Whether or not you like a game like this depends on your personal threshold for grinding 1% drop rates and your personal suspension of disbelief of watching women with swimsuits on take several thousand bullets to the stomach.

I'm not some young buck that gravitates towards media just because it has some tiddies on the loading screen. I was brought here by all the comparisons to Warframe and Destiny. Warframe is a game I still actively play with over a thousand hours played. Destiny quite a bit less so, I played D2 and was quickly bored by the "endgame=raids", since I'm not a hardcore player by any means my progress was quickly halted and there wasn't enough activity in the world for me to really bother with. But the gameplay itself can be fun and satisfying up to a point.

I'm not going to waste any time talking about the story. It's a framework for the gameplay and much like the two games it's copying from, you mostly forget what happened five minutes after it happened. The intro cinematic threw a lot of names at me like the beginning of a fantasy novel. "The humans were defeated by the Volges, then the Colossi came and then..." Like what are the Vulgers or whatever, what are Colossi? Is that a faction or literal? (It's literal). That Vulga boss sure looks human to me. Does the game explain that? Absolutely not! I still don't know what "Achre" is, just that we have a lot of it. Anyway, who cares. Moving on.

The game shares more DNA with Warframe than Destiny. Each zone is a quasi-open world but they're mostly just instanced shooting galleries with precious very little in between the missions. You may run into some players that help you during these missions but half the time they run off to do their own thing. Which I can't fault them for, they've got their own progression to get through. Sometimes I just catch a high level player just going for that 20% blueprint, so that's always nice to get some backup. But the loop is basically Warframe's relic mechanic spread across the entire loop. You do missions to get some token, then you either go fight a Colossi or do some elite fight planetside to crack the token open, very much like WF's relics. The main problem here is that seems to be the entire game so far.

The visuals seem to be a bit overdesigned which is often a problem I run into with Eastern MMO's in particular. The main villain looks like someone sat down to draw a gothy suit of armor and didn't stop adding tassels or metal fixtures for six hours. Everything shares the same philosophy to where minute by minute visuals get drowned out by all the gunfire as I spend more time looking at my health, the enemies health, and my bullet counter far more than the "looks" of anything. During cutscenes or even just finishing crafting something we're treated with some mechanical metal sound every second anytime anyone or anything does anything at all. It's so excessive and actually does the opposite of the intention; at the end of the day everything feels a bit homogeneous. Warframe also has a similar problem, but it takes the three or so designs and standardizes them. They have the knowledge that people aren't going to stop and look at the walls very much so you needn't waste more time adding panels or alien ridges. The First Descendant does not understand this distinction.

Look, I'm enjoying the game for what it is right now. I play a lot of fantasy and stealth games and sometimes I just want a nice gallery shooter. However, I can't tell you if I'm going to be playing this in another six months or not. I fear that this game may share the fate of other Live Service games, or turn into the forgettable Outriders where once you hit the end game you just hit a wall after sixty hours and just think "well, I guess I'm done here". TFD has the markings of this very problem but if they are vigilant with keeping up with the community, updates, and maybe a little buff here and there with the droprates to shed this company's previous reputation, they might have a decent competitor here. That, or they'll just cut and run like the rest of them. Time will tell. Until then, it's hard to argue with free.

The best game I can't recommend. Not at the moment. The game has a lot of growing pains that need to be ironed out before I can suggest it. Coming from Warframe, there's a lot going on here that's both great and terrible. But I'm not going to compare a game that just released to a game that's been going strong for 11 years. Despite all its flaws, it still gives me unbridled joy and I didn't know I needed a game like this.

The game feels more like an action MMO than a shooter, similar to how Firefall from 2015 used to feel. It's not exactly a bad thing, but it did feel strange during the early levels. Many of the ideas are borrowed from other looter shooters: Basic guns drop from enemies like in Destiny, and can be modded like in Warframe.

Equipment has levels and proficiency, and two guns of the same model share the same mod loadout AND proficiency. Mastering your descendant increases your stats incrementally and raises modding capacity. Gain enough proficiency with the descendant and your guns, and you can rise in Mastery rank. If you're also from Warframe this is pretty standard. Mastery also unlocks more features so newer players are not overwhelmed. While I don't like it, I understand it.

The map is divided up into Regions and Zones. Heading to the first Region, naturally only one zone is unlocked. Complete all the missions in a zone and another one opens up. Repeat until you clear every Region. Things quickly get formulaic as you progress through each mission in a zone until you reach a dungeon and return to the main city. This boils most areas down to a mission collection instead of a proper MMO zone, making the areas feel too big and too small simultaneously.

Cosmetics and Slots are only obtainable through microtransactions, and while they're not in your face, it does ♥♥♥♥ that I can't increase the amount of characters I can have at once, or amount of loadout slots without paying real money. However, 10 character slots when the game only has 16 unique characters isn't that bad. Game does have a paid battlepass too, which is not inherently bad but it's worth noting.

I couldn't get into it. Much of the story is exposition and could be trimmed. The voice actors all did decently well but there's only so many times you can hear about a McGuffin before it becomes grating. There's very little interaction between you and the BBEG, outside of them collecting the McGuffins.

I know I'm not running the strongest rig and I'm closer to the bottom end of the recommended specs, but I truly believe most of the impact on my system is from Easy Anti-Cheat and their choice of shaders. The game needs an optimization pass especially as a free to play game. The game stutters frequently regardless of hardware and crashes to desktop for no reason.

For the few descendant and weapons parts that drop from normal missions, they drop at a 20% chance. While not horrible, some of the required missions can near 8-13 minutes plus. And in extreme cases, you can end up needing to do early level missions for parts of a legendary gun, and the objectives then become "standing in place for a few minutes".

Missions sometimes hand out Amorphous Material, which are similar to void relics from Warframe, except that they have a wider variety of things inside. Unlike WF where the relic tells you which missions you can crack it open with, each Amorphous Material is bound to a specific mission needed to decrypt it. Thankfully you can check in your info codex where that is, but that feature is never explained in game. Chance to get matter, decrypt it, hope for a part you want. That's how you get a majority of the characters for free. 2 layers of RNG.

Most new features are explained via a Descendant Instructor NPC's subtitles and brief windows on the side of the screen. Despite having an extensive codex of all of the items you can and already have obtained, the tutorials are logged nowhere in-game for the player to review, often causing more confusion than understanding.

But now, the biggest offender: Soon after entering the Sterile Land region, you get a tutorial quest that introduces you to how to get new Descendants. For mine, they gave me Freyna's main blueprint, and I was hopeful that I would fully earn at least a Freyna part some time in Sterile Land. So... Naturally I progress through all 5 zones not seeing a single part in the mission rewards... Turns out, Freyna parts drop from missions in Vespers zones. And the last mission of the last zone of that region, the very last thing you do in Vespers... Has Freyna's last part. Yeah.

16 missions. 2 dungeons. before I could earn a single Freyna part.
32 missions. 4 dungeons. 10 whole zones and 2 whole regions. LITERALLY 10 HOURS after I got the quest, before I could even begin researching my first Descendant for real.
A quest that's supposed to be a tutorial, and set the pacing for the game. For a system that ISN'T how you get most descendants.

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But after going on all those rants... How could I possibly have anything positive to say? Well..

Each zone is instanced with multiple other players if you choose to play on public. Because of this structure, you can easily join in on missions in progress and others can quickly come to help you in a mission you've started. There's no greater feeling than literally jumping in on the action. Most missions keep you active and engaged throughout their 3-5 minute runtime! The variety of missions may not be the best in each area, but the grappling hook makes movement insanely fun.

Each region ends with a colossus fight that feels like an actual challenge to people that are on level. I can't tell you how much I missed alter my build so I can hit the boss's weak points and survive their attacks. The colossi are interesting in both a statistic level and mechanical level, AND come with their own enrage mechanics! They serve as a challenge for new players and a gear check to make sure you can handle the next area. And every single dungeon also comes with their own boss which are usually interesting enough to keep you on your toes, especially when doing farming runs.

Every character has 4-6 mods that can drastically alter their abilities, on top of the many essential mods needed to augment your defensive stats or your abilities. Guns come in a variety of options, ranging from pistols to machine guns, Snipers to Beam weapons... Rockets to ARs...! Because of this, you can fine-tune your builds based on your needs or preferences. And since weapons of the same model share builds, it's easy to preemptively set your build, pick up a higher leveled gun and instantly use that in the fight.

Characters all have very synergistic kits, not just with themselves, but also with other characters. Your group's dynamic changes so much based on who your team is made up of, and how they've made their builds. It does put a bit of responsibility on their parts but it keeps each encounter fresh.

The Access Info tab in your menu has information on literally everything in the game, from basic materials to Modules and their drop locations, to character and weapon acquisition. You can track specific parts for characters or weapons so you don't have to keep tabbing back in to your menus over and over again... However tracking does NOT tell you where the drop location is after it's set.

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