In The First Descendant, Nexon’s new heist shooter, each character has their own set of skills and tricks. Bunny, the first one you can unlock, must keep moving to charge up her electricity, which she can then use to fire off attacks. She does more damage the faster she runs, so you barely fire your weapon, relying on her area of effect pulse ability. It’s a perfect summary of the kind of playstyle the game encourages. Run past enemies, through levels, away from your teammates – go fast and go as far as you can to get to the good stuff. The problem is that there aren’t enough good things to justify spending time or money on the bad.
Loot shooters have a bad reputation for being too tough, but when the core gameplay is satisfying, that’s not a problem. Unfortunately, The First Descendant’s missions are repetitive, its weapons lack any sense of uniqueness, its story is dull, and the Descendants themselves, while looking cool and quite different from each other, only have four abilities each which barely change as you progress. It’s all well and good to create an experience around overpowered late game builds, but players need a reason to want to use those builds.
Every combat zone in the game follows the same structure. You talk to a Descendant stationed at an outpost, then go and do some missions. These are all variations of killing enemies in an area, destroying generators, collecting orbs, or escorting a payload. It gets repetitive quickly, especially when you’re trying to rush to the endgame where all the best equipment and builds are limited. This is a live service game, so things will change over time and more mission types and abilities may be added, but as it stands now, these features are missing.
Even with repeated goals, exciting combat can save a game like this, but it quickly becomes boring. A descendant’s abilities grow as they do, but all that seems to happen is that they do more damage or last a bit longer; there’s no tangible progression because the enemies also get stronger, so at best you’re a little ahead and you’re shooting everything, able to clear missions faster, and at worst you have to retry one . The missions are challenging if you do them alone, so teamwork is encouraged, but again, the main difference here is the speed at which you move through the content.
It doesn’t help that the guns don’t feel that different from each other either. Sure, pistols and sniper rifles fire slower than SMGs and machine guns, but blast the enemy long enough and they go down, so who cares what you use to do it?
The only way to feel any sense of progress is to unlock a new Descendant, but then you either have to rip specific missions and buy materials to research them, or pay to unlock them outright. Even if you enjoy the gameplay, you have to wait an incredible number of hours in real life to research the weapons and descendants you collect materials for. The worst part is that the price to speed up the timer is the same as buying Descendant outright in the first place, so if you’re going to spend the 16 hours it takes to quest, you might as well buy them and pass them all. so is the mission.
The lack of build diversity caused by the four skills each Descendant is locked into only reinforces the feeling of stagnation. It’s a cruel design that encourages players to buy all of the Descendants so they feel like they have access to variety, but the scantily clad sexy characters sell. Spending a few quid on a new hero or skin isn’t a big deal, but when they get boring after a day and you buy another one, then repeat the cycle, the money adds up fast.
All of this would be irritating but passable if the story was engaging, but it isn’t. It’s your standard doomsday fare. Humanity is at war with a race called the Vulgus, and their scenes are the most interesting aspect of the plot. The Vulgus leaders have great character designs and different motivations, so the drama and spectacle they provide is great, but you only get one scene per combat area, right at the end. Can you spot the theme running throughout this game yet? The good parts only come after you get through the repetitive stuff as quickly as possible.
By far the best part of the First Descendant is Colossians. These are giant robotic creatures that enter the world through some sort of dimensional wall – think kaiju on Pacific Rim. They are challenging, look incredible and require teamwork to pull off. More of these and less of the others would greatly improve the overall experience, but they’re only accessible after completing specific missions, further encouraging you to rush through the base game to get them.
The only thing that makes fighting tolerable is playing with friends. Everything is so dizzying that you can go on autopilot while talking. Unfortunately, the only gain is higher DPS and better coordination against some of the higher level bosses and colossi. It also highlights a huge missed opportunity. Elemental abilities and successors do not merge at all. Why don’t Valby’s water abilities make Bunny’s electricity do more damage, or make Viessa’s ice powers freeze longer? Because then you’ll have to think instead of just speeding through everything as fast as you can. Hopefully this is something that will be expanded upon as development continues, because it could become a very interesting system that encourages teams to use different combinations of Descendants.
CONCLUSION
Destiny is great, but it has an extremely satisfying gameplay loop and a rich story. Outriders doesn’t have the best plot or visuals, but each class has a wide variety of powers that come together brilliantly, meaning each build is unique to how you want to play, and the fight is worth it for its own sake . The First Descendant has the standout Colossus battles, but everything leading up to them is so tedious that it doesn’t justify the time or monetary investment you’ll have to spend to enjoy them. It’s the gaming equivalent of playing with a fidget spinner while on a Discord call – something to keep your hands busy while you catch up. It’s a game designed to make you pay to skip it, not to play it, so what’s the point?