The First Descendant is an upcoming MMO looter shooter that has fast-paced movement, chaotic combat, and is also free to play. In a competitive space with more similar titles, The First Descendant stands out because of its broader variety of characters with unique playstyles paired with next-generation visuals. In my First Descendant Preview, I’ll talk about my experience with the early hours of the game.
Fast-Paced And Rewarding
I spent my brief time in The First Descendant with Lepic, as I am a big fan of DPS in these games. Lepic was a powerhouse and was capable of breezing through the early missions on his own without breaking a sweat. Right off the bat, after you finish the tutorial level that eases you into the game and its mechanics, Lepic has an assault rifle, a shotgun, and even a sniper rifle.
Combat in the game was fast-paced and felt rewarding, and while this was in the early game where enemies are rarely ever a challenge, it was still fun to experiment with his unique abilities that are made available during the tutorial.
Lepic’s abilities include a high-damage grenade with a fast cooldown which helps clear out groups of enemies in almost one throw. He also has a grenade that pulls all enemies to one location so you can focus your shots better, and power stream, an ability that allows him to do 20% more damage while also adding fire effects to his previous two abilities.
His best ability by far is the arm launcher which as the name implies, turns his arm into a rocket launcher capable of dealing massive damage in a good radius for 4 seconds. However, this does have a significant cooldown but can be essential for large enemy encounters.
All of my questing in the game was mostly clearing out areas of enemies, and there were a few moments where I felt overwhelmed by enemies, particularly with some of the near deaths due to me standing too close to explosive barrels.
The enemy variety also helped keep things interesting during questing, with more armored enemies taking strategy and thinking to defeat.
A Classy Title
Where Destiny 2 has 3 classes to choose from, The First Descendant has 11 characters. While the Beta I played only has 3 of them, this is still a greater variety offered to players who want more dynamic squad compositions. Each class is also unique in its own regard and while the traditional role of tank, healer, and DPS is there, even a class whose role is healing is also capable of dealing decent damage in the group and feeling more like a participant in the action than someone obligated to keep the group alive.
It will be interesting to see how the 11 playable characters pan out in the final game.
Variety is always great in a title like this, and my time with Lepic let me explore a taste of the fast-paced combat I would be in for when the title does launch and I can look forward to bringing some friends and trying out the game.
The World And Setting
The world in The First Descendant is definitely a visual marvel. With the help of Unreal Engine 5, the game looks and runs great on PC, and I rarely had frame drops or slowdowns even in the most chaotic moments. I played with the high preset across the board and faced very few problems on my RTX 3060 and Ryzen 5800H.
Your quest givers are interesting enough to give you enough exposition and reason to do your quests, but the lore of the world is also inviting enough to encourage players to explore the world on their own. While I touched on the lore at a surface level in the beta, it seemed interesting enough to keep building itself to higher levels, encouraging players to be invested enough for future content.
Summary
Wrapping things up, my time with The First Descendant preview was engaging, and while the title does show a lot of promise, it has a lot to fight against in an already saturated space. However, if what I have seen so far can be further improved upon and refined, the game has a strong potential to build an audience over time.
With free-to-play as the biggest selling point and is available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC on launch, the game is looking to reach as many players as possible which is already a great start.
The First Descendant Open Beta
If you want to get an early look at The First Descendant yourself, you can register for the cross-play open beta, which starts on 19th September 2023. You can read more on that here.
Will the game be able to push out enough content to keep its position and grow from there? We will have to wait till the launch to determine that.
What did you think of our First Descendant Preview? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This preview is based on the PC version of The First Descendant. The key was provided by fortyseven communications.
