The First Descendant – Review

Are you ready to jump into a world that’s part Destiny and part Warframe? Cause, if you are or are just curious, read on dear reader as we talk about The First Descendant.

The First Descendant is the latest game released by Nexonof, a sci-fi free-to-play, looter-shooter with its inspiration worn very clearly on its sleeve. During my opening hours with The First Descendant, I found myself continuously seeing parallels between Destiny and Warframe. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing or at all to be negative as the pieces they’ve used from both are personally some of the best features of each game blended together.

The game starts with you picking one of three heroes (Ajax. Viessa and Lepic) to join a fourth hero (Bunny) as you attempt to claim an item called The Iron Heart. Naturally, things go wrong and the big bad and leader of the Vulgus (the enemy and alien faction) sends his troops in to stop you before claiming it for himself, culminating in him leaving you to deal with a now awoken colossus. All of this serves as your tutorial to the game for its core gameplay from movement to combat, especially with a colossus to take down at the end which you will be required to fight during specific story points to continue your progress.

Now I’ll admit, while the story was interesting to listen to and play through, I can’t honestly say it stuck with me. There were some fantastic moments and twists along the way (one of which I was quite happy to see the outcome of) yet the core story was a fairly typical “you are special due to reasons go fight and stop the big bad doing the bad thing”. I’m aware that makes me sound like I didn’t enjoy it, but this is far from the case. The plot just didn’t stick with me.

The main meat of The First Descendant is the gameplay. It feels like it’s heavily inspired by Warframe. Each Descendant has their own set of four usable skills and one passive skill, along with each character being one of the five element types; Electric, Fire, Toxic, Frost and Non-Elemental.

As you use your skills and guns you will find many (oh so many) mod cards to further bolster your weaponry and descendants. This allows you to create a build that suits your playstyle, whether that’s building a defence-heavy gun user or a high-skill attack user and everything in between. Your mods are your key to achieving this.

Since we’re still in the Warframe comparison, you will also be met with grinding for materials for quite a wide range of things. Standard materials upgrade mod cards, others are for building ultimate guns (that all have special passives) and descendants, without forgetting to mention the amorphous materials, that act very similar to void relics from Warframe and have specific loot pools when you crack one open.

Phew that was a lot of comparison, but it doesn’t stop there, as now we’ll deviate into where the Destiny ones begin. Firstly the guns.

Unlike Warframe, where every gun needs to be crafted, that is not the case here. Nearly all guns (apart from the previously mentioned Ultimates), will drop from enemies and missions that you complete. Each gun of the same name will act the same way but will drop with different passive perks such as extra firearm attack or higher reload speeds. Actually, in that sense, the weapons feel more like Borderlands with the different skills that can drop.

Opposed to Warframe’s Orbiter hub and mission-based structure, The First Descendant follows closer to Destiny’s formula with different mission areas called Battlegrounds. These are semi-open world zones where you can fast-travel between them. While inside these areas, you can start missions or join anyone who is currently running the mission seamlessly, either by activating the mission start point or shooting something within the mission itself.

The missions range from defending a “thing” to collecting “things” and even murderising many “things“, but that’s not all. There are also mission types called operations that are in essence dungeons, complete with a boss at the end and mechanics during the mission and boss, akin to Destiny’s Strikes and yet better rewards can be found even doing low-level ones to collect blueprints for guns/descendants and mod cards that can be dropped here.

Visually, The First Descendant is stunning and arguably rivals games that are in the triple-A game sphere. Every gun has a unique look. The enemy designs, while not overly varied, are again all unique. Even with waves of enemies charging at you and various particle effects from skills and guns popping off, I couldn’t notice any visual dips or lag. The designs of the descendants are also gorgeous and I’m not just talking about Ultimate Bunny’s outfit!

The soundtrack and general sound design are also top-tier. The heavier music that starts playing during combat encounters pumps up the tension then swaps back to a more peaceful ambient set of tunes of which some almost sound like they are from Metroid Prime.

Despite the game being in its infancy as of writing, there is a plethora of content to sink your teeth into. Whether farming for a specific character, battling your way through hard mode for new gear or even helping your friends get through the game and farming in a team, there is a lot to conquer and master.

Just like Warframe, each weapon and character has a proficiency bar to max out that will increase your overall mastery rank for bonus inventory space and mod capacity. The Devs have announced that the game will run on a three-month season system, which will have a battlepass, and each season will bring new content, guns, story and characters. At the time of writing, they have already shown a roadmap for what to expect up to and including season two, and I’m solidly locked in and ready for the ride.

For me, The First Descendant came out of nowhere and my initial impression before playing, was that it was going to be a Warframe rip-off, but it is so much more.

If you are a fan of looter shooters and playing games with friends, then I completely recommend this game. And if you don’t like them, well, you’ve not lost any money due to it being free (although warning you may lose hours into it if like me you really vibed with it).

To make the deal even sweeter, if you have friends on different systems, it’s fully cross-play between systems. The First Descendant is an incredible feat of gameplay, world-building, and sound design. The devs seemingly know exactly what they are doing and listen to fan feedback as they have made many quality-of-life changes since launch. So, let’s hope they keep this momentum.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some blueprints to grind for…