The First Descendant is an AD for Warframe | 2024 Review
In fact, I don’t even recommend you try the former.
In fact, I don’t even recommend you try the former.
I noticed that I had not written a review for this game. I really think I should, despite my experience being quite dated (played at launch), though I imagine my sentiment will transcend time regardless. Overall: Play Warframe.
The First Descendant (TFD) was released at an interesting time when I just wanted a new multiplayer experience in my life. I was hoping I could find a game that would better respect my time and my loot, without any FOMO. Destiny 2 was at a complete lull for me. This was new. Decided to “give it a try.”
22 Hours is a lot more than just a “try” for me. I’ve played so many other games that have been infinitely better uses of my time. In some ways, I wish I could get my 22 hours back from those initial days of playing TFD. I could have chipped away at my backlog on something else.
It’s definitely catering… to a certain… audience. A “gooners paradise”, if you will. I poke fun, but truthfully, they did a great job with their character designs and outfits, and in playing a few characters I was able to unlock, their kits are actually pretty fun in their own rights. Some of the weapons are also pretty cool. I had a relatively fun time building my end game kit, and was actually pretty strong by the time I stopped playing.
But that’s the best I can say about it. The story is cliché. The writing within that story, and any dialogue that spawns from it, is hot garbage. Drop rates for certain important progress halting items FEEL abysmal. I can’t get started on the games’ economy either or we’ll be here all night. System after system is rotten to the core, much of it pointing to in-game spending as a possible solution.
But it was a fresh new game to play. There was a cool idea or synergy every once in a while. The Characters looked neat. It had its way of drawing me in for a time.
The reason that hook stopped working for me was because I had hit a point in the narrative where I needed to beat a certain boss. How difficult could that be? You spawn in teams of 5, which can be a mixed bag, but I hadn’t ever lost one of these battles. Tried it once, twice… four tries later, I’m like, what gives? Turns out, the boss was easier to kill… when you solo queue, for some reason. The game was imbalanced, the boss health scaled incorrectly. I beat it my first try solo.
I played the game a bit more over a week, and even got to the next boss. Had the same problem. Fixed with the same solution. At that point, I knew that the devs couldn’t care less about the player experience. And If they couldn’t care enough to tweak a boss to scale correctly in a patch after two or three weeks of launch, why should I bother playing at all? And with multiple additional solo tries with these same bosses on the horizon for more crap chances at a cruddy loot pool staring me down, I just broke.
So you know what I did? In frustration, I downloaded Warframe. I had put in a good 200 hours about 5 years ago, and I wanted to see how it felt by comparison. Not shocking, but it felt great. Looked great. Played great. Everything was leagues better than anything in TFD.
Imagine every system of The First Descendant, except it feels good to play. Imagine currencies dropping at a rate that doesn’t make you want to rip your hair out. Imagine a story and dialogue that are actually interesting and gripping enough to draw you IN. Everything I liked about The First Descendant is vastly better, already existing in Warframe, and everything I thought was missing in The First Descendant, is guess what? Not missing in Warframe. There is no denying this. My Warframe experience after the First Descendant was so soul-shockingly good for me that I went on a multi-month, 260 hour binge of it. And I’ll never touch The First Descendant again. I have been cured.
Warframe has been lovingly handcrafted by community feedback and developer passion for over a decade, and it shows. Could The First Descendant get to a point where it’s in the same position? Honestly. I don’t think it could. My soft advice is, to play 10 hours of The First Descendant, and then 10 hours of Warframe. Spot the differences. Note how it feels. But if you just want my opinion straight?
Play Warframe, and have no regrets.
Originally published at https://backloggd.com.