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When it launches on July 2, The First Descendant will enter a genre that, lately, has had more failures than successes. High-profile games like Anthem, Redfall, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and Marvel’s Avengers all operated in the same space that the upcoming loot shooter is hoping to enter, and all struggled to make lasting positive impressions. Even the king of loot shooters, Destiny 2, has struggled–though developer Bungie just put out an acclaimed expansion, the game might have been at its lowest point ever just a year ago. Loot shooter players can be a tough crowd.
I recently played about an hour of The First Descendant at Summer Game Fest 2024’s Play Days event, which wasn’t enough to get a full sense of whether developer Nexon will avoid the pitfalls that seem to doom so many of these games. It did, however, give a sense of moment-to-moment gameplay that seems to change significantly depending on which of the 14 characters you play throughout the game. The huge amount of customizations that come with guns, characters, and modifications you can make to your loadout suggest that The First Descendant will offer a whole variety in ways to play it. That, coupled with what sounds like a large amount of content at release, including for its endgame, has me cautiously optimistic that The First Descendant can succeed where so many other recent games have failed.
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Now Playing: The First Descendant – Xbox Extended Gameplay First Look
I played as Eseimo in the demo, one of the three new “Descendants” that Nexon is adding to the game at launch, who focuses on using high explosives and tanky, overwhelming force. The demo also included some new content coming at launch, and I was able to jump into one of the game’s dungeons on my own and fight through it. The mission sends you into a snowy facility overrun by enemies, culminating with a boss fight at the end. It gave a pretty good sense of Eseimo’s high-damage, crowd-controlling capabilities, and how he might contribute in a group.
The core of The First Descendant is third-person shooting, the kind where you do a lot of running around and dodge-rolling as you fight. The shooting felt solid generally, capturing the same vibes as something like Outriders, with punchy guns that can easily mow down smaller enemies but require a little extra effort against beefier opponents. I mostly used an assault rifle that kept the bullets flying as much as possible, but The First Descendant includes 11 firearm classes that give some variety to players and their loadouts.
As you might expect, Eseimo’s abilities include whipping grenades into crowds–these came in clutch in the dungeon, where tougher opponents joined a flood of enemies. The trek through the facility included a portion in which I had to defend a large room that had a big dome forcefield in the center while waiting for a door to unlock. The room flooded with enemies, including heavy units carrying large medieval-like shields and even larger, tougher enemies that took a lot of fire to bring down.
You get both a recharging shield and a health bar in The First Descendant, with the latter becoming vulnerable while the former is broken. The recharge on my shields took quite a while, however, which meant that tactical repositioning (running away) is often extremely important to keeping alive as a solo player. It made for a fast and frenetic experience throughout the dungeon, and one that I had a pretty good time with.
During that fight, success required keeping clear of smaller melee troops while focusing on the shield-bearing troopers to thin out the numbers of tougher, more dangerous enemies, all while being conscious of positioning because characters could pass through the big forcefield, but it would block bullets and other attacks. When things really got tough, I could activate Eseimo’s most powerful active ability, which essentially turned him into a truck. You charge forward with a dash move that lets you smash through enemies, but you’re unable to stop until you trigger the ability again to let loose a powerful explosion all around you. It was great for cutting through tons of enemies and putting massive hurt on some of the tough-to-kill variants.
The dungeon culminated in a boss fight that gave me some sense of what mechanical elements The First Descendant will employ to make its gunfights a little more interesting. The seven-foot-tall, minigun-wielding fighter was tough to take head-on and, to make matters worse, was flanked by snipers, more of the roving melee troopers, and enemies carrying shields, which required a lot of running around the arena.
That arena was also oddly shaped, making the already tough fight even tougher. The boss came up an elevator attached to a cliff face, its path winding around along the side of a mountain. Staying put wasn’t an option, as the boss would continuously launch mortars that would stun and pummel you if you didn’t clear out before they landed. Yet venture too far to one side and it was a deadly fall. However, if you followed the snaking path upward, you’d reach a position where you could clear out enemies and shoot down at the boss and his minions as they flooded up the path.
The toughest part of the fight came about halfway through, when the boss summoned a set of drones that shielded him from damage. This was where things got a bit more technical; to destroy the shield, I had to shoot the drones, yet only one was vulnerable at a time and only briefly. Zooming in for a quick sniper shot or two was enough to bring the drones down, but with the constant reinforcements of enemy troops and the mortar and minigun attacks from the boss, a lot of coordination was required just to stay alive. As a team, the boss fight might have been easier, given they used careful coordination to keep everyone alive and fighting. For a single player, however, it could get pretty challenging. However, after two rounds of destroying drones, and several close calls, I finally toppled the boss.
The hour-long demo gave me enough time to mess with one character and complete one mission. What I played felt good, if a little fleeting and hard to pin down. From the sounds of things, though, The First Descendant will offer a lot of different content. A presentation during the demo noted that Nexon has expanded and deepened the story content in the game from what was previously shown in its beta tests, and will be adding specific stories for each of its 14 characters as well.
For loot shooters like this, endgame is a major consideration–it’s the content that will keep players coming back long-term. The dungeon I saw is one of the game’s higher-level areas, and Nexon said there will be 16 of those dungeons available at launch. They’ll include normal and hard difficulty levels, with the tougher versions dishing out better loot. There are also Void Intercept missions, which are The First Descendant’s real claim to fame. These are battles against absolutely massive creatures and look like they have the ability to create some intense, memorable moments that’ll help keep The First Descendant interesting over the long term.
I didn’t really get a sense of the loot system in my limited play time, but I was impressed by the level of customization and build-crafting that The First Descendant seems to make available. In addition to all the guns and the many characters with their own special abilities, there are “modules.” The First Descendant has something like 560 of these, which you can equip in different combinations to further customize how you play with a series of passive bonuses and alterations to your guns and abilities.
On paper, all of that sounds very strong, and I enjoyed my short time with the game and the one mission I was able to play. If nothing else, the demo left me with the impression that The First Descendant is launching with a lot to do, solid third-person shooter gunplay, and character-specific elements that mix things up pretty significantly.
The First Descendant launches on July 2 for PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PS4.
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