I put almost 30 hours into The First Descendant beta, then a few more into the most recent technical test for good measure. While I’ve had access to a preview build for a few days now, it’s been quite lonely and missing the co-op shooter action that makes the game so enjoyable. For that reason, some of this review will be based on previous beta tests, and I’ll focus solely on gameplay quality and final polish for this release build.

There’s just something about The First Descendant that ticks a lot of boxes for me: it’s a grind, for sure, but the smooth combat, grappling hook traversal mechanic, and scaling technical difficulty of the boss fights really shines. It’s also crispy clean running on my RTX 4090, and while I can’t max out the ray tracing without sacrificing performance, you can still make it look damn good. Is this the start of a new era for PvE shooters? I’m starting to believe it just might be.