The First Descendant

“The gameplay loop is tremendously grindy, the skins are expensive, and it has a ridiculous overly massive amount of resources to keep up with and long cooldowns/craft times. It really took all the fun out of it and feels like money milker mobile game kind of gameplay, but not as bad.”

“The average human life lasts roughly seventy to eighty years, which when translated into hours becomes a number large enough to make people feel comfortable wasting some of it on hobbies, relaxation, and games, yet somehow The First Descendant manages to take that enormous block of time and convert it into a slow mechanical ritual where the player repeatedly eliminates the same groups of enemies across the same arenas not for excitement or discovery but for microscopic fragments of materials that trickle into your inventory with the generosity of a leaking faucet. Because the real objective of the game is not fighting enemies but fighting the calendar itself, as every weapon, character, or meaningful piece of equipment exists behind a chain of grinding so long that it begins to resemble a part-time occupation, forcing you to collect components for hours, sometimes days, only to reach the next stage where the game politely informs you that you may now wait additional hours while the item is 'researching,' transforming what should be a fast-paced action experience into a bizarre factory simulator where your reward for grinding is the privilege of waiting even longer. Somewhere in the background sits the quiet alternative offered by the store page, glowing softly like a neon shortcut, gently suggesting that all of this suffering could disappear instantly if you were simply willing to exchange a small mountain of real money to unlock the same weapons, the same descendants, the same equipment that the game otherwise expects you to farm for what feels like a thousand hours of repetitive missions, turning the entire experience into a strange ultimatum where you either surrender vast portions of your free time to the endless cycle of farming identical enemies for microscopic rewards or open your wallet and skip the torture entirely. To complete the performance, the cosmetic system stands nearby like a final insult, offering the choice between walking around the battlefield dressed like a factory default mannequin or paying sums of money large enough to fund a modest grocery trip simply to look like one of the characters displayed in the promotional trailers. This creates a situation where the game technically contains exciting weapons, powerful descendants, and impressive gear but hides them behind a wall of grinding so tall that by the time you finally reach the point where the game becomes genuinely enjoyable, you have already sacrificed a measurable percentage of your actual lifespan just to get there.”

“All bosses have the exact same health gate mechanics with the floating balls. The only thing in this game that has variety is the colossuses. The gunplay is mediocre as well; both Warframe and Destiny have more satisfying and unique weapons with better shooting mechanics to back it up.”

“The average human life lasts roughly seventy to eighty years, which when translated into hours becomes a number large enough to make people feel comfortable wasting some of it on hobbies, relaxation, and games, yet somehow the first descendant manages to take that enormous block of time and convert it into a slow mechanical ritual where the player repeatedly eliminates the same groups of enemies across the same arenas not for excitement or discovery but for microscopic fragments of materials that trickle into your inventory with the generosity of a leaking faucet, because the real objective of the game is not fighting enemies but fighting the calendar itself, as every weapon, character, or meaningful piece of equipment exists behind a chain of grinding so long that it begins to resemble a part time occupation, forcing you to collect components for hours, sometimes days, only to reach the next stage where the game politely informs you that you may now wait additional hours while the item is “researching,” transforming what should be a fast paced action experience into a bizarre factory simulator where your reward for grinding is the privilege of waiting even longer, and somewhere in the background sits the quiet alternative offered by the store page, glowing softly like a neon shortcut, gently suggesting that all of this suffering could disappear instantly if you were simply willing to exchange a small mountain of real money to unlock the same weapons, the same descendants, the same equipment that the game otherwise expects you to farm for what feels like a thousand hours of repetitive missions, turning the entire experience into a strange ultimatum where you either surrender vast portions of your free time to the endless cycle of farming identical enemies for microscopic rewards or open your wallet and skip the torture entirely, and to complete the performance the cosmetic system stands nearby like a final insult, offering the choice between walking around the battlefield dressed like a factory default mannequin or paying sums of money large enough to fund a modest grocery trip simply to look like one of the characters displayed in the promotional trailers, creating a situation where the game technically contains exciting weapons, powerful descendants, and impressive gear but hides them behind a wall of grinding so tall that by the time you finally reach the point where the game becomes genuinely enjoyable you have already sacrificed a measurable percentage of your actual lifespan just to get there.”

“Cons: too grindy - really small chance to get materials per missions, use those materials to have another small chance to get the items you are looking for, then use those materials and other resources that you have to spend more time to farm to make a couple parts, then use those parts to finally make something that you want descendants/weapons/ect.”

“Played when it first came out it looked amazing but as you play you find it took everything bad from destiny and warframe slapped it into one game and said here ya go have fun....oh and don't mind the issues just focus on the sexy and not on the bugs/crappy story/ammo issues/time waste/or the huge amount of money for one outfit that you may or may not be able to use on their ultimate for....of and farming their piece is nightmare fuel thanks to trashcan drop rates so better your luck is really good but then again its Nexon alot of their games have issues and they barely go in and fix them”

“Although I love the game's idea, mechanics, visuals and so on, the optimization leaves much to be desired. I completely fulfill more than the minimum specs and the game is still completely unplayable, reaching only 20 unstable fps on the lowest settings possible. This is my main issue. There's also small bugs even after all this time. Please Nexon, fix your game, because deep inside I love it.”

“Running on 32GB of RAM, 4080 Super and a Ryzen 9 7900x, and I'm getting stutter issues, lowered the frame rate, graphics, and tweaked more settings.”

“The latest update is 'graphically broken' and poorly optimized.”

“The monetization in this game is the worst I have ever seen, period.”

“The microtransactions are openly and shamelessly predatory, which is disgusting to me when comparing it to Warframe.”

“Monetization is incredibly predatory and excessively aggressive.”

“The game is very poorly optimized, unplayable, more bugs than in the beta test, I am very disappointed with the game; you actually ignored the beta tester poll and you broke the game even more than it was in beta.”

“I've played for 2.1k hours perfectly fine, but after a PC cleanup and updates, it totally screwed up the first descendants' optimizations; support was unhelpful and the server is crap. The game destroys your PC; it's like smoking for PCs, poorly optimized, badly done and rushed.”

“Performance issues and massive stuttering with a good PC and settings turned down; constantly stuttering and freezing no matter what setting you change; game still crashes basically every 1-2 hours and desperately needs optimization.”

“The storyline fails to captivate, with weak character development and unconvincing dialogue.”

“Literally every aspect of this game is boring, the only thing worth mentioning is the character design.”

“Tldr: combat is slow and boring, movement is slow and boring, story is boring (then again I did start skipping through it so maybe it goes hard idk), and finally the character design is unoriginal in its entirety.”

“Game is unplayable, even cut scenes freeze, mouse freezes, player freezes, fps unmanageable, public spaces gets 2 fps, absolute crap.”

“My only gripe with this game is the fact that you can't take screenshots on win11, the game freezes often upon tabbing out of the game, as well as a long initial load time.”

“Bro, I can't even get into the 'press enter' screen, because the game freezes when showing logos and then bricks my whole PC after waiting to try to get into the screen.”

“The soundtrack for this is the most bland, unoriginal, painfully mediocre OST that is devoid of even a speck of character or craftsmanship.”

“The music is corny, the voice acting is corny, and the lack of character customization in a generation when that comes standard in a game makes this a 3/10 at best.”

“The voice acting is bad, the music doesn't evoke anything from me or even match the pacing of the game, the guns don't have balls, your characters don't make sounds as they're running and walking, the environments don't have any ambiance; it's disturbingly dull and lifeless.”

“Constantly disconnecting from the game is not funny.”

“This is not funny at all or entertaining.”

“I mostly pass out doing this boring story. I have played this game much back in beta and then now; the story progression is awful. You do like 3-4 same missions and keep repeating those for the next 1-2 hours to unlock a good cutscene (e.g. that Jeremy fight), but the problem is the same boring events you need to keep doing. I was already tired of it, but they keep giving those in each region.”

“On top of it being a pretty boring story with very forgettable characters, I, no joke, think this might be one of the worst campaigns in the history of live service games and maybe games as a whole.”

“Played a fair bit; gameplay is fun for the most part and I managed to complete the main campaign and a bit of hard mode, which is literally the same but harder with better rewards. Hoping the game becomes more innovative going forward because with a stale, boring story and a painful grind, the quests become old quick, as they are pretty much the same type of thing in every new battlefield you discover with the only difference being difficulty and bosses, although even some of the boss types are reused, like who is Greg and why are there so many clones of him?!”

“It is clear the developers did not care to follow through with making a replayable game you can spend all day on.”

“This game on release felt lacking, has no replay value - all grinding after grinding, there is no feel of accomplishment.”

“Content drought lasts for months at a time and when they do release content, it's finished in 2 hours with little to no replayability.”

“The newer maps often feel large but empty, lacking atmosphere and variety.”

“The game also seems to lack in atmosphere.”

“Boring enemies, boring locations, non-existent atmosphere.”