Destiny 2 Reviews

I've put a lot of hours into this game yet these days it feels more like a sunk cost fallacy than anything as the reason I continue to play. The gameplay is some of the best I have seen from an fps and it's fun to just run around shooting things then disintegrating more with abilities. However beyond the fun gameplay (for the most part) lies a gameplay loop, monetisation practices and such that are absolutely abhorrent. Destiny 2 these days is a game that banks heavily on FOMO and 'Engagement' or making sure you're playing it for as long as possible. For one all story in this game prior to the Shadowkeep expansion is gone, The Red War, Curse of Osiris, Forsaken, all gone. They have 'timeline' missions as a pretty bad attempt to inform what happened but you're probably batter off grabbing some popcorn and watching a multi hour story summary if the story prior to shadowkeep is important to you. The seasons (or now called 'episodes') in this game only last for a year and then disappear from the game entirely including gear save for collecting it randomly when that seasons exotic mission gets added to the roulette along with all the others. This includes the story and some of the story beats are important to the story at large so if you miss it before you get a chance to play it you will again need to look up videos for the story after it gets 'vaulted'. One of Bungie's biggest blunder imo of recent has been the removal of crafting for seasonal weapons which was introduced to the game in the Witch Queen expansion, it was a system that took some of the pressure off of those who didn't want to mindlessly grind for hours for a good weapon roll. However as of the start of the Revenant episode, they have done away with those so now rng grinding is king again, pandering to the people who love that sort of thing like the Destiny content creators and people who can stand to play this game for hours on end. They speak of 'catchup' crafting system but they have yet to elaborate on this and I'm one to take it with a grain of salt given their history. Another big one is how they deal with monetisation. Dungeons in this game used to be things that came with the expansion itself (or at least with the season passes) but at some point in the past they decided to start selling the dungeons separately from the seasons and the only way to get access to them is to either buy a 'dungeon key' or buy the expansion with the added 'annual pass' that includes all seasons plus dungeons which costs about double of what the expansion on its own costs. The Eververse store is Destiny's premium currency store and has tons more to try and tempt you into spending real money like weapon skins, glamours, shaders/dyes and the like. Holiday events are notorious as well with added 'event cards' that cost about 15 AUD along with special glamours that cost 22.50 aud based on the silver purchasing prices unless you bother to save enough bright dust in which they each cost 6000 bright dust. The events themselves are just general copy and pastes of the previous years with maybe a few new additions and is just more grinding mostly. Then there is the bugs, and oh boy it's not Bethesda levels of bad but it can be bad from missions bugging out to abilities not working as they should to even episode gameplay systems not even working as they should. Worst thing is Bungie tends to usually drag their feet about it though given the amount of people they have lost over the last year or so it's not really surprising. Destiny 2 is like the ultimate love/hate relationship I have for any game with things I like about it but at the same time it is just dampened by so many baffling design decisions by Bungie. It's my recommendation to not buy this game until Bungie can get it's act together (if they ever do) but if you want to try the game regardless I caution to be careful cause it can become too easy to fall into the same sunk cost fallacy trap me along with many others have fallen into. I only pray that the Apollo expansion fixes a lot of the issues that Destiny has.

going to be honest this game was fun for a while but i don't know at what point i realized i no longer enjoyed playing and everything felt like a chore to do. It seems like bungo is just treating the symptoms rather then the issue like the medical industry they rather milk you for every cent they can get then throw you to the side afterwards. there is no real incentive to play for new comers / returnees i would say go watch byfs videos on youtube if you want to follow the story just save yourself some money and don't support the devs they honest don't deserve it at this point.

Honestly loved the game joined when forsaken released quit when forsaken was removed. Everything about the game screams content but then you realize that's just because they deleted the previous stuff or you haven't spent enough money to be strong enough to do anything in the game. Bungiee you were cool for forever but its time that this company died and the workers who are worth a damn get separated from the ones who aren't.

Look, I have pit in a lot of hours in Destiny and Destiny 2(across PS and PC). Games where amazing even though they had some flaws and balancing issues. Gunplay was one of the best, story was good and the missions where fun. But what hooked me then was the raids and pvp. I haven’t touched the game for two years. I fo mis Destiny and Destiny 2, but not the game it is today. They lost me when they started cutting content. Basically I missed buying a DLC and found out I could do basically as much as a free player. I was €300,-+ in and couldn’t play most of the things available. I could’ve bought the DLC, but it just clicked with me that it doesn’t matter. Because if you don’t buy the next DLC, you’re nothing more than a free player again. The content itself took longer to be done even though it got worse as well. It was clear to see Bungie lost its way and marketing people had taken over the company. And it’s really sad because some of my most fun gaming memories are beating Crota’s end, Vault of glass or King’s fall with friends. Getting the Icebreaker, Touch of Malice, etc. Doing missions a special way to get an exotic. Those days are long gone.

The devs and bungie as a whole clearly have developed a gaping void where their brains used to be, the moneymaker of the game for cheap, crucible, where you also get to use all those fun new weapons? It's like watching two toddlers trying to cram a square block through a circle hole with how they balance it. Not only do they just straight up ignore community complaints at this point, they show a clear preference for certain playstyles and weapons and ignore everything else, and then ask you to pay another $30 per season to get the latest and greatest reskins of weapons you got years ago, with new perks you'll ignore because old ones are better. They can try to shift the blame to upper management all they want, but for things like the crucible strike team? They all need to be fired ASAP and moved to a special needs facility. Oh and that'll be an additional $15 to play the new dungeon.

Not only that I grew up on this game, I watched the beginning, the rise, the prime, and now the fall. From all the memories of doing LFG's with randoms, crucible matches, and making some longtime friends along the way, its sad how the company is treating its workers when all is done, treating the game like its a cash grab at the end of the rope. Ill never be 13 again pulling my first ever exotic, but I will remember the first time beating Oryx at 3 in the morning when we said last try two hours ago. Thank you Bungie for such an astonishing game that reigned over for years.

[code]While Destiny 2 offers satisfying gameplay experiences, memorable story moments and a stellar presentation in terms of art direction and soundtrack, it unfortunately devolved into a “you had to be there”-kind of MMO, that is incredibly unwelcoming to newcomers: A baffling amount of removed content, time-limited story events and lots of microtransaction needed to access the “full game” should make you think twice about getting into Destiny 2.[/code] I started my personal journey with the [i]Destiny[/i] franchise all the way back in June of 2014, when the original [i]Destiny[/i] released. I still remember firing up my PlayStation 4 on launch day, my excitement when joining many other players as newly awakened Guardians. After starting out in the Cosmodrome on Earth, I’d travel all over the solar system to fight for the fate of humanity in PvE encounters – or against fellow guardians in PvP matches (thank you, Hawkmoon). Since I was also playing through each of the four expansions when they released, I soon racked up way over 500h of playtime - and while the original [i]Destiny[/i] definitely wasn’t a perfect experience in many ways, it gave me a lot of fond memories that I cherish to this day. In 2017, [i]Destiny 2[/i] was released, although in a very different form compared to what the game is like today. First off, while the games only featured time-limited content in the form of special events before, tied to occurrences like Valentine’s Day or Halloween for example, the release of the [i]Forsaken[/i] expansion in 2018 saw [i]Destiny 2[/i] introducing a seasonal model to the game: New additions to the game in terms of story and gameplay, that were releasing between the annual paid expansions, where now tied to “seasons” - with most of this new content apart from your claimed rewards being removed once a season ends. While other MMOs, like [i]Final Fantasy XIV[/i], keep their story (patch) content available forever, [i]Destiny 2[/i] was now requiring players to keep playing if they don’t want to miss out on how the still ongoing plot, that started with the original [i]Destiny[/i], develops. It was at this point that I stopped playing [i]Destiny 2[/i] frequently and only returned for a bit every time a new expansion released, as I didn’t want to be stuck to a game that puts an expiry date on its story content. Unfortunately, in retrospective, this would only turn out to be the beginning of the horrid relationship that [i]Destiny 2[/i] has with its older content. After going free-to-play with the release of the [i]Shadowkeep[/i] expansion in 2019, which didn’t mean much as you still had to pay for past and future expansions, the year 2020 and the [i]Beyond Light[/i] expansion brought what many players consider to be most problematic change in the history of the entire game: The “vaulting” of [i]Destiny 2[/i] content. To cut it short, over time [i]Destiny 2[/i] removed earlier campaign content from the game, which includes the original “Red War” campaign as well as those from the [i]Curse of Osiris[/i], [i]Warmind[/i] and [i]Forsaken[/i] expansion. Notably, this does not only include the campaign missions but entire locations like Mars, Mercury, Titan, etc. as well. They’re simply gone, with no way to currently experiencing them again apart from watching old playthroughs on YouTube. While they could [i]potentially[/i] return one day, it hasn’t happened for the campaigns at this point, and I think it’s fair to say they never will. While the entirety of the original [i]Destiny[/i] remains online and playable, there is no an incredibly large gap between the last events of the game and the currently playable events in [i]Destiny 2[/i] – not only in terms of the already time-limited seasonal content. While the intro experience has been redesigned according with the “vaulting” of campaigns, frankly, even as a veteran like I am it’s a miserable experience trying to keep up the story, with so much content vital to the overall narrative removed. Sure, you could resort to dozens of YouTube videos to figure out the missing links, but this is something that a (new) player shouldn’t have to do – while [i]Destiny 2[/i] does offer a dedicated recap page with very brief descriptions in order to keep you in the loop, it obviously can’t replace the experience of playing through the content by yourself. As such, while the latest [i]The Final Shape[/i] expansion might’ve concluded ten years of storytelling to a certain degree, it still feels like the last pages of a book that had entire chapters ripped out from, with the missing information only being available through second-hand reports from other readers. That said, [i]Destiny 2[/i] sure likes to take money for the older content is hasn’t yet vaulted. While diving into details here would unfortunately take too long, I just want to point out that the “Legacy Collection” and even the biggest “Light & Darkness Collection” bundle doesn’t somehow include full access to all available content in [i]Destiny 2[/i] – as they’re missing the dungeons from the [i]Witch Queen[/i] & [i]Lightfall[/i] expansions. It also feels incredibly ironic to still sell the [i]Forsaken[/i] expansion at a price of 19,99€, since much of the content in the expansion got vaulted, including the campaign – which means it’s just access to a few weapons, a dungeon and a raid now. Did I mention that seasons also offer a premium battle-pass for sale, including buyable tier skips? While I haven’t yet talked about the absolute disaster that is the [i]Destiny 2[/i] PvP experience, which is incredibly punishing for new players, or the amount of pop-ups, intro-missions and cutscenes you receive when starting up the game for the first few times, by now it should be clear that [i]Destiny 2[/i] is almost outstandingly bad at introducing new players to the game – or at reintroducing players who have been absent for a longer time. This is especially infuriating because below all these aggressively unfriendly design decisions, there is an incredible game hiding. I absolutely love the gunplay of the franchise for example, fighting against the various enemy factions is usually extremely satisfying. Some of the highest-rarity guns (“exotics”) have become my favourites across all the first-person shooters I have played, be it through their unique effects or great look. In general, the art direction and soundtrack of the franchise is incredible, which makes the ”vaulting” of old locations even more painful, as some beautiful sights are now lost to time. Finally, tackling even the toughest challenges with a group of friends can make for extremely memorable experiences – I still vividly remember the excitement after finishing my first raid, for example. Still, despite all the greatness that [i]Destiny 2[/i] can offer – which it once again proved with its latest expansion - it’s unfortunately the type of MMO that’s best-described as a “you had to be there”-experience, since it’s painfully bad at allowing new players to catch-up with the long-playing veterans. While not impossible, getting into [i]Destiny 2[/i] requires a certain amount of work that’s understandably deterring to a lot of players – if I were to start out with the game as it is now, I probably would’ve quit the franchise after a few hours or so. Even while [i]Destiny[/i] remains a good starting point if you got a PlayStation/Xbox available, the narrative gap that follows now is likely going to be too large for most players. Hopefully, the franchise can get a fresh start one day, with a [i]Destiny 3[/i] that is once again welcome to all kinds of players, old and new.

I think this is the best game ever made and it's not very close. I started playing around the time it went free to play and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. No other game does what this one does. I think everyone should get to experience what Destiny offers. This rating is positive because of what this game has meant to me, not because of what it has become. [i]Currently:[/i] [list] [*]This game is so unfairly priced that I can't genuinely recommend any of my non-Destiny friends or new players to pick it up to try it out. [*]The community is toxic as hell. [*]The game is dying, fewer and fewer people get on to play every single day. [*]There are cheaters in 1/3 of Crucible games (might just be caused by the dwindling player count making the concentration of cheaters higher). [*]Every new update is bugged (sometimes to the point of unplayability) and results in either server downtime, another update to address it (takes a month for this to get released), or Bungie just giving up and auto-completing quest steps. [*]The new player onboarding experience is abysmal. You're given a 5 minute cutscene to explain the story (since they completely removed the real campaign), a couple of introductory quests, and then you're kicked out of the bird's nest to do whatever your heart desires with minimal direction or suggestion on where to go. So bad, in fact, that Bungie has given up and now provides players with an option to skip it entirely since they know that if a new player is playing this game, it MUST be at the direction of another existing player telling them what to do anyway. [*]The game is riddled with power creep. Guardian kits are the strongest they have ever been and new aspirational content has gotten easier and easier. [/list] Realistically, the game needs a reset like Destiny 1 got with the release of Destiny 2, but Bungie's insistence on this being a forever game post-Final Shape has led to Destiny 3 being nothing but a pipe dream while this game wanes in its final days after the equivalent of an Avengers: Endgame story beat. Bungie just doesn't know when to let it go. Some of my best memories are playing this game, but I just can't in good conscience say that you should start playing this game if you haven't already. You just had to be there, I guess.

10 year veteran of the franchise. this new season brings to me the unfortunate realization its over. the game had the most amazing expansion in its history, just to turn around and fire loads of staff. bungie vets who made this series what it is (was practically) are gone, and you can feel it. new season with no exotic armor at all, mediocre activity that is just the same recycled event, with recycled modifiers from older content that is extremely tiring, just cus it worked once doesnt mean they need to do it 3 or so times. the sandbox is in a pretty great state, but the creativity of the team is dying out, and the lack of employees and budget is extremely obvious. Pete Parsons is directly responsible for cutting hundreds of devs and bringing this ship crashing into the ground. Destiny is genuinely unenjoyable and within the hour i was bored. this is genuinely depressing as i have thousands of hours, and thousands on psn and have loved the game through some of its lowest points. but the mediocrity of this season is killing me. i genuinely am worried this game will actually die for real within this act.

This is the best game that I can't recommend. The shooting, the art, the sound—everything about it is the industry's best, held back by draconian progression systems and temporary-by-design story content. I imagine this game is comparable to something like heroin: it feels [i]so good[/i]... until it doesn't. And then you're stuck chasing the dragon. No other developer exhibits such frustrating inconsistency of quality and consideration for its players. The future of this live service game is uncertain, and that's a real shame because I'm pretty sure nothing will ever be as good as this game can be, could have been, should have been.