The First Descendant – 15 Gameplay Details You Need to Know

The First Descendant is an upcoming free-to-play looter shooter that has undergone massive improvements since its wave of beta tests in 2023. The grapple hook traversal and unique aesthetic help it stand out amongst its competitors. Above everything, though, the transparent community engagement and response to feedback are doing wonders for the ever-expanding game. Here are 15 things you need to know before playing The First Descendant when it launches on July 2nd on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

The Grappling Hook Makes Traversal a Blast

The grappling hook was always the feature that made The First Descendant stand out over the other online looter shooters, and that’s even more true after years of beta tests. The overhauled grappling hook allows for 360-degree movement so you can swing from side to side and adjust acceleration from front to back. The icing on the cake is the grapple hook is not context-sensitive and can grapple anywhere in the environment. In addition to the enhanced mobility and inertia, grappling also plays a function in boss battles with the ability to grapple on a boss directly.

Improved Movement and Parkour Elements

The First Descendant’s movement has been refined through public beta tests for years now, and the results speak for themselves. For example, characters now mount and vault on ledges in a fluid animation instead of stiffly jumping on top of a platform. Ledge hanging allows players to focus on shooting instead of precise platforming, but also allows more variety in the platforming due to the enhanced 4-way grapple. The painstaking amount of revision the team underwent based on player feedback is laudable, and these dev notes give some confidence that the final product will deliver with smooth traversal and free movement.

Module System Allows for Expansive Build Customization

The First Descendant doesn’t feature full-blown character creation, to the dismay of some, but the build possibilities are exciting nonetheless. At launch, The First Descendant comes with over 600 Modules (previously named Runes), which modify weapon and skill parameters. Modules confer basic buffs like improved air damage and faster skill cooldowns and can even get into the nitty gritty of skill details like switching from blunt ice projectiles to sharp shards inflicting status ailments. For those who get overwhelmed by complex stat screens, they’re finally adding loadouts to swap between characters so you can use pre-existing module setups without having to start from scratch.

No plans For PvP Yet

The First Descendant is a PvE shooter first and foremost and the devs have stated they have no plans to introduce PvP in the near future. Nexon is instead focusing their attention on fine-tuning the balance of the core PvE structure for its July 2^nd release. It’s encouraging to see that they haven’t spread their net too wide in an attempt to capture a market (PvP) that they didn’t design the game around, but many are still hoping for a PvP mode in the future. It’s likely that after a year or so of updates, The First Descendant will add a PvP mode, but it’ll remain PvE for the time being.

The Cosmetic Selection Makes the Lack of a Character Creator Easier To Swallow

Characters in The First Descendant are bespoke individuals with pre-existing backstories and lore, so cannot be created from the ground-up. However, the game does give you a lot of customization options. There are character skins, weapon skins, and grapple hook skins, each with color customization. In addition to skins, there’s also spawn animations, emotes, and even UI themes to choose from. My favorite cosmetics were the aquarium tank and soda bear backpack, unfortunately exclusive to last year’s beta tests. Still, If those unique cosmetics are anything to go by, there are bound to be some very intriguing customization options to make your character stand out as the game launches and gets updates.

Open-World Fields Are More Content-Rich and Dense Since the Beta

Gone are the empty fields from the beta test days. The First Descendant is adding minigames, collectables, side quests, and more in an attempt to diversify field activities and create better density of content. The Encrypted Vault minigame “carries information and resources that the Magisters have hidden away” tying in neatly with the various collectables like Records which no doubt add to the lore of the setting. Support droids fill out the landscape giving you ammo pickups and there are other activities like Vulgus Recon Outposts and Void Fusion Reactors to enjoy when not engaged in the core PvE missions.

Online Sessions

This is a change to the sprawling open fields of early betas. Players rightly expressed how long it took to team up with players and get to their objective in these large zones, so they responded by making Missions take place in smaller battlefield maps. The density seems better balanced to allow for less dead time and more moment-to-moment combat, relegating exploration of the map to the side activities outside of online sessions.

Instance Dungeons Make for a Worthwhile Endgame

Instance Dungeons are uniquely designed to challenge players who have maxed out certain aspects of their character. These dungeons can be completed solo or co-op and have normal and hard difficulty settings. The devs have promised these dungeons to feature plenty of traps and unique puzzles besides just combat. Besides Instance Dungeons, there’s also the endgame Void Intercept Battles (basically raids) which add substantial variety to bosses with unique mechanics and higher difficulty.

Difficulty Modes Contain Different Drop Rates and Rewards

The different Mission types have their own normal and hard difficulties, rewarding the player with increased drop rates and better gear for opting in the enhanced challenge. Fields also have their own normal and hard difficulties as well, providing different enemy spawns and rewards. What’s especially cool is the modular difficulty you can impose on yourself for even juicier rewards.There’s even a drop rotation system for hard mode that allows you to identify specific loot in a field that you may need.

New Laboratory Zone Allows You To Test Various Equipment and Characters at Your Leisure

With such an intimidating amount of different gear and Modules, a zone to test it out is a much-needed convenience. The Laboratory is a unique environment with its own lore within the world of Albion that offers this kind of testing. There’s a changing station to select a Descendant and select any gear and cosmetic you want to try out with them. But this area isn’t just an empty space to shoot and swing around in wildly, you can also summon monsters to test everything out on.

Dedicated Journal and Item Library

It continues to surprise me just how many modern games lack a journal tracking progress through the game. Meanwhile, The First Descendant will include a Journal, item Library, and achievements/titles at launch. We haven’t seen any further details regarding the Journal, but the Library contains all the items you’ve collected in a 0/300 format so you can keep track of your progress. You can track target items and loot using the Library tracker too, so farming can be done with greater intention.

Might Appeal to Monster Hunter Fans With Its Large Boss Battles

While The First Descendant isn’t competing with the likes of Moster Hunter Wilds, it does feature some large boss fights complete with phases and part detachment. The ability to grapple directly onto bosses adds verticality to boss battles and makes a close-range melee build feasible. We know that normal dungeon bosses have invulnerability phases that require unique solutions like environmental puzzles and such to overcome, but we’ll have to wait and see what the new Instance Dungeon boss fights will be like when the game finally launches in July.

Convenient UX/UI With Years of Refinement

Menus were pretty rough to navigate during early betas, which prompted the team to implement tooltips, equipment compare screens, filters, and more. New menu features such as simultaneous objective waypoints during missions and at-a-glance target confirmation are much-needed conveniences that make the game that much smoother to play.

Versatile System Requirements

Based on the Unreal Engine 5 graphical fidelity and the sheer scale of the game, you’d think it would take up a boatload of memory. It’s surprising then, that The First Descendant only takes up 50 GB and 8GB of RAM on the official Steam page. It looks like you can even run The First Descendant on older hardware with its Intel i5-3570/AMD FX-8350 and GeForce GTX 1050Ti or AMD Radeon RX 570 Video Memory 4GB minimum requirement, though expect much worse fidelity and performance with that setup. Recommended requirements include 16 GB of memory, Intel i7-7700K / AMD Ryzen 5 2600X on the CPU front and GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5600XT.

Cross-Play Between PC,PS4/ PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One

Although The First Descendant is on all the major consoles barring the Switch, optimization is best suited for the PC. The team at Nexon is somewhat new to console development, having previously only done PC and mobile titles, so we should expect some bugs and optimization woes for the console versions. That being said, the team has been transparent about their dedication to console optimization, stating, “In the Crossplay Open Beta Test, we were new to consoles, so features like gamepad controls and optimization weren’t up to par.” Here’s hoping the console versions aren’t a trainwreck to play and run reasonably well at launch.

---