Introduction

The First Descendant is a free-to-play cooperative action RPG for up to four players that immerses players in a vibrant sci-fi fantasy world. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity's survival relies on the skills of powerful warriors known as Descendants who wield unique abilities. Players team up to battle against the Vulgus, a formidable alien threat, to reclaim the Earth from its clutches. The story unfolds as players uncover the mysteries of their own origins and the secrets behind the catastrophic invasion. There's many character customization options, enabling players to upgrade their Descendants' skills and gear through a comprehensive progression system, encouraging diverse playstyles and strategic team play.


The First Descendant (TFD) is developed by Nexon Games, a South Korean game studio known for their online multiplayer titles. Epic's Unreal Engine 5 is used, which delivers impressive visuals and detailed environments that enhance the overall gaming experience. Using DirectX 12, the game has support for ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 ray reconstruction, and NVIDIA Reflex. In terms of upscalers you can use NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR or Intel XeSS, or even the temporal upscaling available from UE5.

This benchmark review will evaluate the performance of The First Descendant on a wide selection of modern graphics cards, show image quality comparisons and look at what's required in terms of VRAM usage.

Screenshots

All screenshots were taken at maximum settings, with upscaling, ray tracing and frame generation disabled. The gallery can be navigated with the cursor keys.

Graphics Settings

• The main settings menu lets you select from "Low," "Medium," "High," and "Ultra." On top of that there's "Auto" and "Custom"
• Ray tracing has four modes "Off," "Medium," "High," and "Ultra." RT seems to affect shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections and global illumination
• The "Additional Options" dropdown is where you can enable DLSS/FSR and XeSS. An additional option "Epic Games" lets you enable Unreal's own temporal upscaling algorithm
• When an upscaler is enabled, you can select the quality level ("Performance" or "Quality" etc.), but the sharpening can't be controlled here, a slider for sharpening is available in the display settings
• DLAA and FSR's NativeAA are supported
• You may enable DLSS Frame Generation or FSR Frame Generation. FSR Frame Generation requires FSR Upscaling (NativeAA is possible, just not "off")
• Mixing DLSS and FSR Frame Generation isn't possible
• V-Sync can be disabled completely, there is no hidden FPS cap
• An FPS limiter is available with the following steps: 30, 40, 60, 95, 120, 144 FPS
• Besides that there are several additional options for performance fine-tuning
• At the end of the list you can disable Motion Blur. Unfortunately the game still looks very soft, no matter what you do (a manual .ini edit helps)

• The display settings menu has the usual options for "windowed," "borderless," and "fullscreen."
• You can also adjust the field of view here, I found 90° to be quite decent, and I usually complain about too narrow FOV
• Sharpness can be adjusted here, too