions and battles over and over again to unlock new toys and it becomes a monotonous blur after a while.
Of course, you can spend some real-world coin to grab what you want without all the hard work, but here all the old tricks are in play. In-game currency can only be bought in lots that are slightly less or excessively over the cost of a new Descendant, The season pass moves pretty darn slow (I have been playing for about 40 hours and am only at level 30) and bundles are overpriced. It is like Nexon has ticked off every checkbox in the “Gouging Your Players” guide book and it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
That said, if you are enjoying your starting Descendant (or Bunny, another Descendant you will get access to early on) then there is quite a lot of game to get through before you need to worry about any of that. I would say I got a good 25 hours of fun before the monetisation became an issue for me and for a free-to-play game that is quite a lot of fun to be had at zero cost. The range of missions keeps things reasonably fresh for the entire length of the story and as I said, every time you face a new Colossi for the first time it is something special. It all adds up to a chunk of content that can be enjoyed without any need to spend a single cent.
On the tech side of things, the game looks great, has some cool character and enemy design and sounds fantastic. The network code, while a little rough in the early days, seems to be pretty rock solid now and crossplay between consoles and PC works perfectly. The game runs well on a range of systems and I had no problems on my high-end gaming rig, my lesser laptop or even my ROG Ally, so almost everyone on the PC side of things should have a good chance of it running well. This is a well-put-together game, have no doubt.
In the end, though there is just no escaping the monetisation cloud that hangs over everything. I just wish there was an option to buy a few Descendants and weapons that felt fair, but as it is, everything seems designed to bleed players, not reward them and that is by far the game’s biggest sin. Had they got the monetisation right, I feel like The First Descendant could have challenged the likes of Destiny for the crown, especially as it grows and adapts (as these sort of games inevitably do) but as it is I think it is safe to assume it is going to lose a lot of players as they come up against the paywall.
The First Descendant is a good game held back by aggressive business practices but it is still worth checking out, especially if you are looking for some community shooting fun. There is quite a bit of content to get through before the need to spend becomes paramount and the moment-to-moment is genuinely enjoyable. Hopefully, Nexon gets the message from the community and adjusts its practices, because if they do, I will be back for more of this community-focused fun for sure.
But as it is, as the game currently stands… I am done.
The First Descendant was reviewed on PC. The Reviewer purchased the Season Pass for the purposes of this review.
