It’s been almost a year since we last played The First Descendant. Over this past year, I can’t tell you that there have been many significant looter shooters to hit the scene, but I will tell you that it’s hard to really stand out in the looter shooter genre these days. It’s easy to pick out games that have taken heavy inspiration from the most popular games in the genre like Destiny 2 and Borderlands. However, what surprised me about Nexon’s upcoming third-person looter-shooter The First Descendant is that it’s a game that’s so heavily derivative of some of the biggest stars of the genre, yet somehow Nexon managed to make a top-notch PvE experience out of it that’s worth playing.
Over the past week, The First Descendant opened a cross-play open beta test. Immediately, once the flood gates opened, players flocked to the test, which resulted in more than 70K concurrent players on Steam, pushing the game into the top 10 most played games. Now that the test has concluded, I’ve had some time to reflect on what I’ve played, and I can’t help but get excited for what’s to come.
Co-Op PvE Done Right
The First Descendant isn’t perfect by any means. The story revolves around your heroes, known as Descendants, as they attempt to find the Ironheart, a mystical technological marvel, so that they can end the war against the dangerous beings known as the Vulgus. It’s pretty standard as far as stories go, and the three starting characters, Lepic, Ajax, and Viessa, along with their teammate Bunny, are all kind of hokey. Each starting character fulfills a basic archetype. Ajax is a tank character with ample shielding abilities. Viessa is more akin to a crowd control character, utilizing ice powers to immobilize and debuff them. Finally, Lepic is your basic damage dealing soldier that harnesses the power of fire.
The abilities, and in some ways, the game in general, feels extremely similar to Outriders. The fire bullets, jumping charge attack, cold snap and shielding abilities show some remarkable similarities. It’s also very easy to look past this, as there are only so many ways to exercise elemental weaponry in the shooter genre, and I can’t imagine Nexon wants to reinvent the wheel here. The main point is, the skills synergize well for team play, and that’s predominantly where The First Descendant thrives. They do this with a very open questing experience, where players can jump in and join you as long as they’re in the area.
Instead of being locked down to specific quests by quest givers, the world of The First Descendant allows you to wander around and pick up quests in a non-linear format (for the most part). Obviously, there will be certain quests or prerequisites if you’re aiming to push the story along. However, in many cases, I would find a quest marker and activate it, or join in on someone else’s quests, and get rewarded by killing those naughty vulgus even if I happened to be in an area purely coincidentally.
As the kindly gentleman that I am, I’m always drawn to support classes, and I was happy to take on the protector role by selecting Ajax, who has shielding and control abilities that are well suited for team play, but also work well when adventuring alone. As a large hulking robot-looking person, it was easy for other players to determine my skill set. Due to my shielding abilities, other Descendants congregated around me, especially during invasions where enemies would appear out of nowhere. Somehow, co-op began to flow smoothly, and no matter how many different players I ended up fighting besides, we all would benefit, and nothing felt strained like any of us went out of our way to make these interactions happen.
Build a Better Descendant
After the tutorial, I was introduced to the main hub where I started to amass a wealth of information related to upgrading my Descendant. There are a lot of ways to increase your power, which includes slotting Descendant Modules, weapon mods and other components which will increase your strength and grant you additional unique abilities. There were also robust visual customization options like new Descendant skins, UI themes, weapon skins, nameplates and more. The customization also gave me a glimpse into what The First Descendant’s cash shop might look like, as there were several in-game shops that provided Descendant skins, paints, and weapon skins for different currencies that will undoubtedly be cash-only in the future.
I did spend some time customizing my character, but a looter shooter is nothing without some great loot, and that’s where the modification system comes in. Early on, I found an epic reactor that granted additional skill power if I had a submachine gun equipped. Different rarities of weapons provided a lot of options to how I wanted to kit out my character. On top of simply finding great weapons, progressing through the game, and completing missions would grow your proficiency with those weapons which in turn increases your mod capacity. More mod capacity means building better weapons, which means you build a better Descendant. Everything eventually adds up!
I didn’t get to spend as much time as I wanted with The First Descendant. While a specific release date has yet to be announced, Nexon did mention that they are shooting for early next year. Hopefully before then, more game testing will commence. However, for those interested in waiting for the full release, The First Descendant will be a free-to-play game upon launch and will be available on Steam, Xbox X|S, PlayStation 4/5, and will have shared progression between consoles and PC.
