We have a heat advisory here in the Seattle area with temperatures up into the 90’s. To avoid the heat I stayed inside and played games but let’s be honest, that’s what I would have done had the temps been in the 70’s. I decided to investigate the two big new free to play titles Zenless Zone Zero and The First Descendant. I bounced back and forth between both games all weekend and now I have…Opinions!
This is an absolutely stunning game with a fast and fun combat system. It also drip feeds this combat to you in tiny levels that only last a couple of minutes. The rest of the game (what seems like the overwhelming bulk of it) is the definition of “busy work”. Of the six hours I spent playing ZZZ I’d wager less than a quarter of that was spent actually having fun fighting bad guys. The rest was spent roaming the boring ass hub world listening to mindless exposition and being force fed pages of information about convoluted mechanics designed to waste my time. ZZZ has at its core an incredible action game that rewards perfect timing with satisfying and flashy combos. It’s like the delicious tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop only instead of being surrounded by candy, this game is surrounded with dogshit. After six hours I was told about yet another new system with its own sub currency and I had to check out. The tiny two or three minute action sequences are simply not enough to make me want to navigate the rest of the games overwhelming fucking tedium. I realized that most of the time I was playing ZZZ I had a pained sort of pinchy look on my face like I had just swallowed a nickel.
Another Free to Play game full of mechanics designed to atomise player rewards and force you to spend countless hours trying to assemble a prize from the fucking ashes. The difference is TFD at least lets you play it and playing it is a lot of fun. Let’s be clear, The First Descendant is Destiny/Warframe GoBots. It’s possible you’re too young to get that reference so I’ll break it down for you. These smaller, less expensive transforming robots competed with Transformers for kids' attention back in the 80’s. Essentially we’re talking about a cheap knock off here. You can still have a lot of fun with Gobots though, especially if you’re tired of playing with your Transformers.
I don’t like or honestly really understand a lot of the FTP mechanics in The First Descendant but I did play it for 12 hours over the weekend so there’s obviously something here that I do like. I don’t stay up playing games until midnight these days but that’s exactly where I was last night with TFD. The grappling hook movement combined with really solid gunplay and fun skills kept me pushing through the game's main quest chain. You won’t find a lot of variety in the missions here but the environments are beautiful and the shooting is fun. I had a good time seeing the interplay of skills between different “descendants” as I teamed up with randos to complete open world missions even if the prospect of unlocking these new characters is daunting. I haven’t spent any money but you certainly can. In fact some of the systems designed to extract money from players in TFD seem downright ghoulish like making customizing paints a one time use.
I’m not in the endgame although I do have one character already nearing the level cap. I’m still traveling through what is essentially the tutorial and I’ve been given a new Descendant as well as a special weapon so that I can understand how these systems work. It’s possible that when the low hanging fruit I’m being given disappears and I have to start running the same mission fifty or sixty times to get just one of the crafting materials I need, I’ll lose interest. That’s fine, I’ll have had plenty of fun for free. TFD doesn’t have to be my forever game and honestly if Nexon’s history is any indication it will be closed down soon anyway. In the meantime I’m just going to enjoy playing with these GoBots.
-Gabe Out
