The First Descendant is a Free-to-Play (F2P) third-person looter shooter Eastern ARPG (action adventure RPG) developed by Nexon Games. It’s available on consoles and Steam for PC – about 35 GB before patches and updates.
Creating a Nexon account is quick and easy in- game, and you’ll be dumped straight into pre-tutorial character selection with three characters to choose from. I went with Lepic for my first playthrough, who seemed a good option for a balanced solo starter.
STORY
Okay, cards on the table, the story is a bit cliché and a virtual straight rip from Destiny’s playbook. The port from its Korean origin is pretty thin, which leads to a lot of ‘lost in translation’ lines that just don’t flow well. In fact, my best tip from this early playthrough is to switch to Korean audio and your native language subtitles. Trust me, it makes a BIG improvement if you don’t mind subs. Hearing the original VO, synched properly to mouth movements can’t be understated. I found the early dialogue cringey enough to make me wince at times.
The tutorial does a decent job of guiding you through the basics, but the story remains a shallow trope-fest. Early on, beyond mentions of Vargus and the Iron Hearts, it’s tough to grasp what’s happening or why. The quest chain provides some direction, so if you can tolerate the cheesy dialogue, there’s some decent text/story to be found.
In fairness, I will concede that, personally, I found the dialogue and NPC interactions improved after a couple of hours and I wound up enjoying the overall game enough to get me through it.
Either that or I just became numb to it after a time.
STORY SCORE: 2/5
COMBAT
Combat in The First Descendant is where the game starts to shine. About five minutes into the tutorial, I began to appreciate the mobility, worked with the grappling hook – which feels like a zip-line – and learned to time dodges. No stamina means you can sprint forever, which is a plus.
Boss fight mechanics are cool, almost Monster Hunter-esque, and the weapon stats are detailed and satisfying. The combat feels like a blend of Destiny and Apex Legends with a third-person action style reminiscent of the good things we were promised with Anthem.
The fighting is fluid, feels pretty epic. The stats and theorycraft systems are well-fleshed out, without burning your brain. The ‘recommended mods’ option for your weapons, character and skill upgrades offer an easy route to optimize for those who don’t like to spend so much time under the hood.
However, if you like to min/max, test and theorycraft – there seems to be hours upon hours of opportunities for that too.
I found the organic challenge level just right, and of course you can always close the gaps by farming and upgrading if you feel a bit under-powered. At no time did I feel like the encounters were brainless and boring OR gated and frustrating providing a satisfying combat ‘sense’ overall
Special skills and rotations feels intuitive and complimentary to weapons loadouts. My only real gripe on combat is that I could see the limited real variety of weapons getting a bit stale; however, there is a lot I hadn’t explored with upgrades, customizations and ultimate weapons in these first few hours of play.
Progression is account-based, which means that your collection of Descendants’ power level and mastery level (basically character level) carries over, as well as inventories and mods, so you don’t have to re-farm or grind everything for each one of them individually – thankfully.
COMBAT SCORE: 4/5
ENVIRONMENT AND AMBIENCE
The traversal, climbing, and mobility feel great and play an important role in combat, as well as exploring the (so far) beautiful, seamless map locations. Note that the grappling hook has two ‘charges’ before a short cooldown. This will save you unfortunate falling deaths early on.
The transition from cinematic to gameplay is smooth, though some NPC names, like “Guide,” are hilariously on the nose and custom in many Eastern RPGs. The game provides good guidance through its systems and areas without hand-holding, and the missions are embedded into the maps with pylons that serve as terminals to start or join them, but otherwise, they exist seamlessly in the shared map zones. It’s a fresh sandbox-y, theme-park mix that felt new and innovative to me.
The campaign missions are short and fun, with a great sound and music system that makes the progression feel epic and your achievements punctuated by hard-hitting musical stings.
The Descendant collection and mission system adds a nice touch of variety. While there is great exploration value in the environments themselves, I found myself wishing that the rewards for discovering a hidden ledge or nook where more fulfilling, instead providing ammo or average mods.
ENVIRONMENT AND AMBIENCE SCORE: 3/5
GRAPHICS AND VISUALS
The game kicks off with a fantastic cinematic intro and the storied graphics are very good especially when reminded of the fact that the game is free. On tweaking my graphics, I found that the display preview isn’t accurate, making in-game settings adjustment a bit of a chore.
The graphics and style are visually pleasing, particularly if you like that benchmark jRPG, anime style. It follows convention in that regard, so while not necessarily ‘new’ it keep with the high standard set by games like Final Fantasy.
All in all, I thought the game was very pretty, runs very well on my “okay-est of gaming PCs” and never got bogged down with movement chop, rendering lag or blurriness.
I actually had to keep reminding myself that it was a F2P game.
GRAPHICS AND VISUALS: 4/5
OVERALL GAMEPLAY
As a complete package, I thought the overall gameplay was good. Honestly, I went into this completely expecting to not like it at all, but I found myself looking forward to jumping back in after each session.
The First Descendant got a lot of things right with many integrated systems that will give you PLENTY of things to do, while upgrading, farming and maximizing your characters – provided you like that looter-shooter play-loot-upgrade-repeat game loop.
The multiplayer integration is great, especially for solo players who want the option of teaming up, but not the stress of KEEPING up. It’s as simple as choosing to load in private or public and then seeing if there are a few others doing missions you want to do. If so, your mission pylon changes from ‘start’ to ‘join’ and that’s it – you’re in with some backup. The same goes for instanced ‘dungeons’ and boss fights.
Even the story and dialogue that I found cheesy and cringe-worthy grew on me a bit (and even got better I think) after the first hour or so.
OVERALL GAMEPLAY: 3/5
Summary and Conclusion
If you enjoy action RPGs (AARPGs) and looter shooters, The First Descendant is worth your time. It’s F2P, so there’s no risk in giving it a try. Nexon has done a commendable job of making complex, engaging systems easy to get into. Despite my initial skepticism, I found myself eager to dive back in time and time again.
The story, though cheesy, becomes charming, and the laughable dialogue grows on you. If you don’t mind subtitles, I highly recommend switching to Korean audio – it enhances the story and makes the animations feel more natural.
For those cautious around games with cash shops or micro-transactions, after a few hours of play I found no urge to visit the cash shop. To me that suggests that microtransactions won’t hinder your enjoyment and are likely cosmetic or progression-related.
Overall, I give The First Descendant a solid [score] based on my first few hours of play. I recommend it as a Play/Buy Now, especially since it’s entirely F2P. Dive in and see for yourself – it just might be the perfect game to unwind with after a long day of adulting.
THE FIRST DESCENDANT FINAL SCORE: 3/5
RECOMMENDATION: PLAY NOW
