The First Descendant Is A Loot Shooter With A Ton Of Customization
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.
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.