I’m not sure I’ll ever get truly sick of live-service games. There are times when I’m glad I’m not playing them and times when I wish I were keeping up. When Nexon’s The First Descendant showed up I was excited to see what a company specializing in online play will bring to the table. Gamers shouldn’t be the only ones upset at the growth of live-service games. While it can provide stable career centers in development that aren’t wholly hinged on the sales of the next game, as we’ve seen in Austin with Arkane, it can also completely tank otherwise successful studios. I was hopeful for The First Descendant, the idea of mixing a little character into the player instead of a blank slate intrigued me. The experience offered did not match my expectations, for better or for worse, and left me just as cynical about this industry as I was when I went in.
The First Descendant
Developer: Nexon
Price: Free-to-Play
Platforms: Playstation 4/5 (Reviewed,) Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (Steam & GeForce Now)
The First Descendant can be boiled down to a few activities depending on how you look at it. Throughout the beginning of your journey, you’ll be mostly progressing the story which is composed of a few different game types. Make no mistake, these aren’t new styles of gameplay, you’ll be defending, killing, and escorting your way through the entire campaign. Along the way, you’ll collect various materials used to research new items, weapons, and new Descendants. Though there’s still plenty more of the game left for me to explore, the majority of your time will be going back and forth between doing story missions and heading back to Albion, the hub location, to kick off more research. And it all starts with picking a starter Descendant.
Credit: Nexon
Like Pokemon, there are three starter Descendants. Ajax, Viessa, and Lepic are your starters, and sticking them out in front is a choice. Ajax, who I chose for release, is a big armor boy with a full helmet on and giant horns with no elemental affinity. Viessa, who must’ve been created in a lab for the sole purpose of showing off her breasts in her bodysuit with an enormous boob window. And who could forget Lepic? Well, I did for a long time. Almost nobody was playing him during my playthrough and he’s the most generic looking white guy you’ve ever seen. All three Descendants have a very fun and useful skill set. Each one is given four active skills and a passive skill. I went with Ajax whose skill set is built around AoE attacks and defense. While I had a lot of fun playing with Viessa and Lepic, they weren’t nearly as useful to have on some of the more difficult fights later in the game unless a fight specifically required one of their elemental affinities.
After picking a Descendant you get right into the bare bones story. This is where the comparisons to Destiny really get on the nose. Guess what? Humanity is on its last legs! There is an ever-present looming threat in the form of an alien species. But hold the phone, because the Descendant Bunny and the player’s Descendant have just stumbled upon an Ironheart, also known as a McGuffin, and it unlocks this being known as the guide, a sentient AI that’s trying to help us. The story is painfully boring and elicits no sense of urgency whatsoever for the player. Which is nice, I was able to take things at my own pace but did little to cause the narrative hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. Some story beats are so boring you’re thankful there’s a skip button.
While the story is worth ignoring, the gameplay is another story. The third-person shooting aspects of The First Descendant are largely good, especially when there’s not much network latency. Initially, my review was leaning favorably towards how little network issue there’s been but between the first draft and edits, things have progressively gotten worse. At best, bullets in the open world won’t get counted, and at worst, you’ll be in a dungeon and begin clipping around during a boss fight. With multiple weapon types and no restriction on how many of each type you can have equipped at once, the loadouts are a little more varied than you’d expect. Likewise, the shooting feels pretty strong with good hit feedback and quite a few mobility options depending on the Descendant you’re playing as. All Descendants can use a grappling hook for mobility and while that seems alluring, it adds very little to the gameplay.
As someone going into The First Descendant alone with no pre-set group of people to play with, I’m impressed at how grouping is handled. Primarily, on story missions out in the field, you’re simply teamed up with whoever happens to be in your instance and is also attempting the same mission. This is rough as there’s no indication you’re in a dead instance outside of the social menu. At several points, I was pulled away from the game only to return and have to do story missions alone. Normally, I’d be unphased by this but the balance on some of these missions is all over the place. Various missions going solo would be near impossible with enemy strength modifiers, and overwhelming enemy numbers, causing me to get merked in a very unfortunate way. I’d go in again with just a single teammate and absolutely crush the enemy and complete the mission within seconds. This could be especially frustrating as sometimes you’ll need to repeat missions just to acquire new materials from the randomized loot to research new Descendants.
Credit: Nexon
Gacha? No. Not quite. Currently, all Descendants can have their research materials farmed, though research itself takes quite a bit of time. The level scaling in The First Descendant is based on gear level, not a collective gear score oddly enough, and fights once thought difficult become trivial quickly. Paying players should receive a lot of these items a lot easier and more immediate than free-to-play players but while I had a little money to spend on the game, it felt far more rewarding farming to unlock. Just know that the option is there to skip some of the farming or acquire Descendants before you can unlock them traditionally. As far as I can tell, it’s not a very predatory shop. Obviously, there are also cosmetics for your Descendants, guns, support materials, and a battle pass as well. The battle pass has premium currency in its unlocks, so if you complete a full battle pass, it will mitigate the cost of the next one. The pre-season battle pass has enough premium currency to cover more than half of the next battle pass, presuming it’s the same price.
Without paying out the gate, The second Descendant you should unlock is Bunny, an electric fast lady who is pretty squishy. Taking the free route, I managed to unlock 4 Descendants with little farming before I completed the campaign. That does include Bunny though, who is unlocked through a story quest. Bunny actually has Descendant-specific quests whereas the other Descendants I unlocked did not, including my starter. This is kind of a big disappointment. My understanding is that Descendant-specific quests are on the roadmap for Season One but when you’ve funneled your playerbase into only 3 Descendants to start with you’d think those would be the priority.
Cosmetics in the store provide enough of a variety that several times I’ve been confused as to what Descendant was being played until I looked at the icon by their name in the party. Unfortunately, it’s mostly just people playing Bunny at the moment. I imagine it has to do with her being free and some of her cosmetics being rather lascivious. That said, there are some incredibly fun cosmetics including a dinosaur suit and a back piece I got from the battle pass that’s just a hamster in a hamster wheel. After finishing the campaign I unlocked a skin for my grappling hook, something I never even noticed had an original skin for during gameplay. These cosmetics, while nice and fun, lead into another discussion altogether on pricing.
Pricing is an interesting thing to me in live-service games, please note prices listed below are in USD($). I’ve been playing MMORPGs since 2001 and even if I’m not actively playing one, I usually am checking in on new content. Pricing structures are not always made equal, but I think The First Descendant is pretty middle-of-the-road when it comes to cosmetic and Descendant pricing. Descendants range from 300 – 900 of the premium currency, of which can be purchased in $5 (250 credits,) $10 (500 credits,) and $20 (1,000 credits) increments. You’re given a lil’ bonus based on how high of an increment you buy, this kicks in at a higher rate the more you spend. Premium currency goes up to $100 (5750 credits (5000 + 750 bonus.) If you want to turn the gacha, there are tickets you can purchase that will unlock a random Descendant in its group immediately but at $10 that seems a little steep. Ultimate Descendants cost anywhere between 3,000 ($60) and 5,000 ($100.) Cosmetics range from 125 credits ($2.50) to 1,900 credits ($38.) The battle pass itself is only $10, inline with most battle passes, and comes with premium currency to unlock, so take that how you will.
Credit: Nexon
I have a side-quest to unlock an ultimate Descendant but currently have no plans to farm one up as that research seems farmalicious. But the cost for a Descendant isn’t simply one of money but also time. I believe that Nexon sees a problem with the target demographic for live-service games, more money than time. Research plays a huge role in unlocking a Descendant. Not only are you required to spend time farming for the materials to craft the Descendant, but also research the Descendant as well.
Let’s say you wanted to unlock Ajax, the starter I chose. You’ll need a few things to unlock him. First, you’ll need his code, an item shaped from amorphous material patterns, an item that can be shaped into 5 different items of varying probability. Following that, there are three separate items you’ll need to research and develop before you can even start researching Ajax. Before we break down the numbers, I want to emphasize the point here. You begin by farming the amorphous material pattern then you go fight a boss who allows you to shape the material ONE time every time you beat them, and if you’re lucky, you get the item you’re looking for. You have to do this with ALL THREE materials (with some exceptions, some of the materials for Descendants just drop,) before you’re able to begin researching. Now we do the time math. Each item takes eight hours to research, and since you can research five things at a time, that should only be eight hours, right? Provided, all the farming was fruitful and you were able to get everything all at the same time. Potentially, you’re looking at 3 separate instances of research amounting to twenty-four hours. Not including the Descendant research, which takes sixteen hours for a regular Descendant, and thirty-six hours for an ultimate Descendant. Research is done passively and without you needing to be logged in to research, but that’s still quite a long time.
The First Descendant seems like a fun lark at the moment. Even after completing the lengthy campaign, which took me around 45 hours, I’m still looking forward to more of the gameplay. All I can really do is review what’s currently in the game now. I look at games like Anthem and Babylon’s Fall and worry about recommending a live-service game to anyone. However, being free-to-play at the onset seems to have done well for the community. While I was ahead of the pack I found it a little difficult to find groups but, overall, found myself playing in fairly helpful company. I haven’t had to wait longer than 20 seconds in matchmaking and few areas are completely devoid of people. If this keeps up and Nexon stays on top of its roadmap and schedule, The First Descendant could become a mainstay for years.
Credit: Nexon
The Final Word
Being free-to-play, it’d be hard for me to tell you not to give The First Descendant a try. Even after forty hours, I’m still looking forward to spending more time in Ingris and unlocking more Descendants.
MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
