Performance Issues on PC
When I played The First Descendant on PS5, there was some heavy frame rate stuttering in the first Battlefield. It would have been game-breaking if persistent throughout the experience, but subsequent regions were much better. PC performance is a completely different matter, with reports of freezes, frame rate drops, crashes and more, even for those with powerful rigs. Further fixes will undoubtedly roll out to improve the same, but right now, it’s far from the ideal way to play for some (which is a shame because the visual fidelity is pretty high).
Enemy AI
I’ve had my share of baffling fights with the enemy AI and can confirm how utterly terrible it is at times. Grapple to a high enough location, and they seem incapable of responding when they’re not blindingly running in, trying to leap up to you. On the other hand, there have been plenty of encounters where they simply don’t miss and nail every shot like a washed MLG pro. It’s almost early Redfall-esque in how wildly it swings, making for an annoying experience. I’m not expecting Half-Life-style Marine Grunts in terms of intelligence but at this point, they would probably make for a more balanced affair.
Bullet Sponge Enemies
Scaling difficulty in any looter game is challenging, especially when you must account for characters and weapons that deal tens of thousands of DPS. Nevertheless, the higher difficulties that turn enemies into damage sponges feel like they could be toned down a bit. Even if this is a sci-fi post-apocalyptic title, the power fantasy is somewhat dulled when your enemies can soak up so much damage and keep going. It’s a balancing act, so we’ll see how Nexon approaches this with future updates, but hopefully, it emphasizes more tactical enemies and mechanics over cranking enemy health up.
Lack of Movement Options
Once you’ve played Warframe and experienced bullet-jumping, it’s hard going back to your average looter shooter. However, every game has its share of traversal mechanics that feed into the overall loop. Destiny 2 has Eager Edge swords, mid-air dashes, grapples, slides, dodges, crouching, double and triple-jumping, you name it. The Division 2 lets you tactfully shift from one piece of cover to another (sometimes slide) and vault over cover to fit its more grounded combat.
The First Descendant has running, jumping and grappling – that’s it. No crouching or sliding. Some Descendants, like Kyle, have movement options tied to their Overkill while Bunny can increase her sprinting speed with an ability but that’s it. Long story short, more movement options, please.
Descendant Instructor’s Text Speed
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re not a Warframe veteran or completely new to looter shooters in general. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a character that could explain the game’s systems and mechanics, like why dismantling a Reactor is ideal and useful? Fortunately, Nexon thought of such a character in the Descendant Instructor.
Unfortunately, they forgot to regulate his text speed, and he has a lot to say. Imagine reading entire swathes of information in just three seconds, never mind processing it. No confirm button or anything to indicate you’ve understood. This is one issue I can see getting hotfixed soon (like Hard Mode dungeon matchmaking), but even in the game’s relatively short life cycle, it’s still irritating.
Body-Blocking Allies
Who doesn’t love body-blocking in a PvE-focused game, especially when your allies hinder your movement? Imagine playing a character like, say, Bunny, who has running around and slaughtering mobs built into her kit. Wouldn’t it be funny to try doing this while your allies constantly get in your way? Imagine playing as Sharen and going invisible, only to have others collide with you en route to executing an enemy. It’d be one thing if they blocked your shots, but these movement hindrances are no good.
Level Design
I wasn’t a big fan of the gameplay loop for story missions, and a lot of it was due to the level design. You may run into some light platforming or have the ability to grapple to different places, but for the most part, many of the levels feel uninteresting. It’s not the worst problem for Battlefields, though it certainly doesn’t compel me to want to explore them. However, the instance dungeons, which make up the actual story missions, all feel monotonous and dull – it’s a simple run from point A to B to C, much like the old Destiny 1 strikes. Some of the Colossus fights take terrain into account, especially when you have to platform to avoid some attacks, but they’re even more visually dull.
Repetitive Quests
It also doesn’t help that many of the quests feel repetitive. The dungeons don’t have any deeper mechanics – many of the bosses boil down to shooting them continuously and then shooting whatever defense mechanisms to continue whittling away at their health.
Most activities on the field are similarly dull – you can choose to kill waves of enemies during a Void Fragment, kill waves of enemies while hacking three objectives, kill waves of enemies while attacking three points, kill waves of enemies while escorting a drone and kill waves of enemies while defending something. Looter shooters do have that “turn your brain off appeal” but surely there can be some more variety than this (and no, the horrendous Encrypted Vault mini-game doesn’t count).
Lack of Interesting Skills
In a looter shooter with multiple characters, it helps to have distinctive kits. Bunny is cited as one of the better Descendants, especially early in the game since her charge meter and electric aura encourage running around. Being able to dispel that energy into a powerful blast, let alone increase the damage on her aura, is great. However, that’s the extent of her complexity, and many other Descendants follow the same routine.
Except for Lepic, of course, whose modus operandi boils down to “Throw a grenade, increase skill power and add burn effect, then throw a different grenade.” Or the barriers for Ajax and Kyle – the former is stationary and can deal damage back to enemies when upgraded, while the latter can be moved around. Character-specific Transcendent Modules do alleviate this to a decent extent. However, it would be nice if the base kits offered more variety or the Modules encouraged more experimentation a la Warframe.
Lack of Free Premium Currency
Imagine an in-game store where everything is tied to premium currency (aka, Caliber). Wouldn’t it be nice for those who are free-to-play to earn some of that while playing the game? You could argue that this is how The First Descendant makes its money and how necessary the microtransactions are, but having a smidge of Caliber, perhaps to obtain more paint options due to the ridiculousness of the current system, won’t break the bank. For that matter, neither will adding Caliber to the free track of the Battle Pass while increasing the amount obtained from the Premium track.
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