The First Descendant is a new looter-shooter RPG developed by Nexon that’s heavily inspired by Destiny and Warframe! Read our review to see how well it does its strengths, some areas for improvement, and if you should play it for yourself.

The First Descendant Review Overview

What is The First Descendant?

The First Descendant is a brand new third-person looter-shooter RPG made by South Korean MMORPG giant Nexon. It heavily borrows successful mainstay looter-shooters such as Destiny and Warframe with their own special touch of narrative-driven missions.

The Descendants are superhumans with special abilities born from being used with ‘Arche’ DNA that unlocks their physical and magical potentials.

The First Descendant features:
　⚫︎　 Action-packed combat gunplay
　⚫︎　 Eight full-fledged regions with its own ‘semi open-world’ subregions with its own story-driven missions
　⚫︎　 14 different unique characters/Descendants, each with unique abilities
　⚫︎　 Tons of different guns across multiple gun types
　⚫︎　 Countless different modules to modify your guns and Descendants
　⚫︎　 Countless cosmetics to dress up your Descendants
　⚫︎　 Solo or cooperative online play

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about The First Descendant's gameplay and story.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		PS Store		Xbox

The First Descendant Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Satisfying ‘Skillplay’ and Gunplay Magnificent Worldbuilding, Graphics, and Cinematography Microtransactions Are Mostly Cosmetics	Somewhat Unoptimized Loading Screens Galore Hit or Miss Story Missions and Voice Acting

The First Descendant Overall - 86/100

The First Descendant is an excellent looter-shooter with large swathes of potential to become a mainstay in the genre for years to come. It delivers an intriguing world, fantastically fun gameplay, outstanding visuals, and satisfying sound design. It’s not without faults however, as it still has some things to optimize, bugs, as well as obvious dips of quality in storytelling, gameplay, and music, proving it to still be rough around the edges overall. However, given enough time and refining, The First Descendant has the means to ascend and become a great title with clear longevity not just in the genre, but in gaming as a whole.

The First Descendant Story - 8/10

The First Descendant seeks to establish itself as a story-driven looter-shooter, and it hits the ground running with its very intriguing otherworldly worldbuilding. However, after its initial introduction, it becomes a hit-or-miss through the normal missions, where some have the same quality and wonder of the starting section, to then suddenly feel like filler missions only existing just to pad things out.

The First Descendant Gameplay - 9/10

The First Descendant’s gunplay is crunchy and satisfying, where every gun seems to have its purpose, power, and authority. Alongside the firepower, the various skill sets of all the unique Descendants provide further options in combat, mixing and matching playstyles that allow for flexible emergent gameplay that raises the fun and skill ceiling. On top of all of that, the Modules system adds another layer of depth outside of combat, allowing players to carefully plan and prepare their Descendants and weapons with different kinds of modifications that give various enhancements and modifiers to rain more controlled chaos into the battlefield. What prevents it from achieving a perfect score however, is that the missions will undoubtedly become too repetitive, where you’ll be frequently task to go from point A to point B, defeat enemies, defend Point C, and so on and so forth.

The First Descendant Visuals - 10/10

The environmental graphics; the lighting; the character designs, models, and animation; the visual effects of Descendants’ abilities; and the overall cinematography of cutscenes are on another level in The First Descendant. The graphical fidelity, quality, and care given to every visual aspect in the game is stunningly beautiful and palpable. It cannot be understated how each major area is diverse all throughout, and how gorgeously rich the world is. One caveat is you’re gonna have to make sure your machine can handle it all on High settings, or Medium at the least.

The First Descendant Audio - 8/10

The thing that The First Descendant excels in sonically is indubitably its gun and skills sound design, as every single bullet fired or ability cast feels so powerful and significant that it adds a layer of satisfaction. Making players feel powerful is an important part of games, and the sound design masterfully succeeds. However, in other aspects such as music and voice acting, the quality is somewhat uneven, where there are bright spots in the music that evoke strong emotions, while there are dull ones where they’re entirely forgettable. Same goes for the voice acting, where some you can tell are experienced voice actors, while some seem to be bored and inexperienced with their deliveries.

The First Descendant Value for Money - 8/10

The First Descendant is free-to-play, and it’s a very enjoyable experience from top to bottom, even given some of its blooming growing pains that every big title at launch experiences. It has an intriguing narrative and world, fantastic gameplay, excellent visuals, and great sound design that make for a worthwhile game to dip your toes into. Most of its microtransactions, while inevitably will exist, are for cosmetics that don’t affect gameplay nor encourage any pay-to-win. Its core gameplay wholly encourages experimentation between Descendants, weapons, playstyles, and Modules that give way to extensive playability in the long run, showcasing the great potential The First Descendant has for the future.

The First Descendant Review: Ascending Potential

The First Descendant pleasantly surprised me with its overall quality throughout. Its effective worldbuilding, the varied playstyles of the dozen or so Descendants, the really satisfying gunplay due to its visual effects and great sound design, and the excellent high-fidelity environmental graphics and character models that further breathe life into the world. The game has a lot of strengths that were obviously given a lot of meticulous care, attention, and development behind them to reach such high quality, and that needs to be commended.

It manages to make quite a first impression in its opening mission, planting players right into the middle of the conflict of the world, establishing intrigue, mystery, suspense, and the villain’s goals all in one fell swoop. This signals the start of the Descendants’ quest to prevent the powerful antagonist from accomplishing his plans and provides the players with their motivation to keep playing.

The combat gameplay takes place in semi-open world subregions within whole regions. Think of a country with different states, with each state having different cities. Each city, or outpost in the game’s case, has their own subset of story-driven missions players can undertake that will take place all within those specific outposts. They’re seamlessly sequenced one after the other for players to quickly move on from one mission to the next. This is a great subtle quality-of-life implementation that can easily be overlooked, but should be appreciated by all.

Accomplishing each outpost’s missions will then eventually lead to a finale mission that can be taken publicly alongside other players, or solo if you deem yourself strong enough. They take place either in an extension of the region through a special map tile, or can be accessed from the map itself where you’ll be transported to a special Void arena where your only goal is to eliminate the opposing threat.

The First Descendant implores unique mechanics in their big boss fights, where players won’t have to mindlessly point and shoot at a large body, but instead be strategic on where and when to shoot, all the while staying in motion as to avoid simultaneous enemy attacks. Their basic enemy design might be boring from its spammy hordes in normal missions, but they bring their a-game in the boss designs, allowing for challenging gameplay.

That’s the core gameplay loop of The First Descendant, and it’s surprisingly fun as it succeeds in combining aspects from the games it takes huge inspirations from– Destiny and Warframe. And although it’s still far from reaching those two giants in the looter-shooter genre in terms of everything, The First Descendent is on its way in stamping out its own route and niche in the field.

Pros of The First Descendant

Things The First Descendant Got Right
Satisfying ‘Skillplay’and Gunplay Magnificent Worldbuilding, Graphics, and Cinematography Microtransactions Are Mostly Cosmetics

Satisfying ‘Skillplay’ and Gunplay

In terms of pure gunplay, The First Descendant succeeds in providing very satisfying combat through its wide array of run variety and the general usefulness each gun seems to bring to different playstyles and situations. Rifles, scouts, snipers, hand cannons, shotguns, machine guns, and everything else oozes power and authority that makes you feel powerful. It certainly has to be attributed to their spectacular sound design, where every gun has their unique crunchy punch that sonically satisfies and adds so much to the gunplay.

Not only that, but the wide array of modules that enhance or modify weapons AND your Descendants is complicated but rewarding. Similar to the Modding system in Warframe, players can equip certain mods onto their weapons under a set capacity to boost stats or give unique abilities that subtly enhance their combat prowess, and their implementation is a great adaptation of Warframe’s.

Last but not least, the unique Descendants’ skills play a significant part in combat, as they open up so much extra damage, utility, and support either for yourself or for your occasional teammates. Being able to interweave your gunfire and the use of your skills during high-intensity situations provides a great skill ceiling for players to continually experiment and raise the bar of, and that promotes more player expression and emergent gameplay that is an overall net positive for any looter-shooter that seeks to last long in this modern gaming landscape.

Magnificent Worldbuilding, Graphics, and Cinematography

The First Descendant pleasantly surprises players with its very interesting worldbuilding and lore right out of the gate, being placed in a mysterious quest to recover an artifact, only for the mission to all go wrong. From said starting quest that doubles as a tutorial, it fully flexes and showcases the game’s graphical prowess with stunning locations and great cinematography that’s just flat out alluring. The wide angle shots, the camera pans, and the high-octane action all contribute to the setting up of the world’s story and conflict, all through high-fidelity environments, and extremely-detailed and well-animated character models.

One could be skeptical that this is only to entice newer players in the introduction, but cutscenes of the same caliber are littered across the story-driven game, providing more awe-inspiring moments and spectacles.

Microtransactions Are Mostly Cosmetics

We live in a world where this is celebrated, and that’s a horrifying thought, but it must be done to further shed light on it and perhaps be able to show other developers to keep it this way. The First Descendant has tons and tons of microtransactions that can only be bought with premium currency, and most of the microtransactions don’t actually affect gameplay and story progression, and doesn’t encourage, in any way, the act of pay-to-win. The overwhelming majority of the in-game shop is comprised of cosmetics (where some are quite overpriced, if I may point that out). If one was to nitpick however, the closest thing to paying-to-win would be how you will be able to purchase and unlock Descendants directly, skipping most of the grind in acquiring them. However, raising their proficiencies, understanding their skill kits, and actually applying them in battle will be a different story.

The most harm directly buying and unlocking the other Descendants would be skipping the grind in advance, and that’s just on the players’ decision whether they wish to not repeat missions over and over due to drop rates or lack of time or motivation to grind, as well as having some excess funds to spend.

Cons of The First Descendant

Things The First Descendant Can Improve
Somewhat Unoptimized Loading Screens Galore Hit or Miss Story Missions and Voice Acting

Somewhat Unoptimized

The First Descendant still feels sluggish and unoptimized, and it’s no fault of the hardware. My PC’s specs, though a bit old, are in the middle ground between the game’s minimum and recommended specs. However, even when in medium settings where the gameplay is relatively smooth, it keeps on stuttering at random times during combat. The most consistent stutters however, are at the menus, where the simple act of opening and traversing to each other stutters the frames.

To prove that the game truly is unoptimized to a certain extent, here’s my game where I’ve set everything to low, and still traversing menus and even just walking around the main hub causes stutters here and there.

Loading Screens Galore

The First Descendant has numerous wide open zones with high fidelity areas to explore, and as such, they would all need to be loaded beforehand. Traversing from the main hub to individual regions, and the sub-zones within those regions where quests await all require a loading screen between them, and their presence and length are palpable from the frequency you traverse between regions. From the bootup screen when starting the game, to going to a region, then going into an important ‘finale’ mission within that region, and then going back to the main hub, every single step has a lengthy loading screen that just takes you out of the immersion.

Hit or Miss Story Missions and Voice Acting

Being a story-driven looter-shooter, The First Descendant tries its best at making their attempt work, where the main quest is chock-full tidbits that advance the overall story. However, it’s inevitable that some quests get more shine and refinement over others, whether it be in substance, action-intensity, or just the quality of its presentation. It’s apparent that, in some quests, the voice acting falls rather flat and feels like a throwaway mission that was just implemented because it was needed. The example above does its best to incorporate adequate voice acting with some body gestures, but the stiffness of transitions breaks any attempt at immersion, similar to main story quests generally found in MMORPGs, of which Nexon has had plenty of experience with.

Is The First Descendant Worth It?

Come Try and Ascend With the Rest of the Descendants

The First Descendant as it is, is a valiant attempt at the very-populated looter-shooter genre where many try and fail, and only a few survive. They show signs of high potential and greatness because they opted to copy the most successful ones–Destiny and Warframe, and their influence shows up in dividends. It shows extensive variety that allows for flexible emergent gameplay for its players to experiment and raise their skills and knowledge of, all the while grinding to get better loot and equipment. However, in its current state, The First Descendant still pales in comparison to the two it's inspired by, and still has a lot to go before it can be slotted with the two giants.

That’s not to say that the game itself is horrible, but that it’s still very early and rough around the edges as it currently stands. Lots of optimizations and improvements can still be made that will most likely be fixed, as well as more content, Descendants, and weapons down the line.

As a free-to-play title, it’s by no means perfect–but any interested player seeking to try it out won’t be wholly disappointed, and will find some nuggets of gold here and there. The only low points will be occasional bugs, stutters, crashes, and a plethora of loading screens.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		PS Store		Xbox
Price		Free-to-Play

The First Descendant FAQ

How to Unlock Other Descendants?

To unlock other Descendants, you must acquire four of its components and have the listed amount in Anais’ research lab. You may go to Anais to see which components you will need to get in order to research and acquire new Descendants.

The First Descendant Characters/Descendant List

The First Descendant currently has 14 available standard characters/Descendants, where five among them have Ultimate variants, amounting to a total of 19.
　⚫︎　 Lepic (Starter) (Standard)
　⚫︎　 Ajax (Starter) (Standard)
　⚫︎　 Viessa (Starter) (Standard)
　⚫︎　 Jayber
　⚫︎　 Sharen
　⚫︎　 Gley
　⚫︎　 Blair (Standard)
　⚫︎　 Bunny (Standard)
　⚫︎　 Freyna
　⚫︎　 Valby
　⚫︎　 Kyle
　⚫︎　 Esiemo
　⚫︎　 Enzo
　⚫︎　 Yujin
　⚫︎　 Lepic (Ultimate)
　⚫︎　 Ajax (Ultimate)
　⚫︎　 Viessa (Ultimate)
　⚫︎　 Bunny (Ultimate)
　⚫︎　 Gley (Ultimate)

What are The First Descendant‘s System Requirements

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The First Descendant Product Information

Title	THE FIRST DESCENDANT
Release Date	July 2, 2024
Developer	NEXON Games Co., Ltd.
Publisher	NEXON
Supported Platforms	PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Genre	Looter Shooter, Co-op Action RPG
Number of Players	1-4
ESRB Rating	M
Official Website	The First Descendant Website

Clark Jason Kong

Growing up playing all sorts of games, they love playing a little bit of everything, all of the time. Favorites include Counter-Strike, Life is Strange, Final Fantasy, Spiritfarer, and Devil May Cry.