Recent reviews by Chrismassy

Well... here we go...

The first descendant is a looter shooter that combines elements from games like Borderlands and MMORPG's alike.
The closest MMORPG that i could compare it to is actually Dungeon Defenders 2 due to both the game's need for this rarity drop-based gameplay and unique materials needed to do anything.

I've played many MMORPGs
Trove, New world, Dungeon defenders 2 and Fo76 but somehow, none are as lacking in fun as this one.


Trove had proceduraly generated worlds and interesting classes with unique gameplay, but they screwed up in development and essentially killed the game.

New world is interesting for its angle of medieval RPG, there aren't many like it and it manages to remain quite fun and fair despite its shortcommings in the form of its developers not putting too much into the endgame.

Fo76 is well... fallout 76. It has problems but most of them got fixed over the years and the game is miles above what it used to be but unforunately, its sour start tainted the game forever. However, it still has problems with being too much a "pay for buffs" game.

And Dungeon defenders 2?
Thats how you do it. The game has an art style, a quaint but cool story. Almost the entire game is based around endgame with so many tiers above the end of the story. The game is based around a Tower defence mechanic so each and every character you play as has 4 things they can place to assist in defence along with said characters having 4 unique abilities.
Everything can be modified to be powerful so long as you have the right upgrades on them. Then you can utilize their strange and unique natures to their fullest.

Why am i comparing it to this game?

Good question, the first descendent has a very annoying focus.
Infact, it was properly hard to figure out its focus when i started thinking about it.
Its focus is: Time and chance

Everything you do is focused around one (or both) of these two.
Research, drop chances, re-rolling...
Even when it really doesn't need to be. Even when it *actively hurts the game*.
Research time is a dumb mechanic. As a player and developer choice.
One word: Money
Speeding up research is a thing you can do any it takes real world cash to do so.
Nevermind the effort you have to put in to unlock a descendant, particularly the ultimate ones. The almost 3 day wait you have to do afterwards before you can bare the fruit of your labour apparently is what they thought was best.
Is it not enough the almost days people spend trying to unlock the insanely unfair chances of obtaining, at minimum, 4 things? and then researching those materials on top of that?
This is a mechanic that is utilized by Idle mobile games that count on you playing the game with big gaps between your visits like My singing monsters or clash of clans and makes more sense there as games like that are more like an afterthought.

The first descendant is very hands on, so you expect to be able to to everything you need quite quickly, like the aformentioned games of the same genre, but no. This mechanic soley exists to cooerse you into caving in to impatience and spending a few bucks.
Additionally, the difficulty unlocking certain descendants also is a drive to spend cash.
Haily and Ines particularly are two that require an insane grind to obtain. One is locked behind a daily limit that some say takes half a month to unlock and the other is one that requires a coordinated team to trounce void vessels for the best chance. If you're alone or in a public, you're just ♥♥♥♥ out of luck.
I suppose you could do the missions public but the matchmaking system is one of the worst ever devised.
heres how i feel the system goes:

"Ok, you want a public game? i can search for one, give me [average time that isn't accurate].
Ok, i couldn't find any games and im not gonna wait for a minimum of one, take a game by yourself"

"What? if you wanted a game by yourself you would have just picked private? well ♥♥♥♥ you anyways"

Essentially, its a system that shoots itself in the foot by being almost entirely useless.
I've been playing the game for almost 75 hours by this point and i've only ever had 3 public missions joined by other people.

Its appauling.

As for the graphics, they're fine when they work.
I don't have a particularly crap PC so its bizzare that the game runs as poorly as it does.
I require using DLSS/ Nvidia AI frame gen to get barely 60 or above.
makes my 100HZ moniter feel useless.
I do mean it, i have a decent PC but the game runs like ass. It never used to.
I have two graphics cards in my PC, one for games and such and another for rendering:
A 4070 and a 2060.
The game runs about the same on both if you're struggling to understand my angle.
I cant believe i have to run this game on low settings WITH FRAME GEN ON
with an i9-KF (overclocked), a 4070, an SSD and 32GB ram and barely manages to reach 60.
FFS i had less problems with Star wars: Jedi Survivor, and that game was notorious in its beginning for having poor performance but here its widely overlooked because everyone is too distracted by the characters tits.

Performance problems don't tend to get on my nerves but the frame gen, that gives me a playable experiance, blurs my screen considerably when moving the camera or the character. My quality is directly effected by the lack of performance, and thats a horrid thing, especially when i pay a lot of money for these componants that are supposed to deliver me quality.
I've played cyberpunk on its overdrive ray tracing option at around 60, thats just how bad this game runs.

The biggest problem is: It didn't used to run this bad.
When i was first dragged into playing this game, it ran just fine. I could run cinematic quality with no issues.

As for other issues, there is a legal problem that needs to be addressed before they get sued for it.
The games Age rating.
US players might not notice this as an issue, not because they don't care, but because its age rated properly by the ESRB.
The game is rated M for mature at 17+ which is accurate.

But here in the UK, the game is bizzarely rated 12+
I quote, from the ESRB website, on their take for the game:
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/39621/the-first-descendant/
"Fighting is highlighted by realistic gunfire, cries of pain, and blood-splatter effects. Some female characters are designed in revealing outfits (e.g., deep cleavage, partial buttocks and crotch exposure). The word “f**k” appears in the game."

Just so you are aware, Fortnite is another game rated 12+ and has nothing of the like minus attractive characters, and that isn't particularly a reason to raise it.

The part that they are properly liable for is this:
"Blood, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
Users Interact
In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items)"

In-game purchases, includes random items, that means lootboxes.
We all know, since Overwatch, that lootboxes like this for games rated like this (Overwatch was also a 12+), its considered gambling, and was outlawed in many countries.
Not even limited to the country that the game was made in.
South korean law, stated in 2015, was that the lootboxes need to have everything be clear of what chance you have.
So, you can imagine that Nexon, if they could, would leave you in the dark about your chances to keep you gambling.

You might think it to be unfair for me to assume this, but Nexon has a history of lootbox problems. One of which is stated on the wikipedia article for "Lootboxes". Im not kidding, this is its source:
https://kotaku.com/korean-companies-fined-950-000-over-loot-boxes-1825129253

Remember i mentioned that in the UK that the game is rated 12+? Well now its not just attributed to the suggestive nature of the characters, but the fact that there is gambling. And Gambling that the company has been in trouble for in the past at that.
Not just is it immoral, its incredibly illegal everywhere.

Do i recommend this game now?

Would i have? Yes, any version before 1.0 has been miles better.

The main problem with this is of course what everyone else is saying: "Game runs badly" or "has stability problems" as well as "Development for release was rushed"

It is SO depressing to leave a negative review on this nice little game, it truely didn't deserve to be headed in this direction.
Its one of the only games of its kind and it could have potentially provided so much playtime for how much the game is.

Developers should always try to listen to their fans and should never fail to communicate like these guys have.
Countless community posts filled with the game's supporters desprately urging the devs not to release the game yet all fell on deaf ears at the hands of corprate platitude.

Now, looking at the entire game as a whole, it doesn't feel worth its previous price let alone the price increase they did for release.

Lets look at a similar example that was done correctly: Blade & sorcery

Blade and sorcery is a VR medieval fighting game that has been in development for somewhere near 6-ish years i believe. They recently did a full release 1.0 build that introduced so much content ON TOP of all the previously added content in 12 seperate content updates.

The game feels like a complete overhaul of its previous self, really cementing that proud v1.0 "Full Release" tag on its front page images whereas shadows of doubt had not even earned a fraction of the right.

And its clearly visible why this failed other than the miscommunication.
It would have been the fact that the game has only been in development for a year and 5 months and if you think that THAT is long enough to create a crack-shot procedurally generating game? Then you should be stuck in a mental hospital.

Think about this, what exactly do we have thats new content wise to do? We have like 2 murder types and 3 if you stretch it.
You've got:
Murderers that stab or bludgeon a victim and always leave a piece of evidence at the crime scene
Close range firearm murderers which get found easily due to bullet casings
And sharpshooters which could have been the game's difficult case type to solve but its always just "find the trajectory and see what the only line of sight from a window is".

To be fair, i have had murderers shoot from buildings that weren't where they lived or even near it as well has shooters perching on balconies on the 1st floor.

As a counter point, the murderer that i had on a balcony did shoot people through walls and i was only able to solve that case by standing IN PERSON at the location where people were dropping dead. And only then i watched someone drop dead right in front of me and by using clipping software and deducing where the muzzle flash came from, i was able to find him.

What the f*ck. If sharpshooters can just shoot through walls, how do you expect people to figure these kinds of cases out?
I only found him by bruteforcing by standing there for almost a real life hour waiting for time to pass by in real time. And even then, i had to use an external application to figure out your bullsh*t system.

As i said, i would have reccomended this in the past, and i have. But now?
ColePowered better hope this game attracts a good modding community...

110 Gigabytes of wasted time and space.

I have searched around the main area for 4 hours and only now have found the actual way towards the main story part of the game.

The achievement for getting to the main story part has a completion rate of 50%

What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ appalling game

I haven't played much of this so take my words with a grain of salt.

I does really feel like this is more of a beta-test than an actual game. Though i believe it does give off really strong "fangame" vibes. Whoever made this clearly did want to do as best as they could but simply just didn't give it any of the polish it really needed.

From a game critiquing standpoint: Its very bad
From a portal fan critiquing standpoint: at least ya tried

I have previously made a review on Fallen order about its issues with the game play and bosses.
This game follows suit with being quite unforgiving with its combat on the normal difficulty.
There are a miriad of times where you get stunlocked or unfairly ganged up by about 4 high-tier enemies and they slap you to ♥♥♥♥ and then you die and then you alt+f4 because you cant take the game's ♥♥♥♥ anymore.

I'd say the bosses are better this time around. Except the final boss... Its still just as sucky as fallen order's final boss.
Unblockable attacks having less than half a second of time to react to... the only difficult part being the final bit where you get stunlocked into oblivion and having your guard broken over and over...

Of course its not meant to be easy... but isn't it meant to be fun to play too?

The new stances are... ok? i don't really know what to mention about them...
They are most likely meant to cater towards whatever playstyle you find best or easier but i found that basically the only one that seems to be viable at all is the dual wielding for speed.
Other than that, they ran the double-sided lightsaber into the ground, added the cross guard which was not interesting at all and got me killed every time i gave it a chance. Out of all of the new things they gave us, im glad dual wield isnt restricted to a single move like the last game. I also like how they gave us a gun/single blade stance which utterly deprecates the single blade stance

I do prefer this games usage and point of view in the post empire-ruled galaxy as it is the most packed timeframe of any star wars part.

I just find it funny that im at a loss for things to write about this game because basically all i mentioned about in my review about Fallen order is true here too.
Though if i had to sum it up...

Its the same game, but runs worse and takes forever to load.
I do hate to say it, but this game is somehow the best Disney Star Wars thing to come out in quite a while.
Congratulations Jedi survivor, you somehow managed to raise the bar an inch.
I just wish this game didn't have denuvo so it wouldn't have taken me £30 to write this crap

(Edited due to clowns)

I love Lego games.
I love Star wars

I don't think this game manages to live up at least to 70% of either of those two.

"Lego game shouldn't be third/first person shooter" is a clown response.

Edit for clowns: Let me explain for you dumbasses...
The fact that the lego game is a first and third person shooter is a bad thing. I wAs jUst trYing to sAy thAt the shortened response of [the thing in question] was a stupid thing to say all by its own.
I would have imagined this would be obvious... considering that the rest of the entire review follows this quote"
End Clown explaination.


This game breaks the simplicity of lego games of the past's format with a new, format shattering well... format.

The idea of the lego games (in my mind) being simplified versions of the story made sense. Legos are not very realistic are they?
But with this new format, they've tried to mix their simplistic style with the complexity of star wars as much as they physically could and have managed to create a game that doesn't know how to feel like a game.

It really does feel like this game had an identity crisis:
On one hand - its trying to be star wars battlefront
On another - Its trying to be Force unleashed
and another? - Jedi Fallen order

But the thing it SHOULD feel like, isnt present. It doesn't feel like - Lego Starwars.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What about the DLC? you might say...

Its not worth it.
Just check the entire list if you want your own opinion.

76 British pounds for a bunch of characters that are not functionally different?
No...

All i see is corporate greed piggybacking on every Star Wars Sub-IP (such as Andor, rebels, book of boba fett ETC) and turning them into characters for almost a literal quick buck.

I was unfortunate enough to pre-order this game because i trusted TT Games as i've played their games since i was a small boi of only 10 years old. God how godamn wrong i was.

For my admiration and pride i showed to this franchise, what did i get for Pre-ordering?
A yellow Obi-wan-kenobi. Thats it.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ disgraceful

Existence forces me to have bad experiences with this game or because of it or during it

Rad.

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