The First Descendant Fails To Convince

In comes The First Descendant, the new free-to-play looter shooter from Nexon Games aiming to stake its place in the live service zeitgeist. Over the course of 45 minutes, I had the chance to go hands-on with the game and feel out if it indeed sets itself apart. And while there’s plenty to praise with The First Descedant’s aesthetic and content roadmap ambitions, the overall gameplay loop ultimately left me unconvinced if it’ll find an audience to resonate with.

A Sci-Fi World

In terms of gameplay, The First Descendant isn’t trying to do anything revolutionary, instead leveraging familiar systems and mechanics and marrying them to a grand sci-fi narrative. In this regard, Nexon makes an interesting pitch, with the aesthetics of the world, and in turn its character designs, visually striking. Environments are a visual treat with enough biodiversity between regions to keep things interesting. But it’s the individual character designs that truly draw the eye.

While I didn’t get to directly engage with any of the main story quests, the setup is seemingly ambitious, with main missions tied to individual descendants. It’s a decent enough hook, with 19 separate characters available at launch to play as. Time will tell if the quality of the storytelling ultimately comes together.

Treading Familiar Ground

Gameplay, however, is a completely separate discussion. In short, Nexon’s decision to design The First Descendant around systems from other established looter shooters ultimately makes the game look and play like less-than-inspired versions of better games.

Fans of MMOs, particularly Destiny, will be familiar with most of the core systems in place in The First Descendant. Gameplay starts in a social hub, where you can talk to in-game vendors and use in-game currencies to craft builds before heading off to the next encounter. There’s a wide array of weapons to choose from, 11 classes in total, with each corresponding to one of the 4 separate ammo types. There are also modules, chips you can use to tweak a character’s stats, adjust skills, weapon ranges, cooldowns, and more. And while it can feel a bit overwhelming to sort through several different menus, I’ve no doubt that initial progression will introduce players to these systems in a way that makes sense.

Once you’re ready to venture out in the world, you can choose from a number of encounters, each with a hard mode difficulty where you’re free to enable a number of modifiers to beef up the amount of challenge – and a chance for higher tier loot.

One of the two available during my demo were the Infiltration Operations, dungeons where you and your team clear out waves of enemies from room to room until you reach a final boss with some kind of simple yet engaging puzzle mechanic. The other were the Void Intercept Battles, a raid where you fight a difficult boss in a unique arena meant to challenge how well you’ve crafted your build.

If this is all sounding similar to other popular looter shooters it’s because it is, as Nexon’s mission is to marry the “fun of grinding” through dungeons and loot with creating competent builds that fit the playstyle of your chosen descendant.

Here is where the game truly stands out the most. Apart from the grappling hook, which can be hit or miss depending on your equipped module, each individual descendant has 5 different skills: one passive that will influence how the character plays, and 4 active skills that you can activate to either self-buff or deal damage to enemies. It’s enough of a standout, with cooldowns much shorter than games like Destiny (can you tell this is my looter touchstone?) and something closer to that of a hero shooter. When it comes to combat, choosing the right descendant for the encounter really does make all the difference. To my surprise, it was actually quite engaging.

Hands-On with the Descendant

Unfortunately, most of my praise ends here, as the overall feel of moment-to-moment gameplay once I got into an Infiltration Operation left me particularly underwhelmed. In short, shooting in The First Descendant just feels stiff and stale, with active skills acting as the one major saving grace.

In my time with the demo, I played as Valby, the plug-suit, space helmet, and bomber jacket-wearing character you may have seen from the recent trailer at this year’s Summer Game Fest. The primary role for Valby is dealing aquatic area-of-effect damage, either by activating jets to slick up the floor and causing status effect build-up, teleporting via puddle, and consequently dealing splash damage, or shooting a large bubble out of a launcher that pulls enemies in and causes continuous damage.

While I was only able to play through my mission solo, you can tell the levels are designed with a full team in mind, with each member of your party utilizing their own unique skills in tandem with yours. In that regard, I’ve no doubt playing with others can lead to a much more fulfilling experience.

My major concern, however, is that individual levels look like they play similarly to one another, with the bulk of the core gameplay loop revolving around running into the next room, fighting a horde of adds, and repeating until you get to the boss. Not to mention that a bulk of my experience was confined to an indoor setting, rendering my grapple hook useless as there was little verticality at my disposal to truly move around the space in any meaningful way. And without the fight modifier, there just isn’t any fun way to utilize what is otherwise one of the core staple mechanics.

Combat was even more concerning. Apart from the sound design of individual weapons, which I’ll admit was a particular highlight – each gun sounds incredible and powerful – shooting ultimately felt like a bland copy of games The First Descendant is inspired by. If it weren’t for the crunch of the hit marker sound effect, shooting at enemies would feel like I were aiming at walls, as most weapons left them largely unresponsive. It’s no surprise then that closing the gap for a melee attack was not only ineffective but borderline useless. Hopefully, Nexon is able to make meaningful tweaks here at full release.

The First Descendant has potential. It’s a new looter shooter that is not just free, but specifically averse to any pay-to-win systems and rich with a year’s worth of updates ready to go from the content roadmap post-launch. Not to mention its sci-fi story, accompanying aesthetics, and unique characters are enough to draw an initial audience. But the real test will come with how Nexon responds to level variety and making sure the moment-to-moment gameplay ultimately feels good. As of right now, sadly, I’m unconvinced.

You can check out all of our coverage from this year’s Summer Game Fest right here