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

[Music] all right I am back with another first descendant video uh today is a bit of a MPA in which surprising even uh myself I have done a more or less complete 180 on what I feel about this game um initially I said it sucked and that I was not impressed um people who did like it were saying that uh I was judging it too quickly I mean it was a first impression and I don't think it makes a very good first impression but I now have 45 hours in the game and it's really started to click with me and I said this on Twitter and I want to kind of go over um I am playing lives which is why I'm just sort of around I want to show a few things in town uh I wanted to go over why this is I am not trying to make the case that this is like an explicitly good game that like everyone should play and try I'm going to say why I've started really liking this game and why it started to click with me um my biggest issue my really main issue right now is technical problems and like you probably already seen like my character just jump around I cannot figure out how to fix this it gets worse uh in a group of players but even playing solo I'm getting these these hitches and it doesn't have to do with my internet my settings it it's driving me crazy but outside of that that is that is definitely my main issue um I will say that what really started to click was when you get into these later Maps um mainly these three I'm not a fortress yet uh this gets a lot more interesting in terms of the types of bosses you fight uh to get there and void intercepts um the way you can start really scaling up your your character's power and the fact that the missions here get a little bit more in depth whereas in these Maps they're really really Bare Bones it's like defend one zone Kill 30 enemies that's it some of these areas do have some pretty more involved missions like there's one where you're like scaling a whole Towers enemies spawn and like it's you know and and I'd say the the strike infiltration missions are getting better um it does remain an issue that some of these grinds are not great especially when you have to kind of go back and lowlevel grind things that are just sort of cakewalks I think this will change once I get to hard mode um and everything sort of scales up a bit with better drop rates but that is is sort of the main issue right now uh if I had to sum it up the main reason I'm I'm liking this now is because it feels like a game that is not just a fresh start and we're all starting kind of at Ground Zero here um but it's it's something where I feel like I'm really working towards stuff at all times and this is something I've not felt in um you know my main game Destiny for a while I don't think this is Destiny's fault Destiny is obviously a 10-year-old series and it it's very hard to like keep building new things you're really working toward when your power level just sort of inches up and you're you're at the same power all the time and you're just kind of going for God rolls of of new weapons that are not that different than your old ones but like that's the setup it's still really fun to play I'm Not dogging in Destiny but this is something that um first descendant offers me that I think Destiny doesn't so in this time where Destiny's content is a little more spread out now uh I really think that this is scratching itch for me that um I have not really felt in a while since maybe Diablo 4 got got better where they in introduce kind of new more interesting grinds but again this is brand new it's still you know I'll give it this is a honeymoon period And I'm not saying I'm going to play this for 400 hours but this is why it's working for me right now um I've also I I understand the idea that this has shitty microtransactions and it does um the microt CS here are are not good you can instead of just grinding for a character and earning it you can just pay this is essentially the equivalent of like three bucks to instantly unlock them I think that's shitty and it negates a a kind of core pursuit of the game there are what they do with the Skins is also very funny um Let me let me find on bunny here so like for instance on bunny uh if you want like like okay so there's you can get this pink bodysuit but if you want uh you know the makeup to match the bodysuit with these little bunny ears you have to buy a separate bundle because it doesn't come with the thing and everything is sort of um mismatched here and like oh if you want the helmet instead that's a separate thing too like it does some really crap things like that um but like I I bought a skin I thought that this was cool I wanted I didn't buy the ass skin but I just thought it was a cool recolor and cool hair and I thought it was I just wanted to differentiate myself and like I don't have a problem spending money on stuff like that as I have done in many games where I've invested time I've bought you know Cosmetics here and there here uh it sells boosts it sells some amount of items that will help you uh to some extent um some of these are are packages I don't think you can Reby but um it's and then this is just straight up pay for power if you buy ultimate version of these characters for an insane amount of money you will start with more slots for more potential um upgrades something that is very hard to earn in game so that's shitty but what I found is like you can just sort of ignore all this and you know again the only thing I purchased is like a skin or two where I think if you just sort of ignore the store exists and resist the temptation um it is fun to grind out uh a lot of these characters like yes sometimes it can be frust frustrating if you don't get the drops you want but um you know I have three now I have bunny I have via who I started with I have fra who I had to earn and I just unlocked Sharon um I'm working my way toward a couple other ones um there are what I think there's 21 total and what what I found here is like these are grinds certainly and it does require you know a good amount of luck to land the things and and a good amount of farming but like it's all pretty doable I'd say outside of the ultimate variants which are nuts grinds it's all decently doable to grind out these characters once you have the content unlocked a lot of the pieces are you know depending on if you're doing the right activity like a 38% drop rate for a lot of these things and then the other materials you need are pretty easy to just like go and farm one thing I like about the way this is set up is like the UI could do some work but you go into these research things and you hit acquisition info and it will tell you exactly where you need to go to farm stuff um again any if anything I say here is from Warframe like fine but I have not played Warframe in ages so um I'm just talking about what works for me in this and so this stuff I haven't I'm not able to unlock it yet so I can't get him but if I progress a little more I can start farming him um and it it really tells you kind of what you want to pursue and where so if you want a certain weapon and you got to assemble these pieces for it like okay I got to go you know do this void Fusion reactor event or I got to farm this boss and I I like at any given time having a bunch of stuff I'm working toward this can be farming a weapon this can be uh farming these materials which will allow you to upgrade your characters um so you're you're constantly investing in you know upgrading your weapon mods and then upgrading your descendant mods uh you know you'll hit a Max but then you can Farm to get past the max that is a pretty tough Farm but it's still something can work toward um also another course system I like in this is you are sharing progress across all these characters and every time you get a new character it's not like you're starting over from scratch the way this works is that if you start a new character so the one I just got is Sharon who's only level 22 out of a Max of 40 she can start with all of your she can uh use your level 81 really good machine gun which means she can at least be competitive in higher end content rather than needing her to go through the whole low-level process again and like rank up and like get you know a level 20 gun a level 30 gun like you can skip all this and you're still a little weaker you have less health and and stuff like that and you'll be a little more fragile but you are at Baseline decently strong compared to your other characters uh the leveling process is is irritating cuz it does take a while and the best way to level Farm is like really dull really lowlevel activities um but again you're you're so far ahead here where all of these mods are shared across all characters so if you're making progress with one mod you're making progress on all of your characters especially for really basic stuff you're going to use like defense or this thing which gives you more slots or like more skill power um and then some of these are going to be specific like I only have one toxic character so this is only good on frer right now but a lot of the Baseline stuff you can share and again this will allow these characters to succeed in higher end content like I'm the current maps I'm running with my maxed out high gear characters I'm I'm playing alongside players that are like level 14 level 25 and they don't suck they don't really suck because you know it's it's possible to um you know keep up based on the way the system works so that's why I feel like earning characters and unlocking new characters feels good because not only is it just it's nice when they drop and that's like a good feeling in a looter obviously um but it's it's good that you're sort of at this head start start uh that other games would not really allow Destiny does this to a certain extent you can especially now they they just started like sharing power level across uh characters in the sense that like your drops will be that high level but this one allows just all of your weapons all of your upgrades to carry over and it's just that you have to level them and that's really the only thing um besides that there are you know there are certainly annoyances in here the whole timed research thing is is very annoying like that's clearly a mechanic where they just want you to pay to skip it but like give again like given that there's so much stuff to be doing at any given time oh I can actually craft BBY now that was my last piece I needed so I'm about to unlock another character in 16 hours which that's annoying sure that's annoying and very stupid but like again you're doing so much other stuff in a given basis like if I can't play her till tomorrow like it doesn't really matter I don't need her like urgently for something now it's just all of these characters are sort of a long-term Pursuit and you're going to end up kind of building them all up and picking your favorites and so for Volby for instance I think I already like I have uh a mod that has dropped for her let me see if I can find this which is like one of the you know super rare mods um these are like character specific so this is a Transcendent mod that does not have a level attached to it that can be used you know whenever that only works on Volby so as soon as I research Volby I'm going to throw this on her and that's like something cool that I got uh you know for her this is true this is for Ajax this is for Blair this is for jabber these are characters I don't have yet um but once I work toward them and unlock them I'm going to have instant access to these I did find a VSA one uh the drop rates on these are kind of nuts so this has just been sort sort of luck that I've gotten these so if you're like Target farming one that is going to be very difficult um certainly and then the grind to increase your module capacity is is exhausting too because one of the things is like a 3% drop rate and like that's that's very poor and it can be gotten around by the ultimate versions of characters I don't think they just straight up sell energy activators maybe they're in the battle pass the battle pass kind of sucks there's no act I haven't bought the battle pass there's no actual skins in here um that I can see I think there's something in here there there was something I found where bonus shop I don't know there were a couple skins from like challenges or something you could do that I don't even know how to find that anymore um but it's it's not very much so I'm not really motivated to buy the battle pass like this you know the the some of the Skins here are actually like pretty cheap like the one I got for bunny that's like a kind of a cool recolor is um it was like a buck 25 which again it should probably be free like it's essentially a Shader or whatever but like you know St the Cosmetic ones could be worse the the bad ones are the $100 ultimate things but again it's not mandatory I I think you just don't really need to pay attention to the microtransactions and you can have fun and it's not a PVP game and I just wrote an article about how you're you're playing this game mostly solo uh because the enemy scaling is just so terrible uh on higher levels that you want to do bosses you want to do a lot of the strikes uh solo um so this it really starts clicking later on and if people bounce off this initially because they see all these complicated systems they see the microtransactions I understand that I'm not saying you're you're wrong to think that uh I fully get that and I had the same first impression and I I did almost quit this so I'm like I get what this game is going to be like this is just going to get really annoying but like it's it got better instead I got better I I figured out how to do at least some mildly satisfying grinds and like it is sort of mindless and it takes a certain type of player to you know enjoy doing kind of syy grinds all the time uh but galian brought this up where it feels like Borderlands in a lot of ways where there are obviously people who would just Farm the same boss over and over and over a million times to get that one drop oh this glitching it's killing me I'll try to reset my internet again but but it's it's that it's similar to that philosophy where yes some of the drop rats can suck but like if you want something to farm if you want long-term things to work toward this is something that you can uh pursue and work toward in the future and where am I going I I think it's just a fun kind of leisurely Pursuit and like it's not been leisurely for me because I've been pretty obsessed with it I've been grinding very hard but you know in in downtime between games if this is your genre I don't think it's Reinventing the wheel certainly I think it has stolen almost everything from Warframe it certainly stole some icons from Destiny as we saw uh and it is not the most original it is Wu how do you even know how to pronounce it Wu waiu uh focused with these you know hot chicks and whatever but like it whatever I don't care I'm not going to deduct points for that um it's very engaging to me now it was not very engaging at the start but as you progress um I've really had a a good time kind of mastering uh a lot of the boss fights that these are are mechanically interesting I think and it requires you to kind of Kit out for them specifically um it's been very gratifying to take on bosses that everyone was having a ton of trouble with and like really strategizing and being able to kind of uh get past them myself even if main reason everyone's failing is because of enemy scaling um and doing it solo is easier that has been gratifying for me um being able to finally craft characters I've been working on for half a day two days whatever uh feels really good and then being able to try them out my biggest complaint right that with that is is leveling is bad but again with so much carrying over it's not really that big of a deal so for me this has felt ultimately like a worthwhile investment of my time I'm not going to say this is the most creative or brilliant game or you know not a lot of syy grinds here and there uh or everywhere but for me and what types of games I like like I do enjoy this and since this is Nexon and since it's live service and it's Korean and it probably will do well over there I'm not really I have confidence that this game is going to continue for a long time um I'm sure they'll try to MK it for more microtransactions and maybe you know make grinds worse and that would suck but this doesn't feel to me like an Anthem or Suicide Squad or an Avengers where it's going to just be constantly teetering on the brink of death and you don't know if you should invest into it or not because like what's the point if it's just dead in 6 months or a year it doesn't feel like that it's going to be that type of game because you know these these Korean MMO life service games like they're in it for the long haul and this launched very successfully launched with 250,000 concurrent players on Steam uh it has cross console play another really good thing is in in The Wider World here um all of these missions however you know sort of barebones they may be has dropped really effective drop in matchmaking where scaling is not bad for that so it's very fun to like join a mission in progress to make it take less time or uh to have people join you to back you up so they do they do drop in matchmaking really well that's another thing they do again my biggest problem here is technical I don't know how to fix this glitching again if you have any advice please let me know I don't think I'm alone in this but um it's been very frustrating and is hampering what a game that I otherwise am generally enjoying so this is why I've done a 180 I'm not promising I'm going to play this for 200 hours and it's not going to become like my main thing I don't think but uh I was wrong to well I wasn't wrong to judge it so quickly it does make a bad first impression I I will say that I understand why a lot of people are saying that but if this is your genre as this is my genre I I think there is a lot to like here and even though yeah Warframe is probably better I will you know I'm not going to dispute that it feels more daunting to me to start up Warframe now with people with years of experience like even if they streamlined it I like the idea of everyone being on the same playing field here and being able to get into a game like this on the ground floor that feels good to me anyway that's all I got um give it a try don't give it a try it's free that's the other thing so there's really no harm in uh at least attempting it I would not be surprised if you don't like it at first I would expect you to perhaps not like it at first but I'm just giving my own testimony here that over time I really started to enjoy it again that took you know 30 35 40 45 hours to get to that point and I understand if people don't have the time to devote to that but I'm just saying that it did get a lot better and more fun for me over time anyway thanks for watching and I'll talk to you soon take care

Channel: Paul Tassi

Views: 50,837

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Id: bKNk1NJsAR4

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2024