The First Descendant: Why, Somehow, I've Done A Complete 180 

I haven’t played the game. I might get in but idk. However I RESPECT THE CRAP out of anyone who is willing to change their opinion based on further experiences. You are a good man.

I like that I can turn my brain off and mindlessly farm things.

Its the perfect game to kick back, mindlessly grind, and watch netflix on the 2nd monitor. My kind of game

Warframe veterans: “First time?”

Constant dopamine of progression is the biggest thing it's got going for it. Intercepts that will hard stop you unless you learn how to improve your damage or build or learn the mechanics.

The game is like 60% warframe, 30% destiny, 10% anime waifu to glue it all together. Not as fair or fast as Warframe, nor is the combat as poslished as Destiny, but man, I love Warframe and I love Destiny. If I'm between content on both of them, then yeah, this is probably something I'm gonna have a good time with.

Yes Paul yes. Join us 😈

Paul finally realized how a new Destiny player feels in 2024.

As a Warfare veteran, 16 hr turnaround time for your Descendant is good! Try waiting 3 days for your Warframe

I dropped $20 on the game, bought the battle pass, and just sitting on the rest of the currency. So far unlocked 5 characters via grind, and I’m really enjoying it. You don’t HAVE to buy anything in this game, but can see myself paying to store more unlocked characters. This was the same in warframe and something I don’t like but if I can pay $60 to get the game into a way I’m happy with, I don’t see that as an issue.

I'm at 43 hours and I'm starting to feel the power in my character and enjoying it.

Im looking forward to what happens when Paul starts hard mode void intercepts 😂

Try turning frame generation off. Some other youtuber had some problem that was fixed by turning it off. Might work for you too.

Mad respect for the open turn around, I was pretty much the same. when I was introduced to all the systems. But once I just started playing , it’s just fun .

Hey Paul I saw somewhere to Turn frame generation off, maybe that'll help you??

I really like the game. The build crafting, progression and gameplay are very fun

Warframe players used to be the nice people and this game turned them spiteful. I’ve never seen a community so desperately trying to convince people, who are enjoying a game, that they are objectively wrong for not enjoying the “correct” game.

If you do the Special Operations (horde mode missions) the leveling goes by much faster.

The gameplay is fun so it makes grinding for stuff somewhat enjoyable. In Destiny you grind for higher light level weapons and armor that you upgrade your old stuff with. Sure there are new weapons to chase but it doesn't really feel like your are building a character or weapon. Just running GM's hoping you get the right drop.

I feel the same way as you, but from the perspective of a Warframe player! Its refreshing having a new game scratch that same itch that these games did when they were new. And i also really agree about how great it is to start when it's new for everybody. That's actually the thing that i was really looking forward to the most

The only thing I bought was the battle pass and the little starter packs. I think like 30 bucks total and even had enough to pick up the same skin for Bunny. I’m actually really enjoying it. I don’t think it’s perfect but technically its monetization is on par with Warframe aside from the ability to trade and have premium currency in game.

I have had the same experience, it took me a couple of zones but now it’s got my attention I am really beginning to be engaged

I really love this game

The thing i dislike most about destiny is that even in trivial content, you dont feel like the stuff you grind for makes you strong. Whereas in TFD, i have level 100 weapons, and when im farming low-level stuff, i feel god like.

They should buff the HP and DEF by 150% and remove those 2 mandatory survival mods to enable customization

I uninstalled it for a day because I was raging mad they started what seemed to me as endgame meta halfway the story (with the dead bride boss fight), which requires you to enhance your character a lot by items that are not necesarrily easy to find and have a low drop rate. I literally tried for 5 days to find guns and stat up until I notice I had a damn energy module that extended the power of my descendent and I could actually search where I find the correct modules. I hated the boss fight timer, but I get now, that it's a leveling gate, to make sure that you're having enough damage output / character stats to proceed. And low and behold, as I was anticipating and updating modules more, I did devourerer in the first run, with random publics! I kinda like the story of the game and what I first found to be a web of crafting dependencies, I started to like because as I know more what each item's purpose is and where you can find it, it's just more relaxing to plan your gameplay in order to get what you want out of your char. That parallel gameplay creates an extra motivation to keep playing. I do tend to burn out of these types of games after the story is over and I won't do endgame too much. I'd rather try new descendents' for different playstyle and play the story again a few times. Then i'll see where I get. But I do love this game!

The First Descendant, new D2 content next week, Once Human just launched...not to mention my substantial single player backlog. I need a hyperbaric time chamber to play all these games man.

Literally same. The whole time I've been playing I've though, "this is a bad, unpolished game that's pretty soulless." And yet...I keep playing. A lot. What is happening.

So who is organizing the intervention? My guy has been addicted to live service too long. He is experimenting with fenty now lol

They gave the players what they wanted. I gave them $100 for ultimate Ajax. I leveled my regular Ajax to 40 and felt I wanted the ultimate version. I can see myself playing for a few hundred to thousand hours. New content at the end of August too.

I liked it from the beginning and absolutely love it now. Great video btw, it is overwhelming at first but once you get a grasp on everything the game has to offer on building your descendants and where to unlock other descendants makes it one hell of a good time playing.

I think what you said about getting in at the ground floor is very accurate.

Just started this game during release. I heard its like warframe but this is so much better than warframe in all ways

My new favorite game for relaxing, listening to music, and killing robot gods

Nice video Paul! There is a button in the battle pass (bottom right corner of the screen) which takes you to the "battle supply shop" where you can spend challenge tokens once you hit lvl 50 & 96, to buy cosmetics with challenge tokens you get from weekly/seasonal challenges. This pass has skins for Ajax, Lepic & Viessa as well as a couple of other weapon skins/cosmetics. Also there's been reports of the wave based "levelling" missions having a chance to drop mod slot upgrade catalysts if you finish the entire thing. Final note, I agree with your closing comment, I find this similar to Warframe in a lot of ways but it's not as overwhelming with 10 years of content to catch up on and tons of different systems to learn.

If you're using a AMD graphics card, a lot of people, myself included have been having issues with their latest update. If that's the case, roll back to the one before. Also I read your article reviewing this game a little while ago and must say I was annoyed cause I've been loving this game! After end game, yeah there is lots of grinding with unlocking characters/abilities etc. But it's good because if you get bored doing the same mission over and over, just switch to another one. There's loads of stuff to unlock as well and daily/weekly tasks to do. 130+ hours in and still going! Also it's awesome that you have posted this video. Not a lot of people would do that. You have a new subscriber! :D

I'm not a gamer. I'm a person that plays games. I like the look and feel of Destiny but I was never a big fan of first person. Warframe looked like it was trying too hard to be sci-fi like Farscape or one of those low budget sci-fi shows. So, this is my game. I also like that the devs addressed the issue of people that will join in a year or more, and trying to find a way for them to be able to progress when we're all too high in level to be bothered with some noob. The game has been out 10 days, give them time to work everything out and I think this will be a good game.

Big fan of how much stuff can be farmed concurrently tbh. Makes it feel like even if you arent getting the main drop, you want ur still getting reaources and mats for other stuff. Digging the game tbh. Glad you gave it a chance

It is repetitive for some grinds, but there is so much to do that you can always take a break from one activity and do a different one for a while.

when you get to endgame even ultimate farming gets significantly easier where you get hard mode relics that you can crack on hard mode fights that are 6% instead of 3% and then if you catalyst them (which you can get up to a 20% chance for them to drop from the mission that drop the relics instead of like the 2% it is on normal mode) you can then boost it to 12% for what were 3% drops

If only there was a game with almost identical mechanics..... except you can trade in a player driven economy if you get a rare drop you dont need.... and you can trade the premium currency meaning you can not spend a dime and just commit time to the grind and then someone will buy the rare item from you for the premium currency which you can then use to buy whatever cosmetics/boosters you want.... if only

I played in two betas (2022 and 2023) and could feel the repetitive nature creeping up fast, so I totally understand the first impression.

I was one of the first players to hop into this game during the betas because I as a long-time Warframe player, I was looking for something a little different as Destiny 2 outpaced my wallet. I can honestly say that the betas felt better to play because they gave you more experiences and resources upfront, but on the full release, I'm having a hard time maintaining interest because in Warframe, it's FAR easier to accrue the resources you need in order to craft Prime Warframes. You can also earn the platinum premium currency in-game by trading with other players. The grind is smoother, gameplay is far more fluid, there is a wider variety of enemies and activities to do and more varied landscapes and tilesets to explore. Did it take Warframe a long time to get there? Yes. HOWEVER, considering that both Warframe and Destiny have been around for 10 years, The Last Descendant could have very easily just pulled from their more complete forms and made something that eclipsed them both. Instead, they put everything that's fun about both games behind a massive paywall, otherwise, the grind is pretty grueling. As a casual player leaning on hardcore, it's very easy to see the cracks in this game and I'm going to stick with Warframe until they decide to fix the issues.

those hitches seem to be driver hangs, noticed when it happens my GPU usage just plummits to 0% so either an engine problem (shocker UE5) or some driver issue causing issues, would be nice if they could fix it

Plus as you go on you understand everything alot better so you can go after the things you need/want

I just like that I can do all quests / missions without being gatekept by party size (class item exotic mission)

i haven't experienced the rubberbanding you are having since launch so idk what might be causing it for you, but i personally really enjoy the game so far. I finished the story now and now im at the stage where im just grining for more characters and ult weapons and only after that is done i will probably delve more into hard mode. I did Kingston hard mode and that was super easy so idk if the hard mode is actually that hard if you come in with a proper kit. One of my biggest gripes with the game is that you can't die you base costume and that paints are limited in use so i kind of always feel like i don't want to use one when i get it

Paul you're one of the greatest journalist or game journalist ever. Love your articles on Forbes. keep up the good work.

quick note on transcendent mods. They are hard to get during the campaign. They drop more frequently in hard mode, especially on the hard mode bosses. Theres also some field missions with really dense mobs that you can drop them in. Target farming them is hard but you still get a shot at them. edit: and now they added hard mode dungeon group finder, they drop often enough from the boss.

I'm glad you're enjoying this game. As someone who's logged over 3,000 in-game Warframe hours, I just don't have the energy to jump into a clone. Warframe has over a decade of updates, balancing, polishing, add-ons, game-modes, and not to mention its excellent economy which I'm pretty sure this game will eventually tackle and probably figure out but its just too early. Plus Soulframe is just around the corner and I'm definitely playing that. Its good to see these developers are listening but DE has earned my trust over and over and even if Soulframe has a rough launch I'll definitely give them the benefit of the doubt and I'll enjoy the journey that unfolds as they collaborate with the community to create yet another masterpiece. I can see First Descendant being a great entry point for those gamers who missed the Warframe/Destiny train and feel like those games are too overwhelming and intimidating to jump into at this point. Which I don't agree with, I think anyone can jump into Warframe and have a blast, its when players start watching Meta build videos and feel like they MUST have certain things and they MUST grind Mastery. You don't need to do that. Just play what's in front of you, the game gives and gives and gives. I was MR06 after 500 hours of playing and I finished the starchart with Mag. Just start with playing through each planet and just have fun with the game. Just my 2 cents. I could go on forever about Warframe, so, I'll stop. :)

I understand your struggles. I’m a destiny player too to get it. I’ve been playing a game. That’s been out for longer than 10 years Warframe. this game truly does remind me of Warframe Companion. They are two different games, but the similarity is there. The constant working towards something, the constant adding of characters and abilities the craft. And so on definitely remind me of war frame. Many of us who are now playing the first descendent came from Warframe.

only negative thing i have atm is the module capacity upgrade, i havent focused farming the blueprint/materials for it properly but from first look its just a huge turn off other than that i love it, i have 4 characters at 40 and just unlocked blair all f2p

I've seen a lot of comments saying Frame Generation could be causing the visual hitching. Could well be so.

2 things you can do about the hitching and worked great for me. #1 - If you are using a 4K mouse, drop it down to 1K. I don't think the game is optimized for 4K mice, this fixed my issue. #2 - if you Pre-installed (since it looks like you are on a PC), re-install the game), this helped a little less than option 1 but I haven't had hitching since I did both. For reference, I'm on a R5-5600X/3060TI/32GB Ram playing on High visual setting getting around 65-90FPS

The people who waste their money on cosmetics are the reason cash shops exist. Seeing them complaining about the prices in the cash shop will never not be funny to me. If you can afford it, it doesn’t matter because you won’t miss a few extra bucks. And if you can’t afford it, it doesn’t matter because you shouldn’t be buying it anyways. But keep wasting money on crap you don’t need and complaining about how much someone else got you to waste on that crap. Brain dead 😂

The game is just flat out fun to play. I haven’t felt the need to spend any money. Looked at the Battle Pass for a minute to see if it was worth it and felt it wasn’t. Went right back to playing.

First Descendant has led me back to Warframe, which now makes so much more sense.

Most fun I’ve had playing a co-op game in over 15 years.

I was having the same issues as you. "hitches" After install the game on an m2 drive. I no longer have that problem

Enjoyed listening to this after having a pretty similar experience. This reminds me of anthem without flying more than anything but with a much better thought out progression and endgame. Now that I understand they are basically making money off of people that can’t restrain themselves and that nothing is essential to pay for I sort of dig the free aspect.

Certain people will really love this game. And as a Warframe and Destiny player, I look forward to how this game can evolve with the amount of time those games have had.

Kudos to you for posting this. I didn't think you gave the game enough time to judge it fairly. Honestly my big hesitation was Nexon's rng reputation, but for now I'm having fun.

As an LR 1 from warframe, this game has once again given my endless grinding a meaning. In warframe, I farm terribly low drop rate items to get a gun and then instantly delete it. As for pay for power, do what you want with that. If you wanna spend money to not play the game, go for it. I do how the cosmetic prices go down. Fashion is my endgame in every game. Edit: GO GET ENZO, there, my one nice deed of the day. I'm currently farming U Bunny in hard mode 2/4 and not having Enzo for my first couple days in hard mode meant I wasted so many codes. Last edit 10:54 be glad this ain't warframe, 72 hours and parts are 12 hours One particular frame tkae nearly a week to do, depending on how long it takes to gwt all the parts.

for me turnign off frame gen stoped the skip/runerbanding, the stuff to get extra slots is not hard to get, i thought the same way untill i got to hard mode and figured out how to farm them, have forma my bunny 8 times now without paying anything.

Ultimates i would say are not worth doing without having sharen and enzo, also in acess info you can look at decendent then while seeing the mats there you can press U to tag it then while in a a zone you can press U again to see how many of the mats you still need.

Battlepass is easily the best bang for your buck, you get 300 caliber back so it's effectively only 200, has boosters to help with the grind, ton of weapon skins and an ultimate weapon with enough copies to max out the special effect.

Respect the hell out of you tassi. Pride is a curse that a lot of people have and I appreciate you not getting consumed by it.

I feel like account progression is such an under-utilized aspect towards looter shooters and MMOs that I wish that more games in those genres would take advantage of it. Sure it's great to get a new sword or gun in WoW or Destiny but man, getting a mastery point in Guild Wars 2 that unlocks stealth while mounted for a period of time on all of my characters feels infinitely better and it's why games like GW2 and Warframe have lasted as long as they have. The future is horizontal progression, not vertical.

The game grew on me. Very fun with friends and we can final play as a four now.

It’s almost like they took a page from clash of clans with the research timer 😂😂😂

Regarding what was said about going back to a lower level area and plowing through everything, yes. BUT, one thing I felt good about was replaying some early missions and being paired with newer/junior level players and either helping them through to get a clear OR seeing how they might be struggling in a certain spot where I was struggling before leveling up and fine tuning some load out items. I dunno, pretty cool. The same thing happened to me when I was running the Kingston horde mode mission and this random Valby was an absolutely UNIT and carried us farther then I thought we were gonna go. I’ve been having fun! :)

I like the game overall. I dislike how they sell you default Bunny when she is unlocked pretty early on for free via the main quest.

When Paul talks about everyone starting near ground zero 0️⃣ that hit me. Totally agree

People like to forget that this isn't a pvp game. No such thing as p2w in pve. That's a pvp only thing.

In hard it's a lot more of target farming to get that next boss knocked out then see how the one after is and if you are back to the grind, at least in my experience. Reds drop in hard a lot more so that 1% is a lot less scary, I got the bunny one I was wanting first try on the boss I needed to farm which was amazing

for the FIX of hitching: when you spawn at a new location or area, turn off Frame generation. then Turn it BACK on. FIXED. @paul tassi

even the ultimate grinds arrnt as bad as they seem, 3% is base but you need to farm the highest rate material. then farm the stabalizer for that material. (drops from the same mission as the material..) if you get both it boost rates to 10% and boom suddenly yo get them pretty commen. even at a horrible rng shouldnt take more than a few days to farm all pieces. which is really fair.

The cash shop if a bit weird. I wannted to buy something to support the developers, but the season pass is $10, but doesn't seem useful. I guess I'll look through the skins, but I'm not into pay $50+ on a skin only for a game I'm not sure I'll stick with.

Holy f*** my good sir, you have very sensible reactions. Thank you for your service 🙏 I'm enjoying the game myself. Once you finish and turn on hard mode, level 100 gold gear only drops. so don't fret too much over grinding yet , unless you're finding it fun to and really want to.

If you are on pc look up how to change mouse polling on this game the mouse has a setting for some reason that ruins the games refresh rate because of a mouse refresh rate it changes it completely and makes the game only hitch on server side if you do this fix

The build crafting is the most fun for me. Interested in how the trading will be and when they add mm to hard mode. I also like how there are weapons that specifically add to the decendant you're playing with.

Warframe LR4 with 5k hours play time ... I got into it fast, but have positive and negative things as well. The game mostly needs optimization it just runs terribly and can crash on matchmaking on entering maps, then disconnected to start menu, but not crashed in mission yet with 60 hours and MR13.

Sorry, but this game makes an awesome first impression. I played both war frame mantis and hands-down. The nuclear scream here is 100% better than warfront. It literally shows you not just in introduce you too, but literally shows you about upgrading your weapon about upgrading ultimate weapon about upgrading your character, all the things you need to know or talk to you in the new player experience. I’m like war frame that shows you where your character configuration is and then says to drop you into the game is dropped into the game shows you the new players experience in this game was drafted in the original development cycle and or frame. It been just kind of tweaked and modified over the decadedown for a player hence the reason that in the first three days this game exceeded by like nearly 100,000 the highest concurrent hours that war frame is ever had

This game is up against Helldivers 2 for me for personal GotY. I have MAD respect for Helldivers 2 and it was a sure thing, but this is more my thing. (I just realized I was forgetting about FF7Rebirth... I think that says something)

I'm loving my time with TFD. Honestly I was skeptical at first too, but now I'm stuck on it! Technical issues is my complaint to a degree as well. Overall I'm happy with the game

I view games like this and warframe as almost a different genre from games like destiny. These games to me are about your personal account progression and collecting everything in the game. I dont worry about if other people buy the microtransactions because of the mastery rank system. There's no way to bypass and buy mastery ranks you have to spend the time leveling different weapons and descendants which shows time commitment. One descent thing i have seen on the ultinate bundles is if you were to unlock an ultimate descendant by grinding? the bundle price will reduce because you already own the descendant so then you can buy the skin at reduced cost. Things like time to craft ive never felt the need to pay to skip because if im crafting something i have other guns to play with and descendants to build etc. Big appeal with games like warframe and this game is each day i can grind something different and i know that once i unlock somethings i have it unlocked and ill never have to farm it again. Games like this whether it be just gaining exp or gaining materials almost everything you do will be making progress on your account which feels good because no matter how much time you may have to play youll feel you made some progress.

I feel like this game is more lenient when it comes to farming stuff, things can be really easy or getting lucky puts you in really good spots, just playing missions for an hour gave me plenty of upgrade materials to not have to worry about it until I progress in the main campaign or fight colossus

A large portion of the players I feel get into these kind of things for the grind, and will largely avoid the store. You know it going in so it's not that big of a deal. I'll be trying this game out this weekend, for the destiny reasons Paul mentioned.

I am enjoying it for what it is, but I don’t think it’s better or even on par with other looter shooters such as dsstiny, or even division.

i didn't know about the scaling issues, thats really disapointing, hope they fix it

There are some skins in the battlepass. You have to click that hexagon on the lower right side of the screen(same spot as the bonus point stuff but on initial BP page). The skins are awarded at BP lvl 50 and 96 iirc.

Call the private mode by yourself. You’re never playing this game solo anywhere. It is always everywhere you go. It is a four player co-op and unless you choose otherwise applies when somebody is in the mission with you I say again unless you set your mission to private you always playing a game, only argument for that is if you’re in an open area and you’re doing this message and they’re doing that mission and if you are, if you’re the only one that is activated that mission then it’s you go at all time off work co-op will try not for co-op interceptor battle for co-opyou have to choose to play a solo

Ajax has been a lot of fun and I recently found a hand cannon that’s like Hawkmoon + Ace of Spades? Yeah Goth was right I see the sauce here… Number 5 on top PlayStation games too by the way, absolutely incredible. Yeah this and Palworld are clones of other games, but let other developers put their spin on the genre, too. “Animefy” it if you will. Warframe and Pokemon aren’t forever, so it’s refreshing to have options when those games/franchies have been around for so long. I’m curious what new Descendants we will get or collabs. Dungeon Fighter Online? Maple Story? Possibilities are really endless here. Try it out it’s free on current and old gen, you’ll have a blast. But if you don’t like looter shooters that’s ok

Turn DLSS off it helps the hitching for some reason.

I hit a wall at the Pyro boss. I just can't get a group to get past it. basically I have nothing left to do now.

I had massive rubberbanding issues too. What worked for me was setting the GPU settings dropdown to "off" (or "none", I don't remember off the top of my head).

Idk if this will help you but like Destiny, Starfield, etc this game needs to run on a fast drive. I initially installed it on my storage HDD and it was bad. Reinstalled on an M.2 and it’s flawless

As a warfrmae vet with over 3,000 hours I couldn't agree more with your initial impressions and now your revised thoughts after given it some time. I was initially hesitant about this game for a variety of reasons but after playing it for 20-30 hours its a nice change of pace compared to Warframe and I'm really enjoying it so far and HAVEN'T SPENT A DIME on it

I don't lag like that. That's pretty bad. Idk why you're having that issue.

Kinston defense farm is the best leveling spot. It sucks that the higher difficulty ones don't give more experience.