The Descendant Critic Reviews

The Descendant offers a fascinating sci-fi tale intertwined with interesting puzzles, breathing fresh air into a genre that can feel stagnant at times.

The Descendant is dubbed in English, but the interface and subtitles translation (in Italian) is excellent, and that's a very good start. The gameplay is rather original, different from what you can expect from an adventure game. It won't last too long (10 hours, give or take), but the experience is claustrophobic, cynical, disturbing and often surprising.

The Descendant is a wildly inconsistent adventure; reflective of the reasons why Telltale Games is seen in high regard, even on its worst days. At the same time, it's one of the better pretenders out there, thanks to the morally grey protagonists, daunting set-pieces, and odd gameplay subversions. Much like the sci-fi oddities found deep in Netflix, The Descendant has this rough B-movie charm going for it; flawed, but perfectly passable.

The Descendant has a compelling plot but a very short length and a gameplay full of ups and downs. 1h per episode doesn't feel enough.

Overall, even though the controls sometimes made me swear in frustration and the hackneyed narration made me laugh out loud, I am still, on the whole, pleased to have played The Descendants. It is worth trying out in a sale, and if you can cope with the shortcomings in design, the story is an entertaining five-episode arc.

Despite the polished presentation, The Descendant is by-the-numbers sci-fi that rarely ventures out of its modest comfort zone. It won’t win an Emmy, but it does manage to entertain throughout its five brief episodes.

The interesting and well crafted story of this sci-fi adventure can’t compensate for the awful camera, bad design and poor overall execution.

The developers from Gaming Corps don’t even try to hide the fact that they are shamelessly copying from Telltale. What’s more, The Descendant is a highly imperfect counterfeit – poorly written, not engaging, sometimes unintentionally funny and technically flawed.

Quotation forthcoming.