I probably should apologize for the amount of text following. I realize I've written so much it exceeds Bungie's forum post length limt. But don’t feel sorry. There’s probably a few typos in here as well seeing as I’m not a native English speaking user. Sorry about that. Basically I am growing more and more unsatisfied with the game’s experience. It’s not that I am craving for more, it’s all the little things dragging the experience down to the point where I am often just not having fun with the game anymore. Had to write all of these down in a more or less sorted review / brainstorming. Hopefully, someone will find it worthwhile reading everything that was transcribed to virtual paper. Table of contents: Intro Story Audio-Visuals Technics Gameplay - General stuff & New Light - The Checklist - LFG and personal spaces - Loot Distribution - Sunsetting - PvP - Gambit Intro So… Destiny 2… weird experience. Overall a good experience but one that I cannot recommend to other people as there’s just so many weird design choices that drag the game down, along with a few other things. First things first, though. I first played Destiny 2 when it was handed out to Battle.net users. Played through the original campaign but wasn’t really impressed. Things felt out of touch, without much continuity so I didn’t really bother to play further. Fast forward to March ’20. A few friends roped me into the game again, said it was a good multiplayer experience. Since we were looking for an experience to playing games together now and then it seemed like a good idea. Lots of free content, too and not overly expensive to upgrade at a later time. However, the first hurdle was that there was only a fireteam of 3 which meant we had to split the group in 2. One dropped out shortly after doing Warmind where he felt the game didn’t do it for him, without a coherent story and no actual motivation to grind out the various quests and activities. The second vanished some time later because the game got a bit too samey in its running mill for him. Luckily, we’ve found a third player so at least most of the activities are doable for us again even with the disadvantage of not everyone being available every day. This results me doing my chores solo most of the time. I’ve been playing the last two Seasons and I’ve come to the conclusion that Beyond Light will most likely won’t cut it for me either. I think around 450 hours of play time give me valid insight on the hows and whys. Story The Destiny storyline is… fractured. A lot of complaints I’ve heard and share is that the story itself is inconsistent (at first) and very hard to follow because most of it is fractured, pieces of ten second catch phrases thrown in with an explanation lurking somewhere in the countless findable lore entries. Of course, taking time to explain would mean to slow the pace down a lot periodically, but I think the game would have benefitted a lot by more in depth storytelling. Also, there’s a big discrepancy in tone between the actual ingame banter and the codex entries because one is actual comedy and the other is pretty dark. Some lore is actually written really well, however. One thing that stood out for me was how poorly explained everything was, beginning with something as mundane as a faction presence on a planet. A half sentence about Oryx (whom I didn’t know at the time) is not an explanation as to what the Taken are or what they do on Io, how they got there, or why they are on Earth. Basically, I don’t want to watch a video on “My name is Byf”’s YT channel to understand the story, I want to understand ingame. At least the voice actors and mo-cap actors do a good job the majority of the time. Bottom line: story is hard to follow unless you really look into it, and the good stuff is buried beneath layers of codex entries. This makes the story are hard sell if you’re looking for it as motivation to play the game. Audio-Visuals Here’s one of Destiny 2’s strengths. The game looks great and has a distinct design for the most part to keep things fresh. The Pyramidion on Io, the Arcology on Titan, the Dreaming City, all feel pretty unique even among other games and that’s a huge plus because it’s one of the things that I like coming back to. I still should have taken a screenshot of Mara’s statue in one of the Nine’s realms. A few effects could have handled more decently, though. Taken Captains blight wave gives me eye cancer every time it hits me. Likewise, sound design is top notch. Probably even a bit better than graphics. Most guns have their own feel and sound to it. Voice acting is very good with few exceptions – Savathun’s Song anyone? Technics Over the course of my playtime, I encountered comparatively few bugs compared to the size of the game, but then again I am also playing Bethesda games and everyone knows just how bugged those are. Sure, you have an annoying catalyst quest that doesn’t tell you that only burn damage of an explosion counts for the purposes of the catalyst progression, but I’ve had only one softlock (in the Corrupted strike) and basically nothing that I couldn’t fix with a restart of the activity or some reading. Had a few out of bounds experiences where I wouldn’t have expected it, but it was not game breaking. The game runs as smooth as molten butter on my aging system, with low loading times to boot (I do use an SSD, though). User experience may vary, especially when using The Besto, but overall I think Bungie did a commendable job on the technical side of the game. Gameplay Now for the big thing. There’s so much to discuss in here I have to do separate sections for each. General Stuff & New Light In general, Destiny 2 plays quite well. Character feedback, gunplay and overall game design function really well and let’s be honest: if those weren’t good we wouldn’t play the game. Every jump or punch, every gunshot has weight to it. Most things feel really snappy and most of the content is challenging and unique enough that we keep coming back. However, there are a lot of nitpicks and design decisions that really bring this down. First, getting into the game in the first place is tough. From originally four players that started in Season 10, only two are left. While I tried getting other people into the game, those didn’t stick around either. The game directs you around a few vendors in the Tower and says do a checklist of their activities, but you’re none the wiser of what these things actually are. There’s no motivation why I’m doing this in the first place. A story that could give me that motivation is buried in a secluded vendor in a far off corner of the Tower, and without a connection to any event of Destiny, the original campaign has a rough time delivering a gripping narrative which is further hampered by its fracturing by various planets and factions being wildly thrown into the mix. Beyond Light probably won’t change this, but new players will have an exceptionally difficult time to understand what’s going on. Other fundamental key things are missing in explanation, like equipment infusion as well. Weapon Perks have a basic explanation but deliver no specifics on how they impact the weapon stats. Different barrels could use of an easy to see comparison in numbers, for example. As far as quest design goes, some is good, some is bad. The Whisper is fantastic, for example, but the Ghaul fight is lacking. It’s the same with many other things. The Boss design that just pushes you flat out into the wall is a bad design choice, especially when there is no wall and you fly into the void. Some of the bosses probably need a rework because often enough I feel like they are the most tedious part of an activity, mostly in Nightfall strikes. Lately, a couple of design steps feel like they could have used a bit more thought process in its design. The 2020 Solstice Warlock bond needing 150 super kills whereas Titans only needed 50 for theirs is a good example for this. The Checklist Second, after a while of playing the game it really only feels like doing a checklist, especially when you’re leveling your character to accommodate for a new power cap. Need power level? Grind activities. Need experience for the Season Pass? Grind bounties. Need Bright Dust? Grind Weeklys. Need that quest done? Grind its checklist. It gets really tiresome after a while. The fun part when I was starting out was that basically everything contributed a little to the end goal (whatever that was back then), every adventure, every new mission gave me a little piece so I made steps toward hitting that power cap to participate in the seasonal content – whether Season 10 was good or not I couldn’t judge just having started. After that I could focus on getting additional exotic quests, perfect my gear and find out about builds. With Season 11 the power cap raised and I was forced to grind small puzzle pieces over and over again until I had hit that cap, then rinse and repeat with weekly activities. The treadmill had gotten too uncomfortable. After hitting the 1050 cap, I said the heck and only focused on other content. Activities that could contribute towards that cap are being ignored, like daily Heroic Story Missions. Bottom line: reaching a power cap can be fun when it can be done on the side like doing alongside an expansion, but becoming the sole reason for progression it’s not a good system.