I have lived through various looter shooters in my time. Borderlands, Destiny, Destiny 2, Warframe, and now: The First Descendant. I did not know too much about this game when it was recommended to me other than it was free. Free is always good, right?
Well after 40-50 hours of gameplay, I can tell you that it is not bad.
The First Descendant is not going to change your life. In any way. However, it gives off crazy Destiny/Warframe vibes that are borderline yoinked right from the games themselves. So much so that the devs even mention they will be changing some of the icons to not resemble those of the same nature.
Let's get this out of the way first. This game comes PACKED with insane monetization options. You do not HAVE to purchase a single thing to get ahead if you do not want to. You can simply grind. And grind. And grind some more. I did end up doing a single mission about 10 times in a row to get a blueprint needed to "research" a character. That sounds tedious but the mission itself was about 2-3 minutes long. Sure, it seems unnecessary, but I did end up getting valuable gear to help level me up at the same time and made the next few fights pretty easy. Character skins will run you 20+ dollars and materials are pretty dang close to that as well.
These free-to-play games will always have some sort of "please gimme your dollars" type catch because they are, well, free. So it makes sense. In my 50 or so hours, I spent a whopping ZERO dollars and still had a good time and never felt underpowered.
Story Time
Story is not the bread and butter here and I will be honest, most of the time I ended up skipping dialogue. This is meant to be fast paced and long monologues were preventing me from getting my numbers to the max. I wouldn't worry too much about the story anyway as from what I experienced it is sort of convoluted and basic. Again, they're not expecting you to be heavily invested in why you have these powers and why YOU are the ones to take down the bad boys.
Run And Gun
The First Descendant offers a variety of gameplay with its characters. When you start you can pick an initial "Descendant" who will be your main character for the first few hours of the game. I picked a lady with a few awesome Ice abilities and she was really fun to play. All the characters come equipped with a grappling hook that you can use to traverse the different areas of the map or to get around faster.
Over the course of my time, I unlocked 5 different characters to use. Each with their own abilities. That is typically the main difference between them. I rocked the same weapons and gear for the most part as I switched. There was a character that blasted lightning energy through enemies and she ran like the flash around the map, a guy that throws grenades, one that infects baddies with poison, and a support-type guy who gives you a shield. All pretty awesome I'd say but that is where I noticed the uniqueness ends. For me, with at least 4 out of the 5, I still played relatively the same. Run in, use an ability, run out, pew pew pew. Nothing innovative or spectacular. Using the abilities felt fun for sure but the offense based ones I used were "One icicle of damage" or "one poison AOE of damage" basically with most of them. Again, nothing crazy but it still ended up being fun.
You get tiered gear/weapons when you defeat enemies and, as with this genre, it becomes an inventory management system at some point where you are junking or selling a bunch of the same weapons just with lower number values. I will admit, this is my least favorite part about the games in this genre because it interrupts moving to the next mission or always slows people down in a group. It's part of it, I get that, I am just not a fan.
I did get excited when I found a gun I liked and I got it's higher level version though. It happens quite a bit, too, so you don't feel like you're stuck throwing wet paper towels at enemies for long periods of time.
Friendly Fire
A lot of my good times came with grouping up with my friends (when we could get it to work) and blasting through some of the dungeon type missions. They're usually 20 minutes are so and they are way more enjoyable with some buddies than randoms. The randoms I got teamed up with rarely went for enemy weak points and ran around doing nearly nothing until they died over and over. Maybe some bad luck, maybe not. Either way, snagging the loot at the end and getting something you've been looking for really keeps you going. As stated previously, I didn't mind doing certain missions over and over again. Mainly because I was with friends and partly because the gameplay itself is fun. You can also fight big ole bosses in a simulator type room. They have a gimmick of shooting pieces of armor as critical weak spots and then suffering through a crazy ultimate attack. They're fun and big so I definitely played through those a few times to get some materials.
Visually, TFD does have its share of stutters and weird tearing issues. I played originally on the Xbox Series S but noticed that my character would get extremely choppy and blurry at points and it just looked odd. It did not hinder the gameplay but it distracted me every time it happened. Once I switched the Playstation 5, that problem went away. That is when I realized the game itself looks pretty dang good. Character models look awesome and the weapons are pretty snazzy as well. Environments vary from deserts, to snowy hills, to ruins. I enjoyed looking at them while swinging from one open world mission to the next.
Those open world missions can be joined in progress or done solo, too. I will say, when grinding for an item, joining a mission in progress that normally takes 10 or so minutes and getting there RIGHT at the end and snagging my item, was always pretty funny and a relief.
Who Is This For?
If you like Destiny. If you like Warframe. This is definitely aimed at you. If you got a few hours to spare and want to jump into some action, this is for you. If you're not bothered by a "HEY BUY OUR FRENCH MAID SKIN FOR $30" this is for you.
Really, The First Descendant is a fun game thats slightly bogged down by repetitive gameplay loops and fast pass microtransactions. But in MY reality, it's meant to turn the brain off and let you shoot at aliens or robots for a bit. It won't hurt to give the game a go and I actually recommend you try it now that most of the bugs are ironed out. If you don't have anyone willing to hop in with you, there are plenty of people roaming around to matchmake with! Download this game for free and you won't regret the hours you put in.
The First Descendant is out now on PC, Playstation, and Xbox.
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