The First Descendant

The First Descendant is to Warframe/Destiny 2 what Palworld is to Pokémon/Valheim: a game that draws so heavily on rehashed concepts that it's difficult to extract any personality from it. This does not make it bad, on the contrary: it is designed to be robust and to keep the player invested in its SF universe thanks to the spare parts stolen from its colossi of competitors. Formidably effective, The First Descendant arrives after the war without throwing any stones at the edifice.

The First Descendant offers a good looking, solid and fast experience. The characters are charming and well designed, the bosses are spectacular battles and the progression is robust. The microtransaccions are expensive but optional, and while the missions are repetitive, they are a good base for future updates.

Due to the performance problems on PS5 and Xbox Series, we are forced to deduct [10 points] here. Overall, The First Descendant does not fully exploit its potential. But the title has enough room for improvement and could therefore be expanded further in the coming weeks and months. Even the popular Destiny series was unable to convince players from the start.

The First Descendant has all the building blocks of a fantastic looter shooter, but they’re buried under a pile of monotonous quests, a terrible story, and an infuriating free-to-play model that has influenced its game design in the worst possible way. In its best moments, blasting aliens apart with both fireballs and a satisfying arsenal of weapons makes for a really great time – but at least an equal portion of my time was spent battling perplexing design decisions that tested the limits of my abundant patience. Like its peers, future updates could evolve this live-service into a much more consistently enjoyable way to spend time with friends, but for now it misses the mark too often to make its grind feel worthwhile.