Após terminar a campanha pela terceira vez consigo dar minha crítica, e ela não mudou desde a primeira vez que terminei. É uma campanha ruim, diálogos péssimos e sem peso, história deplorável que não leva a nada. Pra ter noção tem histórias de temporada como a de Rasputin ou A Chegada que são melhores que essa campanha, total desrespeito que condiz com a situação atual da empresa. De toda forma a nova subclasse é divertida e se encaixa com o jogo, melhor que a subclasse esquecida de gelo.
Minha crítica vai para a campanha principal, o planeta é interessante, os eventos são OK, nada inovadores e a lore pós campanha é intrigante até certo ponto mas poderia muito bem ter sido introduzida na campanha.
A incursão é divertida e tem mecânicas de uma masmorra, mas não supera nem de longe o que esse jogo ja entregou com VoD ou Ultimo Desejo.

Lightfall itself was highly disappointing. Neomuna was not fun as a patrol zone, drop rates for weapons were awful. The story. God, the story. Congrats for adding the first(?) nonbinary character to Destiny, but the writing for them was truly atrocious. Caiatl should've been way more important in the story than she was, too. Sadly, this whole campaign is a filler arc from an anime. One big training montage while old man Osiris yells at us.

The complete revamp of buildcrafting is godsend.

The seasonal content hasn't excited me as much this year, but it's still solid enough.

The soundtrack is great but I do prefer the music from The Witch Queen.

Dungeons this year have been pretty good. Ghosts of the Deep is unfortunately a bit of a slog to me, but I still think it's gorgeous and interesting. Warlord's Ruin is genuinely extremely cool and gives me some great Grasp of Avarice vibes. My only complaint is that the final boss mechanics for standing in circles while transferring hex is quite finicky in practice, especially when the AI is so unpredictable, and it really pushes your team super hard on add clear to stay alive. Otherwise two incredible boss fights and just a super original design.

I don't raid much any more, but frankly I didn't like Root of Nightmares. I know it's derided as being too easy, especially compared to Vow, but I just wasn't feeling this one mechanically. The jumping puzzle with the death mechanic especially was an absolute fucking slog. The visuals are great, though, and I love the concept, but it just wasn't as fun as RoN to me.

PvP is still pretty fun. Still too many abilities in PvP I think.

Loot is getting really out of hand and I feel like we're due for another round of sunsetting. Idk we've just got ridiculous power creep in the game but whatever.

Also fuck the layoffs.

I still love playing Destiny, but this year my interest dwindled a lot.

So yeah. Lightfall happened LOL

I'm sure I don't need to talk about the story of this expansion, because everyone in and out of the destiny fanbase surely heard about it at the time. This + the quality of the raid (which is slightly overblown if you ask me) had people up in ARMS calling this the worst destiny expansion to date, even though it's very clearly FAR from that. Neomuna was a great destination, with Strand being the obvious carrier of the expansion, and the QOL changes that came with this expansion as well made gameplay itself probably the best its ever been in destiny. Nobody talks about Veil Containment either when they're trashing the story, as that was arguably one of the best story beats to come out of this entire YEAR of destiny. But after how Lightfall butchered Calus and didn't really progress the main story of destiny at all? I don't necessarily blame them. You can definitely tell they split the story of this expansion and (presumably) The Final Shape into two different things.

The following seasons of Lightfall were.... okay. Much like how the story of Lightfall got the community in a ruckus, plentiful other things did as well as the seasons progressed. Season of Defiance was probably one of the better seasons about it?, but the passing of Lance Reddick definitely hurt things a bit. Season of the Deep saw people up in arms about the repitition of Seasonal Gameplay loops after big promised changes, which isnt the most unjustifable thing, but people definitely were taking it way too far. Season of the Witch/Wish (since it kinda happened inbetween these two seasons) saw the biggest uprisal with Bungie laying off numerous employees (fuck you bungie!), causing loads of people to take a break or quit the game entirely. Being a destiny fan was extremely rough throughout this year of the game, probably the roughest its ever been if im being honest.

But! The pure gameplay of Destiny 2 throughout these seasons was still REALLY good. I would go as far as saying that looking at pure gameplay alone, this was probably the best year we've ever had. The new dungeons were fantastic, the seasonal content started evolving with Rougelike and minor Deck-Building elements, and The Coil might honestly be the best activity they've ever had in a season (maybe not better than menagerie still but i digress).

The story of the seasons is alone what's keeping me from having this listed as four stars: since Bungie probably had no idea how to bridge Lightfall and TFS together narratively after splitting them into two seperate expansions (and i dont blame them), a lot of the narrative this time around felt VERY character focused. I'm never against building characters in destiny, especially because Bungie is really good at it, but when the legit END of your 10 year story is coming up? It felt very awkward, especially since the plots of each season weren't really progressing us any further to the witness (or if they were it was VERY incrementally.)

I probably should include Into The Light as part of this review, but I have yet to fully dive DEEP into it since I was out of the country when it dropped. However, it looks fantastic and I've really enjoyed the bits of it I have played, and community sentiment feels fairly high, especially since it seems Bungie is beefing up for TFS.

Speaking of which: I really really hope Bungie knocks it out of the park with The Final Shape. They very clearly need a win ANYWHERE right now, and it while Into The Light seems like it's helping, it probably isn't enough for a lot of people. I really don't know how to end this, other than saying goddamn why are the destiny worms still inside of my brain. Curse you John Bungie!!!

TL;DR: Story way down, gameplay way up. Please let the next expansion, and whatever follows it, be a banger.

The campaign's gameplay is fine, even on Legendary, but the story is so bad that it has singlehandedly removed any excitement I had about any chance Destiny's story in game being any decent.
On the other hand, the difficulty changes have made the rest of the game very enjoyable, and the improved mod system, combined with loadouts (FINALLY), have made for a pretty good endgame experience. I won't be playing this nearly as much as I used to, but I honestly had a pretty good time (aside from that dreadful campaign).

oh my god i forgot to review lightfall.

i guess The Death of The Studio and a hundred billion day delay to the next expansion is a good time to make the scathing review. this is getting an essay because i need a place to vent my frustrations about this franchise. i’m a consistent, end-game level player who at one point idolized the franchise. house of wolves veteran and all that.

i will be spoiling the main story, but, honest to god, it is not worth the spoiler tag. no one should care about story spoilers for this campaign.

here’s the short of it:

lightfall was a misguided, poorly thought-out money grab with decent improvements to gameplay that were instantly mired either by poor balancing or a greedy company. the following seasons of content were a bug-filled, uninteresting series of maintaining a status quo. the new raid was visually stunning, but a gameplay flop that, quite literally, caused such a complacency problem in the raiding community that it became a meme. the dungeons have similar problems. i’ve watched some of my closest friends lose interest in the video game that brought us together and i can’t help but join them now. being a fan of this series has become miserable.

ok, full review:

lightfall, as in specifically just the expansion, was not supposed to exist and it absolutely feels like it. already starting off strong, the first cutscene and last cutscene of lightfall were clearly supposed to be the first cutscene of the final shape but it is awkwardly split and edited to not appear that way. though you are the most valuable defender of earth and The Main Bad Guy and his forces are literally in earth’s orbit blowing up the Traveler and Earth, you are told to leave and hunt down a MacGuffin in Deus Ex Machina City neomuna. the entire story takes place in a rushed, lifeless city that we are told is thriving but feels lonely and abandoned. you walk through the levels and feel like you missed a party and are cleaning up the cabal janitors. the friendly new factions called the cloudstriders you meet in the campaign and people of neomuna as a whole exist to either be annoying, die in an explosion two minutes into meeting them, or give quests. hey, remember the macguffin mentioned a minute ago? yeah, the game keeps forgetting about it. you spend half the campaign “mastering strand” and the explanation of WHY you should care about getting the macguffin and this story are explained in post-campaign, HIDDEN, lore dialogue dumps and a few season cutscenes that came out weeks after the campaign. god, i wish i was exaggerating. the developers had to say in a blog post that “we know people have questions!” because the fan base was so upset about a complete lack of answers.

oh my god, i still haven’t even mentioned calus.

the other half is spent trying to properly defeat darkness buffed calus which, admittedly and given the bullshit conditions around it, was sometimes cool. his cutscenes with the witness and the final showdown (both holding down a perimeter with caital and the last boss) were the best parts of the expansion for me. it’s clear that this story beat was the only thing they were able to properly cobble together and i gotta give them credit for making it work. that’s the half of a star over one star.

that being said!

everything you did in the campaign is undone in not-well executed bullshit. the more i think about it, the more upset i get. i’ll give it to bungie for foreshadowing repeatedly that the witness can take control of our ghosts. fine. there was no foreshadowing that it can “make a link” with the plot device you refused to explain, our character, caital, and the stupid cloudstrider just fucking watched our ghost sloooowwwwly fly up to the plot device and honestly Second Macguffin, and no amount of “chekov’s gunning” this is going to remove the sin of invalidating all the player’s efforts this expansion. why did we abandon the main story just to get rug pulled in the last moment? the game smugly acts like “the witness outsmarted humanity’s best efforts” and it absolutely did not earn it. my friends and i finished the campaign wondering what actually happened and i had to read a summary. garbage. just plain garbage.

strand adds a few, new debuffs to the game like weakening the damage an enemy deals, a grappling hook, and a new element to the system. that’s really it. the larger game doesn’t support it like installing grappling spots everywhere for example and tying the grapple to your coveted grenade ability. the developers keep nerfing the potency of strand, gutting creative ways the community uses it (weavewalk and DOT), or not tightening core gameplay (strand warlock is centered around making threadlings. threadlings continue to be mid at best). everything else is just Green Damage. same old that you knew.

stuff that’s usually good like the OST stayed good also. no real change there. oneirophobia is probably my favorite raid theme now.

speaking of raids, lightning round for the seasons after, the raid, and the dungeons. the seasonal stories have been a gauntlet of tying up loose ends either by killing off characters or awkward severing remaining story threads week by week. not great. there’s no meaningful changes to the gameplay loop or grind that make them better than “meh.” like i said WAY earlier, the raid is visually stunning but flops in the gameplay. i absolutely fuck with the direction, lore, and wider premise of root of nightmares but i can’t stomach another boring, rng dependant run of scission. the reprised raids were also fine, but are just nostalgic romps and nothing else. nothing new and engaging. the dungeons are clearly designed now to be “marathons” for people trying to solo flawless the dungeon and, as a result, dungeons are slogs even in full teams. it’s a weekly chore. besides gameplay, dungeons are fine (art, music, whatever). the loot for both is also weirdly awful?? i wouldn’t have brought this up if just the ghost of the deep loot was mid, but why were the potential perks for both so bad??

so, worst expansion in my opinion. it’s the worst because it has all the experience and lack of excuses for the curse of osiris and shadowkeep. bungie wanted more time for final shape (which STILL wasn’t even good enough and has its own delay) and this expansion reeks of that desperation. i’m playing up to the final shape to tie a bow on my time playing this series (as a house of wolves veteran), but i’m not playing this franchise again after the witness croaks. judging by the direction of news about the company, Bungie might implode after that expansion anyway.

whole situation is a bummer.

What a sad, disappointing expansion. The way this was marketed would have made you think it was some grand chapter in the story when in reality it meant nothing.

That's the best way to describe Lightfall now that I think about it: nothing. The story was nothing, the characters are nothing, and Neomuna is nothing. I could make an infinite amount of jokes about the Veil and how it wasn't explained at all in the campaign, but it's nothing and doesn't actually matter.

All in all, the only good things about this DLC is The Witness, the music, and Strand, and that took up a majority of the missions in this campaign. After Final Shape releases, I'm done.

Almost forgot: Nimbus is probably the worst character in this entire series.