The First Descendant

Monetization comes up in 20% of longer reviews, and most of those are complaints. Two separate grievances run through them. The older one is price. Reviewers call skins, bundles and the premium currency far too expensive ("just lower the skin prices man, 30$??? make it 5$ ill buy em all"), dislike paints that apply per Descendant or per item ("I'd enjoy the game more if my purchased colors weren't "per-Descendant"."), and a few ask for regional pricing. The newer one is power for money. 7% of longer reviews bring up pay-to-win, Transcendent weapons or Ancestor modules, and most of these describe weekly caps on rerolls with drop boosters and materials sold in the shop: "The Transcendent Weapon system has moved the game from monetising cosmetics and convenience into pay-to-power". Long-time players raise this far more often than newcomers, who rarely mention it. Defenders reply that this is a PvE game, so nobody loses to a paying player, and some say the game is not pay-to-win at all.

"Freezes every 5-15 seconds, even freezes when loading in areas that I've already been to." Performance problems come up in 17% of longer reviews (crashes specifically in 5%), and the reports are concrete: shader stutter, a laggy hub, high CPU load and heat, crashes on launch or between zones, and settings that don't save. Another reviewer put it as "What a stuttery, laggy mess." Some players say performance got worse after particular updates, while a few with high-end PCs report no trouble. Players in their first 10 hours raise it a little more often than others.

Complaints about repetition or a lack of content appear in 15% of longer reviews: the same hallway dungeons and tilesets, recycled bosses, long waits between content drops, and modes that were cut instead of reworked. "The core of the game is good, however, the drip feeding/repetitive content pacing is abyssmal compared to other games." Others say new content just repeats old activities at higher difficulty, or that a new season's power items make the previous grind pointless. One reviewer singled out Karel's mothership update as a strong addition. Long-time players raise this more often than newcomers.

Balance comes up in 12% of longer reviews: nerfs (8%), power creep, or content so easy that one build carries everything. Nerfs to characters players had paid for or spent weeks building draw angry reviews ("We aren't even a full week into the update yet and Gley is getting nerfed already???"). In the reviews written in the week of a nerf to Ines, about nine months after launch, more than a third raised balance or nerfs. Other players complain about difficulty instead: "my number 1 gripe was its WAAAAAAAY TOO EASY of a game", and a single dominant Descendant (Bunny, later Serena) trivialising missions. Some reviewers defend nerfs as needed for the game's long-term health. Balance is mostly a long-time player's topic; newcomers seldom raise it.

"Not into a game with 2% drop rate disguised as 20% drop rate." Drop rates or RNG come up in 10% of longer reviews, mostly with frustration: displayed odds of 20% or 38% that players say never seem to hit, and hours of runs with nothing to show. The pity system gets credit as a fix that works ("ALWAYS activate the "pity" system when you can for any given drop"), and some returning players say farming is much fairer than it was. Plain frustration with the RNG is more common than claims that the odds are actually fake.

New players describe a flood of systems, currencies and screens: "I just couldnt get past the 1 million popups and new info screen every 2 minutes." 6% of longer reviews complain about the UI, menus, pop-ups or onboarding. Others mention a poor tutorial, needing YouTube guides, quests with unclear goals, and inventory management. Supporters reply that it clicks once you learn it, but this complaint shows up most among players in their first 10 hours.

4.5% of longer reviews raise bans, suspensions or item rollbacks. Most of them concern a 15-day ban wave and item removal after players farmed Season 4's new weapons in a "loot cave" that, by their account, had been in the game for months. Critics say a rollback and a warning would have been enough, or that players were punished for a spot nobody fixed: "Banning players over loot caves while ignoring the reasons people farm them". A vocal group backs the bans ("You exploit, you get banned."), so players are divided on this too. Smaller complaints cover matchmaking penalties, AFK bans and an offensive-name ban. Long-time players raise bans far more often than newcomers.

4% of longer reviews raise servers, disconnects, rubber-banding, slow matchmaking or high ping from regions without nearby servers ("add oceanic servers please, the game is good but i dont want to play on 200 ping.").

2% of longer reviews mention trading, mostly the 10% fee on Lounge trades and a minimum price that reviewers say pushes players toward buying currency: "they now employ 10% Tax on your trades if you decide to list them through the Lounge." Before trading arrived, some players had asked for it.

2% of longer reviews complain about real-time crafting waits for Descendants, catalysts and other parts ("16 hours waiting time to craft Freyna, a basic character was the killer for me."). Others point out the timers are shorter than Warframe's.

A small group reports lost progress after linking a Nexon or console account ("This has by far one of the worst cross-saving systems I have experienced."), anti-cheat crashes or concerns about kernel-level anti-cheat and data-sharing terms, and Linux and Steam Deck support that broke and returned across updates.