I Am Addicted To ‘The First Descendant,’ It Is A Problem

I Am Addicted To ‘The First Descendant,’ It Is A Problem

Valby

The First Descendant

I am staring at a number I’m not quite sure I can believe. 135.6 hours. That is how much time I’ve put into The First Descendant, a game that was released 20 days ago on July 2. That’s essentially 7 hours a day of just this game, in an era when I’m supposed to be juggling a bunch of others plus TV shows and movies I need to cover. Instead, essentially every hour I am not writing or spending with my family I am playing this game.

This is a full-blown addiction, something I cannot remember experiencing since some of the highs of Destiny or way back in my Diablo 2/3 grinding days when I did not have all these responsibilities. Hell, I was playing five minutes before I started this article, farming gold and checking my materials and characters that finished “cooking” overnight. When I start playing games in the morning, that’s when you know it’s bad. It’s why I force quit Marvel Snap.

I have said before that I cannot make the case that The First Descendant is a good game. But the longer I play the more I’ve realized that when you get past the muck this has somehow created one of the most compelling, most addicting endgame loot grinds I have ever seen. If I had to sum it up in a word it would be investment.

You essentially can never run out of things to do in this game and as of yet, it has not stopped being fun to pursue these things even yes, in repetitive, often barely interesting activities. It is the ultimate “numbers go up” game, albeit ironically, it’s sometimes “numbers go down” when you prestige guns and characters to make their mods cost less so you can put more of them on and get stronger that way.

What’s the loop here?

The First Descendant

Nexon

Forbes VettedFor You

Farming Guns and Characters – While it can depend based on what you’re going for, the game essentially makes you do pieces of the entire game, while also relying on typical looter RNG luck. But when it hits, the dopamine is an explosion.

To use Destiny terms, for materials and “engrams” (called Amorphous Materials”) here, you need to farm a combination of Outposts, essentially public events on the map, Infiltrations, essentially strikes, Void Reactors (tough minibosses) and Void bosses (the hardest bosses in the game). An engram will open usually after a Void Reactor or Void boss kill, and you’ll have anywhere from a 3% chance to a 38% chance to get what you want.

Prestiging – This is only half the battle, however, and things get extremely extended from here. You want to power up your weapons and characters with mods that amplify things like fire rate and crit damage on guns, and health and skill damage on characters. Mods cost a lot of materials to upgrade, so you’ll have to farm up that currency (players are finding increasingly fast farms as time goes on).

Then, you farm for the ability to permanently upgrade and prestige a gun or character. An incredibly rare item called an Energy Activator will permanently increase you mod capability by a large amount. Then, you farm your gun or character to the max level of 40, reset them, and now one of you mods will cost half of what it did. A 16 power one will now be 8 power, and then guess what? You can put another 8 power mod in there, making you stronger.

The First Descendant

Nexon

You can spread out your farming time to upgrade a range of characters or farm a broad spectrum of stuff. Or you can hyper focus on specific characters to “max” them and try different builds. With this much playtime I’m doing both, but right now focused on a Valby/Thunder Cage build which is in fact getting close to max.

The loop just works. There are some friction points like how annoying Void Reactors are, but Nexon has shown they are both extremely reactive to things players hate and extremely avoidant of nerfing things players love. It’s a sharp contrast to so many other looters that see players farming to much or getting to strong and they’re slapped with a nerf hammer. That just has not happened here, however it may be somewhat unbalancing the game. It’s kept it fun.

You will notice I have not mentioned microtransactions here, and they do suck and they do allow you to pay for power. But there is quite literally no time in the game that I have felt something was fully out of reach and I needed to buy it. There are no inflicted pain points that are strong enough to drive you to the store. I have spent $60 on the free game. But that was for some cool outfits for my favorite characters, and lord knows I’ve gotten my $60 worth here already. It feels like the moment I succumb and pay for power, this game will be over for me. I have not done that, however, nor plan to, based on how things have been going. I just don’t feel that pressure.

If you try The First Descendant and hate it, I get it. The beginning, the campaign very much give a poor first impression. But if you are bored with Destiny and miss hardcore grinds like Borderlands or Diablo, this may be for you. It’s certainly been for me.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.

Read More

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *