(Note: This review is updated as of Season of Arrivals. This also only covers The Red War + content that came with it, and the new player experience in general. Raid content not included, review will be updated as soon as I finish Leviathan)
Destiny 2 base content actually infuriates me, almost entirely due to how good it actually ends up getting on paper and in execution yet holds itself ludicrously back. Combine that with the general awful new player experience and quality of life of Destiny 2 current you have to go through, and it makes the start of this game stumble and fall on every step. Despite that, there is actually something I can see here, underneath the Activision-forced rubble.
The campaign is fine, and it also shows the biggest elements of how easily stuff can be fixed. Enemy designs are all solid conceptually, each with strengths and weaknesses that are intuitive to understand and majority of the projectiles can be dodged, which in theory would make for an elegant dance which combined with your pretty good toolkit of movement and gunplay should make for some awesome combat right? Nope, because almost all of the encounters are way way way too easy. Like it's actually pathetic how you can turn your brain off and not care through it all, enemies do peanut damage and it's not an issue of gear, enemies scale in the campaign with your power level. This leads to a lot of frustration in my mind because something as simple as tuning the damage could make the content legitimately super fun to go through, because the levels are solid enough and there's a lot of variety, even if the enemies are almost entirely from D1 with no new stuff otherwise.
The presentation in contrast is really great. The music slaps, and the art style and scenery is just excellent at bringing you in. I honestly found myself immersed at times, with certain highlights etched in my mind when I touched down on Nessus or drove in my vehicle through parts of the DMZ. I wish it was attached to a story that earns that presentation though, because the story is laughably rushed and incredibly shallow. Character quips range from decently humorous to groan worthy, and while personalities are distinct none of it rung with me because there's no engagement with them outside their already established importance. Story elements just happen with pacing way too fast for any scene to sell it either, the setting is totaled in front of you despite literally just getting into it. It expects you to care from Destiny 1, but from what I've been told it was hard to care that much too (you go from like, powerlessness to full power in the span of 10 minutes it's super sloppy).
And then there's the endgame/post-campaign content, most of which is a grindy mess. Strikes are just as easy if not worse than the campaign without the immersive attachment, basically hitting off a checklist of shoot thing and continue on with nothing else exciting to them. World and weapon quests are locked behind grindy enemy waves and the story of them are not worth the tedium you have to do to get them. Although, as a stark positive, the lore is actually rather incredible and I highly recommend reading or watching through it to get caught up on the setting. It's not a requirement at all but stuff like the origins of The Hive are raw as fuck.
But alas, this, and pretty much everything positive about Destiny 2 base, is buried under a mountain of new player experience that is simultaneously frustrating to parse and it is to go through. New player experience would have you go through old content without any context to finish New Light, and then have you do raids that DO NOT HAVE A ROULETTE AND YOU HAVE TO GET A TEAM FOR, leaving a lot of content, some of which is even considered the Good part of Destiny 2, behind a series of lacking QoL to get to. I for one haven't been able to get my group just to get one raid done, and LFG has been a nightmare.
Overall, I do not recommend playing Destiny 2. I enjoyed myself with The Red War and had my moments, but it's definitely not good and 100% worth skipping over.
Destiny 2 base content actually infuriates me, almost entirely due to how good it actually ends up getting on paper and in execution yet holds itself ludicrously back. Combine that with the general awful new player experience and quality of life of Destiny 2 current you have to go through, and it makes the start of this game stumble and fall on every step. Despite that, there is actually something I can see here, underneath the Activision-forced rubble.
The campaign is fine, and it also shows the biggest elements of how easily stuff can be fixed. Enemy designs are all solid conceptually, each with strengths and weaknesses that are intuitive to understand and majority of the projectiles can be dodged, which in theory would make for an elegant dance which combined with your pretty good toolkit of movement and gunplay should make for some awesome combat right? Nope, because almost all of the encounters are way way way too easy. Like it's actually pathetic how you can turn your brain off and not care through it all, enemies do peanut damage and it's not an issue of gear, enemies scale in the campaign with your power level. This leads to a lot of frustration in my mind because something as simple as tuning the damage could make the content legitimately super fun to go through, because the levels are solid enough and there's a lot of variety, even if the enemies are almost entirely from D1 with no new stuff otherwise.
The presentation in contrast is really great. The music slaps, and the art style and scenery is just excellent at bringing you in. I honestly found myself immersed at times, with certain highlights etched in my mind when I touched down on Nessus or drove in my vehicle through parts of the DMZ. I wish it was attached to a story that earns that presentation though, because the story is laughably rushed and incredibly shallow. Character quips range from decently humorous to groan worthy, and while personalities are distinct none of it rung with me because there's no engagement with them outside their already established importance. Story elements just happen with pacing way too fast for any scene to sell it either, the setting is totaled in front of you despite literally just getting into it. It expects you to care from Destiny 1, but from what I've been told it was hard to care that much too (you go from like, powerlessness to full power in the span of 10 minutes it's super sloppy).
And then there's the endgame/post-campaign content, most of which is a grindy mess. Strikes are just as easy if not worse than the campaign without the immersive attachment, basically hitting off a checklist of shoot thing and continue on with nothing else exciting to them. World and weapon quests are locked behind grindy enemy waves and the story of them are not worth the tedium you have to do to get them. Although, as a stark positive, the lore is actually rather incredible and I highly recommend reading or watching through it to get caught up on the setting. It's not a requirement at all but stuff like the origins of The Hive are raw as fuck.
But alas, this, and pretty much everything positive about Destiny 2 base, is buried under a mountain of new player experience that is simultaneously frustrating to parse and it is to go through. New player experience would have you go through old content without any context to finish New Light, and then have you do raids that DO NOT HAVE A ROULETTE AND YOU HAVE TO GET A TEAM FOR, leaving a lot of content, some of which is even considered the Good part of Destiny 2, behind a series of lacking QoL to get to. I for one haven't been able to get my group just to get one raid done, and LFG has been a nightmare.
Overall, I do not recommend playing Destiny 2. I enjoyed myself with The Red War and had my moments, but it's definitely not good and 100% worth skipping over.