It's Warframe but worse. It's Destiny but worse. It's ANTHEM but worse.
If you like endless grind looter shooters with lots of character kits to sink hours into and don't give a thought to any other design elements besides what guns to use and what mods to plug in, you'll like this. If you have anything that keeps you from enjoying noncohesive gameplay systems and the progression therein, and chafe at the prevalence of nondescript PNGs and poorly explained statuses and bolded verbs and adjectives you need to pay attention to, go elsewhere.

It's flashy and energetic and full of the most overly-designed characters and guns and setpieces that UE5 can render, but without any meaningful substance to back any of it up. Guns sound meaty but have no feeling for handling, character movements are weightless even with heavier classes, ability use has little meaningful feedback and impact and just sort of occurs, and all the animations for every character are just too much. There comes a point where the big armor pauldron has simply moved around and CLANKED too much. Sound design overall is alarmingly poor but also overengineered; booms and techno fwooooms are way too loud and frequent to be enjoyed and guns just sound like modern "insert sci-fi weapon type here" stock packs. The only sound that has any serious chop to it is the hitmarker and headshot SFX which are suitably crunchy and satisfying.

Character kits have all the hallmarks of classic archetypes we've been seeing for a decade and there's little in the way of anything new and exciting. The tank makes a big wall and sometimes a dome and sometimes does a big stomp, the damage guy has explosives and fire damage for DoT, the CC lady makes lightning jump around between enemies for big clears, you've seen all of this before. Other characters have more stock kits and very few look to be a worthwhile grind; I wouldn't know, I'm not made of enough money to buy any of these things comfortably.

When you're actually running around shooting stuff with your team of randoms or friends it can feel like there's something to latch on to. Your abilities are going off, you're shooting the same big boys together and whittling down their health bars, you're clearing groups of enemies with accidental symbiosis, and you can feel that there's something here you can latch on to. You'll pick up your new guns and mods and compare stats that mean nothing but make numbers go higher, so you'll at least feel some sense of your strength as a character getting higher. In these moments, First Descendant may finally feel like a fun time.

And then you'll be ripped out of the experience to talk to the next poorly-voiced NPC who gives you a new quest to go shoot the next Florbo, Scourge of Bungo but only after you watch another overacted cutscene and talk to 4 other NPCs who do nothing but fill out objective markers that are "Talk to Scrungo to upgrade your Bits". You'll have to talk to the one NPC who can make your mods stronger for an increasing fee every time because the idea of you upgrading anything without having to run around the social area is seemingly too much for Nexon. At least that way you can maybe see a player wearing that other character you REALLY want to play with and feel pressured into spending money to get them faster.

You've seen this grind a dozen times by now: get the Small Bit to make the Bigger Bit to make the big newest Toy to play with. Run the same activities over and over and over to collect PNGs that may not be the PNG you need right now, but at least you're collecting stuff! If you're impatient, you can pay money to skip the "research" time so you can use your new Toy sooner. Uh-oh, what's that? The rush payment is just a little too much for just one pack of premium currency? Hope you don't work minimum wage to afford that rush AND the new skin that other player was using that looks REALLY cool. And the premium battle pass, because it's free to play but not free to progress.

It's nothing new, it's the same stuff we've seen time and time again from these kinds of games. It's slop. It's artists turned loose with no oversight and designers answering to overlords trying to make a functioning videogame out of the disparate art assets being turned in. A producer steps into the office to see a demo and leaves 5 minutes in because it runs. An investor is at his own little desk running projections and salivating. If you get enjoyment out of this type of stuff, then you'll be comfortable here. If you're at all tired of modern looter shooters and especially F2P ones at that, you've already skipped this.

It's Warframe but worse. It's Destiny but worse. It's [i]ANTHEM[/i] but worse. If you like endless grind looter shooters with lots of character kits to sink hours into and don't give a thought to any other design elements besides what guns to use and what mods to plug in, you'll like this. If you have anything that keeps you from enjoying noncohesive gameplay systems and the progression therein, and chafe at the prevalence of nondescript PNGs and poorly explained statuses and [b]bolded[/b] verbs and adjectives you need to pay attention to, go elsewhere. It's flashy and energetic and full of the most overly-designed characters and guns and setpieces that UE5 can render, but without any meaningful substance to back any of it up. Guns [i]sound[/i] meaty but have no feeling for handling, character movements are weightless even with heavier classes, ability use has little meaningful feedback and impact and just sort of occurs, and all the animations for every character are just too much. There comes a point where the big armor pauldron has simply moved around and [b]CLANKED[/b] too much. Sound design overall is alarmingly poor but also overengineered; booms and techno fwooooms are way too loud and frequent to be enjoyed and guns just sound like modern "insert sci-fi weapon type here" stock packs. The only sound that has any serious chop to it is the hitmarker and headshot SFX which are suitably crunchy and satisfying. Character kits have all the hallmarks of classic archetypes we've been seeing for a decade and there's little in the way of anything new and exciting. The tank makes a big wall and sometimes a dome and sometimes does a big stomp, the damage guy has explosives and fire damage for DoT, the CC lady makes lightning jump around between enemies for big clears, you've seen all of this before. Other characters have more stock kits and very few look to be a worthwhile grind; I wouldn't know, I'm not made of enough money to buy any of these things comfortably. When you're actually running around shooting stuff with your team of randoms or friends it can feel like there's something to latch on to. Your abilities are going off, you're shooting the same big boys together and whittling down their health bars, you're clearing groups of enemies with accidental symbiosis, and you can feel that there's something here you can latch on to. You'll pick up your new guns and mods and compare stats that mean nothing but make numbers go higher, so you'll at least feel some sense of your strength as a character getting higher. In these moments, First Descendant may finally feel like a fun time. And then you'll be ripped out of the experience to talk to the next poorly-voiced NPC who gives you a new quest to go shoot the next Florbo, Scourge of Bungo but only after you watch another overacted cutscene and talk to 4 other NPCs who do nothing but fill out objective markers that are "Talk to Scrungo to upgrade your Bits". You'll have to talk to the one NPC who can make your mods stronger for an increasing fee every time because the idea of you upgrading anything without having to run around the social area is seemingly too much for Nexon. At least that way you can maybe see a player wearing that other character you REALLY want to play with and feel pressured into spending money to get them faster. You've seen this grind a dozen times by now: get the Small Bit to make the Bigger Bit to make the big newest Toy to play with. Run the same activities over and over and over to collect PNGs that may not be the PNG you need right now, but at least you're collecting stuff! If you're impatient, you can pay money to skip the "research" time so you can use your new Toy sooner. Uh-oh, what's that? The rush payment is just a little too much for just one pack of premium currency? Hope you don't work minimum wage to afford that rush AND the new skin that other player was using that looks REALLY cool. And the premium battle pass, because it's free to play but not free to progress. It's nothing new, it's the same stuff we've seen time and time again from these kinds of games. It's slop. It's artists turned loose with no oversight and designers answering to overlords trying to make a functioning videogame out of the disparate art assets being turned in. A producer steps into the office to see a demo and leaves 5 minutes in because it runs. An investor is at his own little desk running projections and salivating. If you get enjoyment out of this type of stuff, then you'll be comfortable here. If you're at all tired of modern looter shooters and especially F2P ones at that, you've already skipped this.