The First Descendant did a sweeping patch to change all three of its main new mission additions for season 1, and now that I’ve played them a good amount, they are no longer as annoying as they once were. Now they are just bizarrely dull.
The two worst missions where you have to memorize the location of symbols and colors were irritating, especially when you’re trying to do this while being swarmed by mobs you don’t really have time to fight unless you’re just auto-AOE-ing them with very specific heroes (yay more Bunny).
Now, the color map and the symbol maps have been nerfed and both puzzles are easily completable in a minute or less in each segment. The puzzles are easier, you have to do less of them and there are now barely any enemies at all in these sections.
This will race you to the boss zone in just a couple minutes where again, everything has been streamlined and you just have to crack a shield and burn them. Depending on the boss, this may be the only mildly challenging portion of the whole thing, and it’s now beyond easy to get gold every time. Nexon says they will be adding matchmaking to these missions because everyone was complaining about them being solo but now, there’s quite literally no point unless you’re running some dramatically underpowered character.
Don’t get me wrong, I would much rather have this version of these missions than the old ones, which was so bad I quit trying after day one as I knew Nexon would nerf them. And they did. But the point is this speaks to exceptionally poor level design as who thought standing around memorizing symbols or standing in tiny colored circles was a fun activity? I cannot imagine anyone except apparently, Nexon’s internal playtesters. But you essentially have do these missions a bunch in order to farm the materials to get Hailey, the new sniper hero. Thankfully a buff to her materials also came with this patch, so you will have to run less of them in the end.
The First Descendant will add harder Infiltration missions in the second half of the season, and hopefully some worthwhile rewards to match, as currently there really aren’t many currently. In season 2 they say they’ll be adding a larger dungeon, format unknown. But hopefully we are not going to see anything like these missions, and it’s clear from some of the higher tier bosses that this game cannot effectively do anything approaching coherent teamwork with randoms as it’s often impossible to coordinate.
The First Descendant does have a hill to climb. The launch of season 1 of the game was very small bump in playercount which has already settled to a level below what it was a week before the season launched. It needs something inspiring if this decline is going to be halted. These missions certainly are not it.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
