The First Descendant is a free-to-play cooperative third-person shooter from Nexon that was developed using the Unreal Engine 5 engine. Players take on the role of the Descendants, whose mission is to protect humanity from the alien invaders Valgus and the destructive Colossi. Find out more about Nexon’s new project in our review.
On the 2nd of July, Nexon released The First Descendant. This is a free looter-shooter for those who missed Destiny 2 and Warframe in their prime or just wanted something new to play, like me. Bungie has long since removed the starting story, the first add-ons, and a mountain of other content from the game – all to “save space on your SSD.” That’s why, in 2024, it will be difficult to enter Destiny 2 and understand what happened. But you can launch The First Descendant, which copies Bungie’s epic saga in almost every way. But was it a worthy replacement? We’ll try to tell you now.
From the first few minutes, it is clear that Nexon has not been inspired by Destiny 2 but has shamelessly copied it. What is the value of a plot in which humanity faces a formidable alien enemy? If in Bungie’s game, the Wanderer and his Light came to the rescue, in The First Descendant, it is the Descendants with their fantastic powers. Incidentally, your hero is endowed with the special power of the Chosen One in the very first mission, so congratulations!
Whenever I talk about The First Descendant, people always compare it to Destiny 2 or Warframe. But you know what? Once I was on Ingris, it was like being teleported to Paragon. Back in 2016, Epic Games released a promising third-person MOBA that was supposed to eclipse SMITE but failed, and then The Overprime project, which Netmarble was already trying to resurrect, also failed.
I immediately liked Paragon because of its gorgeous visuals and futuristic setting. While SMITE had gods running around with spears and throwing lightning, Paragon’s characters were wielding firearms, controlling battle robots, and wearing cool exosuits. Unfortunately, due to the unexpected success of Fortnite, Epic Games’ attention was focused on the shooter, and Paragon was shut down. And even then, Paragon looked like a bomb on UE4 compared to the current SMITE 2 on UE5.
As it turns out, the association with Paragon was no coincidence. After the original Paragon was shut down, Epic Games allowed free use of the game’s assets, and several tiny indie studios and one giant Nexon company took advantage. There’s even a post on The First Descendant’s official Reddit group entitled “For those who think they’ve seen it before.” Attached to the post is a clip of Paragon, which is the case. I don’t know about you, but as someone who’s played Paragon, I found this rather encouraging, especially since Nexon’s project is primarily based on the visual representation of the world of the deceased MOBA and its graphical solutions.
The First Descendant engine provides advanced effects, including dynamic lighting and shadows, realistic textures and smooth animations, real-time ray tracing, and fantastic character detail. With a rich and vibrant color palette, the game offers a visually mesmerizing experience that blends natural and sci-fi aesthetics.
Meanwhile, there are often less pleasant flashbacks to MOBA elements that do not seem so relevant in the context of a shooter: collisions with invisible walls, with tiny obstacles, with other players and getting stuck in them.
Is It Really a Clone of Destiny 2 and Warframe?
Right from the start, it is clear that the developers have borrowed ideas from Destiny 2 and Warframe. In his free time, the hero explores a small hub, and during missions, he runs around semi-open areas, destroying monsters with weapons of varying levels and rarity, as well as abilities such as ice shot or electroshock. If he dies, he will be resurrected by the unknown power of his offspring – unless he has wandered into an area where resurrection is disabled.
The offspring are clearly inspired by the Wanderer and his Light from Destiny 2. When the war with the aliens began, humanity didn’t stand a chance. That’s when the Descendants unexpectedly gave humans their power – and with it, the hope of survival.
Descendants – that’s the name given to game characters who have inherited the special gifts of their ancestors – use four skills in combination with their weapons. Three normal and one ultimate, which also somehow refers to MOBA, but to a much lesser extent, as most of the skills are still adapted to the realities of the shooter, with the correction that it is team-based.
There are currently 14 playable characters in the game and five more ultimates for some of them, and each has a unique role in the party. Each has its own battle tactics and uses elemental or technological abilities to implement them. What’s more, Bunny alone has rightly become the face of The First Descendant’s advertising campaign. Bunny can run at insane speeds, accumulating energy and unleashing devastating electro-abilities. Combined with the cat hook that each Descendant is equipped with to move through vertical spaces quickly, Bunny is an incredibly cool way to travel the map.
The tactical fighter Lepic, the tank Ajax, and the debuffer Viessa are available to players at the start, and you can only choose one hero; the rest will have to be ‘collected’ like the others. The rabbit, on the other hand, is obtained during the story campaign – most of the intricacies of The First Descendant will be learned as the story unfolds. “The assembly of the first Descendant, as well as the first serious weapon, is simply a matter of following the procedure provided. Even the interface seems familiar from the same Paragon. The map, the system of tests, the system of changing weapons, the choice of partners, pumping – all this strongly reminds me of the game from Bungie.
Unfortunately, NEXON has not only taken successful solutions from its competitors. What is worth grinding to which the gameplay is almost completely tied? In The First Descendant, even the story missions are based on the principle of endless repetition. Hold a key point, mow down swarms of enemies, carry bombs from one place to another, guard a companion to prevent them from being killed, and the like – be prepared to do something similar over and over again. The reward will be a better weapon, better equipment, valuable pumping material, or the creation of a new character.
The most notable new feature is the hook cat. With it, the hero can instantly climb tall buildings and charge into battle. This makes the character mobile and adds a dynamic to the gameplay. Another difference is the sexualized heroines. As usual in Korean games, the girls are beautifully shaped, wear revealing outfits and regularly strike spectacular poses, whether good or bad is up to you. There is plenty of content in The First Descendant – more than in the vanilla version of Destiny 2, from which the story campaign has long since been cut. If the grind doesn’t bother you, get ready to spend dozens of hours on the novelty.
In The First Descendant, there seems to be a reaction to enemy hits – you can stop them, you can interrupt their attack, but it still feels rather sluggish, and in the heat of battle, an enemy usually has about 1-3 seconds of screen time before they just die from the first attack.
There’s no sense that your shots really mean anything. You can shoot an enemy with any weapon, and it’s as if they’re just being pushed around lightly. In some games, you feel the full power of your weapon when you hit a target, but here, you’re definitely shooting a pillow.
You don’t feel like you’re holding a powerful weapon, even if you’re firing a giant grenade launcher. If in Destiny 2 each gun sounded unique, here it sounds like an old tape recorder. However, the weapons look no worse than in Destiny 2, and there is more customization for them.
In this respect, The First Descendant is very similar to Warframe. You can get a new Descendant in the game in two ways – either by paying for it in the shop or by collecting resources and blueprints and then crafting it. You can only request to research a Descendant once you’ve collected all the materials you need, which are four components, three of which are assembled from a variety of other parts, and the fourth of which can take a long time to drop from some often challenging activities.
Why Does The First Descendant Have Mixed Reviews?
Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, the game looks decent, but it still feels cheap. Take the cutscenes at least: in Destiny 2 we were shown amazing cinematics, but here we are shown simple engine-based clips. In this game, the opening cutscene demonstrates the difference between the games. In Destiny 2, we were shown spectacular cinematics with cool staging, whip-smart phrasing, and heartbreaking drama. In the new game, the story is told through cheap animated slides and engine-driven clips.
Even more frightening are the gameplay issues, which can easily be described using melee combat as an example. In Bungie’s Hit, every hit was predictable and enjoyable because of the impact. In the new game, on the other hand, the hero’s hits are slow and mostly pleasant – and even when hit, the enemy reacts like a damage-absorbing sponge. It’s a good thing that gunfights don’t lead to rejection: they’re not up to the standard of the competition, but at least they’re not annoying.
The missions are, frankly, terrible. Even the storyline is based on a brutal grind, where we do the same thing ten times: protect control points, fight off waves of enemies, and carry cargo from point A to point B. Get it? Welcome to a new region, where the classes remain the same old ones; by the third or fourth region, you just stop listening to what is happening and start just “cleaning” the enemies without paying attention to what is happening.
I haven’t been to all the locations yet, but the endless repetition has driven me mad. The disgusting Abode of Shadows add-on for Destiny 2 also had a lot of grind, but even there, it wasn’t as dull. As a result, the abundance of content doesn’t seem to be an asset: the developers have scattered a lot of tasks across the regions, but none of them are interesting.
What About Donations or Pay to Win?
The monetization system is standard and mainly tied to cosmetics. For real money, you can buy costumes such as Schoolgirl, Maid, Panda, and so on, as well as a Battle Pass, which includes a variety of emotions, outfits, and accessories.
Donating can also save time. If you want to unlock a new hero, you have to save up a mountain of resources or simply pay for it. The game does not seem to have any important content (apart from costumes and emotions) that would be impossible not to get, so pay-to-win does not work here, but it does make life a lot easier.
The First Descendant: Is It Worth Playing?
The First Descendant is a game of endless grind, where you do the same missions over and over again, shooting thousands of enemies and spending a lot of time doing it all for the sake of new weapons and materials or to get a recipe with a 2% chance. If you like this sort of thing, you can jump into The First Descendant. Just be prepared for some budget, and FPS dips that the developers will have to patch for a long time to come.
However, The First Descendant does come with a very handy tool that lets you see what components you need for this or that research, how many of them you already have, and where you can extract the ones you need. The built-in database is user-friendly and intuitive, a credit to the developers.
By the way, the maximum number of Descendants available for the game is limited. This is one of the many small, imperceptible nuances of a completely free project that will force you to pay for it later.
Another such nuance, which is much more noticeable, is the paid extra equipment sets. When you change a descendant, all the equipment of the previous one is transferred to the new one, but it may not fit him due to the style of the game. It’s not just about weapons – each Descendant carries four gadgets with passive character bonuses and a powerful elemental core with an item that only fits a particular fighter.
Otherwise, The First Descendant is more like Destiny 2. Players will go to open, very picturesque locations with missions and the same type of additional tasks, helping each other to complete them, sometimes unwittingly getting involved in nearby activities. In groups, you can go into local variations of dungeons, fight pretty serious bosses, and challenge colossi – giants that you can even jump on to peel off a plate or two of armor by hand. Each carries three weapons with bonus effects, divided into four ranges, and uses four types of ammunition: standard, special, special (green), and powerful (purple). In total, there are 11 different weapons, each of which must be upgraded separately.
For each weapon, you will find and install special modules that speed up reloading, improve accuracy, increase the chance of a critical hit, add the effect of the elemental element, and so on. Similar modules are available for the Descendants themselves. Taken together, this system offers an impressive amount of scope for customization, allowing you to tailor your character to suit your play style or a particular game situation.
In between adventures, you’ll visit the hub city of Albion, which has warehouses for supplies, a mailbox for letters from the developers, and items you haven’t picked up from the battlefield. There is also an infiltration terminal, where you can quickly get to an available instance, and a scientist, where you can quickly challenge one of the Colossi.
In Albion, you’ll find a terminal where you can increase your account level – what we call your Skill Rank. Increasing your rank increases the amount of energy and cells in your offspring and weapon modules, increases the number of equipment cells and storage cells, reduces the limits of your form stabilizers, and opens up new gameplay options.
The Module master allows you to upgrade, disassemble, or combine modules, which you can then insert into the Descendants and weapon slots. At the workbenches, players will be able to transfer weapon levels like in Destiny 2 and customize weapons by changing their passive characteristics. They can also improve their unique abilities and boost their reactors. Of course, all of this will require a ton of different resources.
Finally, Anais is the place to place a research request. You can research new offshoots and new weapons. Individual descendant materials can be researched, which require up to four components. Individual weapon materials and individual enhancement materials. The different researches take different amounts of time, as well as a decent amount of gold, which can be obtained by completing quests and by selling weapons to the same Master Gunsmith who sells mediocre weapons.
The First Descendant represents Nexon’s ambitious attempt to create an addictive loot shooter that combines elements of popular games in the genre. It borrows the visual style and some of the mechanics from Paragon. The game offers impressive graphics and a variety of characters with unique abilities. The progression and customization system, reminiscent of Warframe, gives players plenty of opportunity to experiment and create their own style of play. At the same time, the mission structure and overall gameplay are clearly reminiscent of Destiny 2, providing a familiar and comfortable experience for fans of the genre.
However, despite its promising concept and impressive visuals, The First Descendant is not without its flaws. The lack of any tangible shooting impact and some of the inconveniences inherited from its MOBA predecessor can detract from the enjoyment of the game, as can the check-the-box story. Nevertheless, given the free distribution model and the potential for further development, The First Descendant is definitely worth a look.
