The First Descendant played: Good, but can't compete with Destiny 2

Do you remember the beautiful trailer from the Summer Game Fest? The First Descendant looks fabulous in its final version, plays smoothly and gives you that “just one more mission” feeling. However, the game doesn't really stand out and seems too repetitive in the long run. If you like co-op looter shooters in the style of Warframe and Destiny and aren't averse to a third-person perspective, you might want to check this one out.

The First Descendant is good, but nothing special

Nexon has opted for a classic sci-fi scenario in The First Descendant. Right at the start, we can choose a descendant from three different classes and use them to save the world from nasty alien invaders. You have an ice mage who slows down enemies, a grenade expert with a lot of area damage, and a tank character. I chose the mage who weakens her opponents and then hits them when they can no longer move. Later, you can unlock or buy other playable characters. Skins, colors, a battle pass, but unfortunately also items that help you level up and make the gameplay more comfortable – XP boosts or inventory slots, for example.

So far, so unspectacular. There are a huge number of tasks to fight back the many different alien enemies. Areas with a few handfuls of missions that can last from 3 to 30 minutes keep you on your toes. The missions are often short and the next one already follows on from the previous one. The First Descendant never feels sluggish, only occasionally a bit monotonous if you complete many missions in a row. Kill a horde of enemies and then destroy a reactor is the motto of most missions. If that's not it, then you defend a point while the enemy sends troops onto the battlefield. Sometimes you swing through several rooms in a dungeon sequence in which you simply have to survive. The First Descendant rarely includes really exciting elements that break up these repetitive patterns. Playing through an entire evening therefore turned out to be rather tough for me.

You can explore the maps, but I couldn't find any secrets or other interesting discoveries there. It's noticeable that the FPS can drop as soon as several descendants are here. I noticed this clearly even with medium graphics settings. It's also questionable why you can't object to sharing your game data with third parties at the start of the game. But there are also some positive aspects that shouldn't go unmentioned. There are rewards after every battle – either from the mission or from enemies who drop some nice weapons or other improvements. You often get items with higher rarity levels and can improve something almost after every battle, or at least after every mission. That feels very rewarding. You also unlock your character's skills surprisingly quickly, as you can level up with wonderful ease here.

You also have a few options in combat. Your skills have a pleasantly short cooldown, but are limited by your available energy. So you still can't use them too often. In the case of the two classes that I tried out, the skills were strong and were able to get me out of tricky situations, but they still seem pretty simple. I would have hoped for a little more depth in the combat system through the skills. Perhaps the unlockable descendants have more to offer here. In return, you have many types of weapons to choose from. From revolvers to shotguns, machine guns to sniper rifles. You collect ammunition and “mana” from the ground. Only your lives regenerate automatically after a while. I rarely reached my limits with ammunition, and the energy for the skills ran out here and there. So a little resource management is called for.

Did I mention the grappling hook? Sure, you can also use a double jump. However, since this doesn't overcome gravity and let you cover long distances in the air, you can use the hook instead to become mobile. This lets you swing onto higher platforms, onto enemies, or past enemies. To live out the sci-fi fantasy, I would have preferred more advanced technology for increased mobility. So there's a catch, haha. Here and there, there are also small jumping passages where you have to dodge deadly laser beams or otherwise use skill to move forward. However, these never posed a challenge for me – and I'm really not good at these kind of skill exercises. In some places, a revival limit makes life a little more exciting.

The gunplay itself is solid, but the weapons don't feel as full as I would have liked. I would compare it more to Helldivers 2, it doesn't come close to Destiny 2. But other things are reminiscent of Bungie's shooter. For example, the types of ammunition, the structure of the inventory, the interaction window with NPCs, starting a mission by interacting with a beacon and the structure of the base with the diamond-shaped icons. Even something like that and the reactor looks exactly like a ghost and floats above your head when active. A little more identity through UI and other details would have done the game a lot of good – especially in the base, which had almost too many similarities to the tower for me. As a player, these similarities and the very transparent and simple pathfinding system made it very easy for me to find my way around The First Descendant.

A real eye-catcher with endgame ambitions?

Visually, The First Descendant has a lot to offer. When the setting sun makes the metallic, square alien plants appear in a magical light, the shooter even invites you to linger for a moment. An animation in which you are enclosed in a giant hand in order to reach a higher level for your inventory left me speechless for a moment because it just looked so cool. The shooter definitely scores plus points here.

The characters and the many areas also look great. Some of the big bosses, especially those from the Void Interception missions, are huge and impressive in battle with this concentrated mass. This is no comparison to the larger enemies in the story missions. No wonder, because this is also endgame content. You can play these on normal or hard difficulty and sometimes you have to take friends or strangers with you into battle, because you are not allowed to face these huge beasts, machines and dragons alone. This makes sense, because you can climb up to level 100 – the hardest endgame boss is level 130. Special missions are also unlocked as you play, which also have an extra hard mode.

Unfortunately, the story didn't really grab me. Good versus evil, humans versus aliens, war. We've seen that a lot before, but it seems to be just a framework. Something that gives meaning to your actions. It's not about shedding an emotional tear or listening to hours of monologues – although one or two NPCs chatted so much without stopping that I had to speed up the rather one-sided conversation by pressing the space bar. You can also skip the dialogues completely if you want – and you will. It's about shooting, leveling up and maybe jumping into the alien hordes with up to four friends in co-op. Especially at the beginning, you'll get through the story even faster this way and can proceed tactically together.

The First Descendant in the test – Conclusion

The First Descendant doesn't currently feel like it could become serious competition for the big representatives of the genre. Perhaps the game will surprise us with more endgame content that satisfies our looter shooter needs. So far, I've found the experience to be mixed. On the one hand, The First Descendant looks great and its fluid gameplay and quick supply of missions always manage to keep me in the game a little longer than planned. On the other hand, the quests quickly get boring because they always ask for the same thing. Since The First Descendant is free, you can't go wrong if you give the title a chance. At least grinding through the levels feels quick and fluid. You always have the feeling that you're making your descendant stronger and you can quickly test yourself through numerous builds.