The First Descendant may succeed where Anthem failed NexonThe First Descendant is a new looter-shooter from Nexon, and it could be a great time with friends if our preview is anything to go by. The last few years are littered with the corpses of loot shooters and \u201cgames as a service\u201d titles that failed to find an audience. For every Destiny 2 or Borderlands 3, there\u2019s an Anthem. For every Apex Legends, there are a dozen Babylon\u2019s Falls. The First Descendant, though, feels like a polished product already, if our brief hands-on is anything to go by. Nexon\u2019s title takes elements from Destiny, Warframe, and even Anthem to make an action RPG\/shooter hybrid that\u2019s fun to play but lacking a little in personality. The First of Many The First Descendant will launch as a free-to-play title, but it doesn\u2019t leave the greatest of first impressions. It looks great, even at this early stage, and its character models are impressively detailed. It just lacks any real charm \u2014 characters are one-note blank slates, and as good as they look they lack any real character. I was able to go hands-on with three of the playable Descendants, and each feels a little on the dull side, full of one-liners but not a lot else. Still, it was nice to have at least some dialogue after the half-a-dozen lines I\u2019ve heard from my Destiny Guardian over the last eight years. There\u2019s also a limited color palette of grays, blacks, and browns that can make it feel a little flat to look at, but things do get more vibrant as more areas are unlocked. With the initial cutscene out of the way and the first of my Descendants selected, things started slowly; third-person combat is snappy and responsive, but it really hit its stride with the addition of a grappling hook. Hooked It\u2019s here that the game starts to grow in confidence, and starts to tease out more of its systems. Combat in looting games, for the most part, has often been a very flat experience. Diablo\u2019s isometric dungeons have staircases, and Destiny uses set-dressing to make many of its Strikes feel more vertical than they actually are, but The First Descendant is the first loot-driven game since EA\u2019s much-maligned Anthem that feels like it wants players to think differently. It\u2019s worth noting that there\u2019s no flight, but the grappling hook is incredibly liberating nonetheless. Flinging my large, tank-like character, Ajax, up to a ledge before crashing down with a ground pound felt great, and everything feels much more agile than the clunky (but fun) Outriders. Each Descendant has their own abilities, too, with an ice-wielding mage or a soldier-type with a powerful arm gadget also included in the trifecta of starting options. Still, throwing my huge tank-style character into the fray before backing up to deploy a shield always felt fun, akin to a Destiny Titan or an Outriders Devastator. Let\u2019s talk about Loot, baby It\u2019s tough to assess a game of this nature so early on because so much of its development post-launch will be informed by the community it (hopefully) builds. Things like currencies, drop rates, and perks will always be in flux. Still, at this early stage, The First Descendant splits its loot into two categories \u2014 weapons and runes. The former is straightforward, and as fun, as the gunplay is, there are some things to iron out, namely that sniper rifles lack the kind of impact you\u2019d hope for and can be hard to aim given the kinetic nature of combat. Players also have access to three weapons at a time, but you need to press a button to cycle through all of them \u2014 there\u2019s no option (as far as I could tell) to hold the button and switch more quickly. On the other hand, runes are used to enhance your armor along your journey. They\u2019re fun to build with, with increased fire rate and reload speed ones offering obvious boons, but I\u2019m left hopeful we\u2019ll see more exciting additions in the full game that can really diversify character builds. On the subject of characters, there are plenty of options, with each offering unique abilities akin to Warframes. Their powers are easy to grasp, and can fulfill almost MMO-like roles such as support, DPS, and the aforementioned tank. Big Boss One of The First Descendant\u2019s big selling points is in its boss battles, where up to four players tackle a huge monster. In the beta, at least, the focus is on cooperation (I wasn\u2019t able to tackle one of these behemoths solo), and leaning into those defined roles feels great. It\u2019s certainly a spectacle, but it\u2019s not particularly inspired as it revolves around hitting weak spots. Between missions, you\u2019ll visit Albion, collecting new quests and tweaking your characters a la Destiny 2\u2019s Tower. You can also venture into more open areas to take on smaller missions out in the field. Some of these involve destroying items, killing a certain number of enemies, or any other standard fare, and while they\u2019re not particularly challenging they are fun to sit back and relax with. Final Thoughts The First Descendant\u2019s setting and structure may feel a little paint-by-numbers, but there\u2019s an awful lot of fun to be had with its classes, weapons, and mobility options. If Nexon can mix up mission objectives and offer some great loot to chase, I can see it becoming a regular option in my rotation of loot shooters. The First Descendant\u2019s beta begins on Steam on October 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The First Descendant may succeed where Anthem failed NexonThe First Descendant is a new looter-shooter from Nexon, and it could be a great time with friends if our preview is anything to go by. The last few years are littered with the corpses of loot shooters and \u201cgames as a service\u201d titles that failed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}