In The First Descendant, Nexon’s new looter shooter, each character has their own set of abilities and gimmicks. Bunny, the first one you can unlock, has to keep moving to charge up her electricity which she can then use to fire off attacks. She does more damage the quicker she runs, so you barely shoot your gun, relying instead on her area of effect pulse ability. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the kind of playstyle the game encourages. Run past enemies, through levels, away from your teammates — go fast and skip as much as you can to get to the good stuff. The problem is there isn’t enough good stuff to justify spending time or money on the bad.
Looter shooters have a bad reputation for being too grindy, but when the core gameplay loop is satisfying, this isn’t an issue. Unfortunately, The First Descendant’s missions are repetitive, its guns lack any sense of uniqueness, its story is dull, and the Descendants themselves, while cool-looking and varied enough from each other, only have four abilities each which barely change as you progress. It’s all well and good building an experience around overpowered late-game builds, but players need a reason to want to use those builds.
Each combat zone in the game follows the same structure. You speak to a Descendant located at an outpost, then you go and do a few missions. These are all variations of killing enemies in an area, destroying generators, collecting orbs, or escorting a payload. It gets repetitive fast, especially when you’re trying to rush through to the end-game where all the best gear and builds are gated. This is a live-service game, so things will change over time and more mission types and skills could be added, but as it stands now, these features are lacking.
Even with repetitive goals, exciting combat can save a game like this, but it gets boring quickly. A Descendant’s skills level up as they do, but all that seems to happen is they do more damage or last a bit longer; there’s no tangible progression because the enemies also get stronger, so at best you’re a little ahead and one-shotting everything, able to clear missions faster, and at worst you have to retry one. The missions are challenging if you do them solo, so teamwork is encouraged, but again, the main difference here is the speed with which you churn through the content.
It doesn’t help that the guns don’t feel different from each other, either. Sure, pistols and sniper rifles shoot slower than SMGs and machine guns, but blast an enemy for long enough and it drops, so who cares what you use to do that?
The only way to feel any sense of advancement is to unlock a new Descendant, but then you either have to grind specific missions and acquire materials to research them, or pay to instantly unlock them. Even if you enjoy the gameplay loop, you have to wait an egregious number of real-life hours to research the weapons and Descendants you gather material for. The worst part is, the price to speed up the timer is the same as buying the Descendant outright in the first place, so if you’re going to skip the 16 hours it takes to research, you may as well buy them and skip all the mission grinding, too.
The lack of build diversity caused by the four skills each Descendant is locked to only amplifies that feeling of stagnation. It’s a cruel design that encourages players to buy all the Descendants so they feel like they have access to some variety, but sexy characters in skimpy outfits sell. Spending a few quid on a new hero or skin is no big deal, but when they become boring after a day and you buy another one then repeat the cycle, the money quickly adds up.
This would all be irritating but passable if the story were engaging, but it’s not. It’s your standard end of the world fare. Humanity is at war with a race called the Vulgus, and their cutscenes are the most interesting aspect of the plot. The Vulgus leaders have great character designs and varied motivations, so the drama and spectacle they provide is great, but you only get one cutscene per combat zone, right at the end. Can you spot the theme running throughout this game yet? The good bits only come after rushing through the repetitive stuff as quickly as possible.
By far the best part of The First Descendant is the Colossi. These are giant, robotic creatures that enter the world through some sort of dimension wall — think of the kaiju in Pacific Rim. They’re challenging, look incredible, and require teamwork to take down. More of these and less of the rest would greatly improve the overall experience, but they’re only accessible once specific missions are completed, further encouraging you to rush through the base game to get to them.
The one thing that makes the grind tolerable is playing with friends. Everything is so braindead that you can go on autopilot while you chit chat. Unfortunately, the only thing this achieves is higher DPS and better coordination against some of the hard end-of- level bosses and Colossi. It also highlights a huge wasted opportunity. Elemental skills and Descendants don’t synergise at all. Why don’t Valby’s water skills make Bunny’s electricity do more damage, or cause Viessa’s ice powers to freeze longer? Because then you’d have to think rather than just speeding through everything as quickly as you can. Hopefully this is something that will be expanded as development continues, because it could become a very interesting system that encourages teams to use different combinations of Descendants.
Conclusion
Destiny is grindy, but it has an immensely satisfying gameplay loop and a rich story. Outriders doesn’t have the best plot or visuals, but each class has a wide variety of powers that synergise brilliantly, meaning each build is unique to how you want to play and combat is worthwhile for its own sake. The First Descendant has the stand-out Colossi battles, but everything leading up to them is so mind-numbingly tedious that they don’t justify the time or monetary investment you’d need to spend to enjoy them. It’s the gaming equivalent of playing with a fidget spinner while on a Discord call — something to keep your hands occupied while you catch up. It’s a game designed to get you to pay to skip it, not play it, so what’s the point of it?