A chance at Destiny.
Developed by Nexon Games Co. Ltd, The First Descendant is a free-to-play hero shooter draped in similar fabrics to that of Destiny, Warframe, Outriders, and more. It may not come to the table with terribly original ideas, but it conveys what is there into one gorgeous and entertaining package. As humanity is on the ropes, a collective of attractive super-powered individuals is all that stand in the way of their complete annihilation.
Part of what makes a successful live service game is in the gameplay loop. This can come in the form of several different mechanics and systems. Is the shooting fun? Are the missions enjoyable? Are we fighting interesting threats? Is the loot satisfying? Are the characters and story memorable? Does the monetization come across as being too predatory? Thankfully, The First Descendant handles much of this well with few complaints across the board. While I'll dive into its monetization shortly, it's not nearly as dire as the clickbait-crazed YouTubers will have you believe.
The First Descendant is about humanity embracing the destiny that has been left to them by their predecessors, the Ancestors. This has allowed key individuals to be blessed and become Descendants. Meanwhile, an alien race, The Vulgus, has invaded and engulfed the planet in war. Humanity had been in a losing battle, but their alliance with the Magister's has allowed them to fight back, all due to a pact to allow the Magister's access to the Ironheart, a device of great power that is sought after by both the Descendants and Karel, the leader of the Vulgus.
To fight back Karel’s forces, you'll have a total of 14 currently available Descendants to level up, equip, and tinker around with to min-max their stats and abilities. During my 50+ hours, and only spending money to purchase the battle pass and one costume, I was able to unlock three characters in addition to a Viessa, a cold-equipped Descendant who I began the game with. Shortly into the story, you'll be able to unlock Bunny as her drops are story-driven and practically provided to you. After that, I unlocked Freyna with little to no problem, and eventually, Sharen, each of which only required a few hours of grinding away missions as the bulk of their drops came easily enough. Now, that said, I have two items left to craft for Valby, and one for Blair, with likely more to come in the future.
The current offering for Descendants are the following; Bunny, Gley, Freyna, Sharen, Blair, Jayber, Lepic, Viessa, Ajax, Valby, Kyle, Yuijin, Enzo, and Esiemo, with Viessa, Gley, Lepic, Bunny, and Ajax having what are referred to as ultimate forms. These variants have boosted stats and just look incredible. Each Descendant does feature in the story to some degree, with some having more screen time than others. I’m not exactly sure why there can be multiple of them at once like having Bunny interacting with Bunny in the story, but it seems doable and isn’t really brought up why you can just change into them on a whim.
The First Descendant’s monetization is handled across a few avenues of content. There are items that are only able to be purchased, such as costumes, accessories, and hairstyles, and the Descendants themselves both in their original forms and the few that have an ultimate version. Now, you can skip the line with the latter and spend money to immediately get them, such as spending a steep $70 CAD on enough Caliber crystals to then buy one of those ultimate variants, or more, should you purchase them in a bundle alongside various items and materials. However, that said, you can find the means to grind those materials and earn them without spending a single dollar. Yes, it will take a very long time as you repeat some missions dozens upon dozens of times, hoping for the 2% drop, but the option to skip ahead to the result is one available to you, should you feel the financial investment is worth it.
Outfits are priced anywhere from around 125 Caliber (which has a minimum bundle of 250 for $6.99 CAD) to 750 Calibur, making the more costly outfits to be around $21 CAD each. These come in a variety of rarities, each with its own baseline cost of crystals. Hairstyles, makeup, and other accessories are there as well, with many options also available through the battle pass. While hairstyles can shake up a character’s look, the makeup doesn’t make much sense given you rarely see your character’s face away from cutscenes, which cannot be viewed again anyway. The store is also filled with a ton of convenience items as well, but I never found a need or desire to spend more than I already had, which is about $20 so far. Would I spend $70 on an ultimate Descendant? Heaven's no, it's simply not worth it for me. Would I grind away to earn one? Probably. Am I fine with my normal version of Viessa? Absolutely.
At the start of the game, you'll choose from Viessa, Ajax, or Lepic, and begin your search for the Ironheart, an ancient device that is said to be humanity's salvation. As towering creatures called Collosi are leading an onslaught to eliminate the human forces present in the city of Albion, the Ironhearts are the only way to close off the wall and stop their attack for good. However, during your procurement of the first Ironheart, the mission goes sideways. Bunny is nearly killed, the Ironheart taken, and the only good to come from this botched operation is the discovery of an AI called the Guide, an individual who might be humanity's last hope.
However, when you return to Albion, not all of your forces are sold on this Guide. In fact, a few Descendants are unable to even communicate with them. This leads to mistrust between the ranks, unsure if this Guide is an enemy trick to hand over the remaining Ironhearts or that their intentions are indeed honorable. While the story is not anything we haven't seen before with much of it written around a Macguffin, it does have some strong moments with a few twists that work well. There are certainly some predictable moments, but the few cutscenes you'll engage with are wildly entertaining, it's just a shame you only get to see them once, even if you replay the mission with a friend. The fact there isn't a cutscene gallery among its menus is drastically disappointing.
Live service games have a history of having largely disposable narratives. This is due to the rinse-and-repeat nature of its gameplay. In fact, I have a friend who I have played a good portion of this game with who plays with someone else the rest of the time who forces them to skip every cutscene in order to keep the pace going. These are players that are simply there for the gameplay and the rewards and will burn through the game to get them.
Most stories in the genre revolve around humanity on the brink of extinction and a big bad that needs to be taken out. And for its part, The First Descendant has a fairly enjoyable tale to tell, it's just not something you'll be remembering a few weeks later or even once the credits have rolled. However, what does pay off are the side stories for each of the cast, or at least what is available of those. While more will be released as time goes on, Bunny is the first and only Descendant to have theirs available. This story revolves around her parents as she is given a mission to undertake that allows her to gain more information about what happened to them.
The main story wraps up at the end of the normal playthrough. While hard mode will unlock at the completion of it, it is not so much a continuation as you're simply replaying the same content but at level 100. While games like Granblue Fantasy Relink continued its story into its own hard mode, that isn’t the case here at all. That said, there are new bosses to take in via the intercept missions, but at the time of this writing, there are only 16 in total, with a 17th one showing up in the loading screens (and the image header at the top of this review) but isn’t available as of yet. However, based on the road map provided by Nexon, more intercept missions are on their way.
The First Descendant is split up across eight environments, each being an open zone biome to explore. From swamps to deserts to a frozen wilderness, there is a lot to explore. Each area has a set number of missions and dungeons, the latter of which offer matchmaking to have players join you. Dungeons feel like Destiny strikes with a few later on that have light raid elements, such as platforming challenges and various other obstacles. The standard missions presented across each location are bite-sized encounters that have you defending static locations on the map, to retrieving objects dropped by enemy forces to then place at a receptacle. These missions are only a few minutes long and often are based around killing a few waves of enemy forces.
Where they are well designed comes in the form of how other players can simply join in by injecting themselves into the mission by either interacting with the mission marker or by just shooting any enemy involved in the mission. It's possible to also join a mission as it is wrapping up and just earn the rewards for the few seconds you were part of something. This is especially great if it is the mission where you have to platform jump to collect 50+ objects scattered about; I hate that mission. Other missions benefit from other players, such as following a drone around as the more players near the drone cause it to move faster. All said, while the missions are not original or memorable experiences, the ease of use of having players join them makes them quick and to the point, moving you along to the more engaging bits of content. I’ll also stress that having other players allows for synergies between their powers, causing more chaos to lead to more fun, and making them far more enjoyable as a result.
Once you have exhausted a location's missions and objectives, you'll take part in those intercept missions I mentioned before. These have you taking on a Collosi. These towering foes have armored plates to shoot off to expose their health. They'll also have moments of invincibility, as well as wide-range aoe attacks. With the right gear and the right team, you'll take them down during the ten-minute timer, but should you join and see a host of lower-level folk, then it’s truly up to god at that point. However, revisiting once impossible battles once you've greatly over-leveled them, will see you trounce them in seconds and grant a sense of revenge in the process. That said, the rewards are level-specific, so you'll likely just take them on to reap the Descendant-specific rewards, like materials to craft the likes of Valby, Enzo, and more.
What is interesting about these encounters is that in past trailers and brief glimpses at gameplay shown off years ago, these battles took place in actual environments and not the barren realms we currently engage with. Seeing the Dead Bride blasting away at you surrounded by trees and a rocky cliffside looked incredible. While the locations you fight them in have a series of pitfalls and obstacles of their own, they all tend to blend together and make for boring set dressing when compared to what could have been. It is likely this is a result of a technical issue or performance concerns for the battles to take place in highly detailed environments, and thus the need to simplify things. It's hard to say.
Each Descendant has their own range of powers and abilities. Lepic, who is a bit of a firestarter, can engulf his ammo in flames, setting his foe on fire. Sharen can lash out a series of blades, Freyna acts on her obsession with poison, while Gley can siphon health from her enemies. Each Descendant has four general abilities with a fifth passive one, such as Viessa creating a series of ice spheres that hover around her once conditions have been met. These spheres act as floating turrets as you move around in battle. These abilities then cause good team compositions as you’ll want to have certain characters in battle with you, such as Enzo, who can not only resupply ammo, but their passive grants fire support to nearby allies.
However, when it comes to weaponry, you'll share in the same toys across your unlocked characters unless you want to play it where Veissa would have a different kit than Blair or Lepic. Each character will have three weapon slots to fill. You'll pull from assault rifles, hand cannons, shotguns, sniper rifles, machine guns, submachine guns, and more. Guns all come in the same tiers of other live service games, but anything over Rare will need to be crafted. Unlike Destiny, where you have higher tier drop in raids and through other rewards, ultimate weapons in The First Descendant need to be crafted out of a range of materials.
Ultimate weapons can also be fused into one another as well to boost their power or have other appropriately leveled items used to have them then match your current level. So, get an extremely low weapon from the battle pass? Well, it is easy enough to feed a current-level weapon into it. This is a similar system used in hundreds of mobile games and it works extremely well here. The mechanic in place to constantly improve your weapons to min-max their ability level is pretty in-depth, especially as you can craft specific builds for each gun as well. This is done in the way of module cards that boost a variety of different aspects of your gun. From clip size to handling, to reload speed and more. This allows a lot of customization on a particular rifle, taking it from good to great to superb.
This same module system is also part of your Descendant as well. From boosting your defense to your shield, which can be supplemented further with equipment, to even how your special abilities and melee attacks function. There are dozens of modules and like the weapon system, you can fuse similar modules together as well to level each module up. This not only boosts the module's power but also increases its slot value, which determines how many modules you can equip to your weapon or your Descendant. And, if you want to invest into your weapon or Descendant even further, there are items used to increase your module capacity.
Abilities and gunplay factor greatly into gameplay as shooting and firing off your abilities is the bulk of the experience. Using your shield as Ajax to protect your allies as someone hauls ass over to revive a fallen comrade is just as important as distracting enemy forces with laying down some cover fire. While I do suggest tinkering with sensitivity settings to find your preferred balance, shooting feels impressively solid. While it doesn't quite stand up to something like The Division, it's still extremely satisfying to fire off the wealth of rifles available to you.
Since each Descendant is wildly different from another, there is a great sense of variety when jumping from one to the next. While there is a test chamber to test out abilities and refine your gameplay, I do wish there was a way to test new Descendants out, since you may want to know how they play before committing the time and resources to them. Still, having such a diverse cast of characters that genuinely play entirely differently from one another, apart from equipping the same guns to them, is a welcome addition to most live service games where most don't really offer completely different experiences from character to character, often relying solely on their gunplay.
The First Descendant also brings with a lot of great quality of life additions. When crafting or seeking out materials, it tells you exactly where to find them, the percentage most materials will drop, and can even assist in teleporting you to the nearest base camp. The “strikes” that I talked about earlier are called Infiltration Operations, and as each location has two of of them. Thankfully, there is a kiosk in Albion where you can simply matchmake into them, preventing the need of being on site to do so, removing a lot of travel time to track them down.
Apart from the main missions, intercept encounters, and the general story, you’ll also have special operations that take the form of wave-based battles. These offer up decent rewards, but you’ll need to clear each wave to get to a point where you can cash out. However, after each reward, the intensity and challenge increase. These can get incredibly hard, especially if a team member opts out at the reward checkpoint. While this normally wouldn’t be an issue, you cannot have another team member join while in-progress, making the mission harder as you have one or fewer teammates to assist.
The First Descendant is simply gorgeous, taking full advantage of Unreal Engine 5 and is all the better for it. Its environments are heavily detailed, stunning, and have top-tier lighting and effects, making for each of the locations present across the game to truly stand out. However, for as good as the game’s environments look, its cast is simply breathtaking. Nearly every character from the Descendants themselves to the secondary support characters in Albion, has beautiful character models that are wonderfully animated and designed. Each character stands unique and is further complimented with additional costumes, each of which can be re-colored using a series of one-off dyes. And from hairstyles, makeup, and additional accessories, customization allows these characters to be refreshed, even after using them for dozens of hours.
If there is one part of The First Descendant’s presentation that doesn’t soar high, it is the game’s audio, at least in one respect. Given the use of Unreal Engine 5, it’s a shame the studio didn’t go the extra mile for language-specific facial capture. This causes character’s lips to move to the game’s native language and not that of the english voice-over. This causes the game to have very noticeable lip-sync issues that are nowhere close to lining up. I love that much of the cast has a good chunk of recorded dialogue, but given the advancements in having tech pretty much do all that work for you, it’s a small blemish in an otherwise well-put-together experience.
The studio has big plans for this game with a road map to offer more characters, new battles, and more. Given the free-to-play nature of the game, it’s possible to play through the entire experience and unlock a solid chunk of the roster without spending a single dollar. While its monetization isn’t fantastic, it is structured to where it doesn’t interfere with the pacing and flow of actually playing the game. Free to play can often fall into the trap of forcing your hand to make any real progress, but I don’t find that here with how it’s implemented.
The First Descendant isn’t shying away from where it’s inspired. Destiny has been a called-out game by its fans and the studio and for good reason, it set the bar. Warframe as well has been a go-to for many in the live service catalog, and by using both as a base and creating something in between, it creates a game that while not terribly original, is an absolute blast to play. Each Descendant has a wealth of skills to make them stand out with a design and graphical fidelity to them that makes this one of the best looking games out there.
Developer - Nexon Games Co. Ltd. Publisher - Nexon. Released - July 2nd, 2024. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC. Rated - (M) Blood, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - The First Descendant is Free to Play and downloaded on a Xbox Series X.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.