MeisterPear
Destiny 2 2017
Log Status
Played
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
1539h 40m
Days in Journal
238 days
Last played
June 5, 2024
First played
September 9, 2017
Platforms Played
Library Ownership
Damn, where to begin with this one? Both Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 have been a part of my life since I was in middle school, and it became the gateway not only to a story filled with fantastical elements but also all of my best friends. I have had countless amounts of fun over the 6 years that Destiny 2 has been out and wouldn't trade it for anything. I will try to be as objective as I can with my review, but I will share one age-old adage shared by many Destiny players: “I hate Destiny; it's my favorite game.”
Pros:
- This list could be massive
- The story has spanned 6 years (plus 3 years if you count Destiny 1) and if you enjoy in depth lore, there is absolutely NO shortage of story for you. You could write research papers on the history of various topics in Destiny's universe. YouTubers that detail the story and lore of this game have made several hour-long videos that explain it all. From the histories of all the alien races, to the development of the current human society, and the origins of cosmic powers, this game has it all. Detailing the theme and setting would take way too long, just watch a trailer to get the gist.
- When it comes to the narratives presented in the game, they can be varied in terms of quality but in general are pretty interesting. The "yearly DLCs" (with a lion's share of content that forms the foundation of the year's gameplay loop) form the majority of the narrative, with "seasons" (3 month period, small-scale stories and activities that slowly advance the game's narrative) filling in the roughly 11 month gaps between yearly DLCs. The Witch Queen DLC is probably the best out of all the campaigns, with Beyond Light and Lightfall also having very engaging moments. Seasonal stories also vary in quality, but unfortunately lean more towards worse.
- The gameplay spans two major fields: gunplay/abilities and “activities” (you know, what you’re actually doing in-game), of which detailed analysis in this review is impossible. The gunplay in this game is incredibly satisfying (and probably what most laymen will praise about this game), with a myriad of weapon classes, rarities, archetypes, perks, and modifications that allow you to play quite literally any role you may want.
- Abilities are centered around elements (of which there are currently 5: Solar, Arc, Void, Stasis, and Strand), which not only feature as damage types in Destiny’s guns, but also in “classes”: Hunters are your classic rogues, who are nimble, stealthy, and fluid; Warlocks are space magicians that augment others with cosmic buffs and debuffs; and Titans are tanks that excel in both holding ground and taking with overwhelming physical force. Each of these classes have “subclasses” with various utilities (grenades, movement skills, melee attacks, various buffs/debuffs). Long story short, you can live your ultimate cosmic power fantasy because you could spend hours customizing your build (or even minutes if you’re looking for something simple but effective).
- I have literally never seen ANYONE criticize the art of this game. The environments are disgustingly gorgeous in this game. You could take a screenshot of virtually any backdrop on any planet and have it look beautiful. Every ability cast is fluid and sometimes even mesmerizing; and the armor and weapon designs range from intricate, to rugged, to otherworldly—and all of those are compliments. The music is also amazing as well, though most people never stop to think about it.
- Speaking of armor, your appearance in this game is very customizable (but is unfortunately part of the grind). The character customization (body type, facial features) is very barebones, but since most of the time, you’ll be covered by armor, that’s not the focus anyway. There are hundreds of armor pieces obtainable from all activities and you can make yourself look as scary, cool, majestic, or ugly as you want.
- If you have friends that enjoy multiplayer games (or Destiny lol), playing with them makes like half the fun of this game. So many different ways to occupy yourself (maybe too many at times) and just have a blast with everyone. From goofing off in patrol zones (basically free roam on each planets), to fighting in Gambit (PvPvE) and Crucible (PvP), to challenging yourselves and chasing the strongest rewards in non-matchmade activities like Dungeons (3 player, communication and mechanic heavy) and Raids (6 player, communication and mechanic heavy), this game is great.
- I know not everyone cares about this, but this game has pretty good representation, though you wouldn’t be able to figure it all out just by playing the game. You’d have to read (yes, read) the lore for most of it.
cons:
- God this list could ALSO be massive
- The biggest flaw of this game is how much money you are expected to spend if you want the full story (and you cannot even play the full story anymore, see below). It is upwinds of $200 dollars to purchase all DLCs with relevant story content. While the base game is free to play, it isn't super deep and may bore people looking for an engaging experience.
- Keeping in line with the absurd amount of money that could be spent on this game, it has a seasonal gameplay model where after purchasing a "yearly DLC", one can purchase "seasons". You can play without purchasing seasons, but will be stuck with the yearly DLC's content to play for a whole year, with only occasional content drops for free-to-play players.
- The new player/free-to-play experience is fairly bad. In the third year of the game’s release, it introduced the “Destiny Content Vault” (see below) and replaced the vanilla campaign (which continued Destiny 1’s story) with the “New Light Campaign” which gives players new to the franchise a rundown of the setting. The story of this campaign is pretty boring and does a terrible job of actually giving you the story; not to mention the tutorials present during the New Light campaign suck hard, leaving many new players in the dark on how they are supposed to play. The latest DLC introduced a rank system that attempts to ease players in with tooltips about the new things they unlock as they progress, but all it amounts to is brief sentences about some of the more basic systems. If you don’t have a friend (see below) to explain things to you, put your thinking cap on because you’re about to go through a baptism by fire to figure out how the hell you’re meant to play.
- The time sink you will find yourself in if you play this and like it is utterly bonkers. The grind is eternal, sometimes entertaining, sometimes not. Flip of a coin if you enjoy the grind on any given day. Plus since this game runs on a seasonal model, after a year, their content is no longer playable, so FOMO (fear of missing out) is a plague. The RNG in this also leans to unlucky, since there are so many variables that can make a piece of gear good. If you enjoy looter shooters, you might like this, but even die-hard fans of that genre may find it too much.
- The "Destiny Content Vault" includes the following things which are no longer accessible: 4 campaigns (vanilla campaign and 3 DLCs), 4 locations (widespread shared-space planets), a bunch of things such as strikes (3 player low intensity), raids, and Crucible maps, and an incalculable amount of weapons and armor pieces (like 100+). The official reason for the devs removing this content is because the game literally got too big for consoles.
- Story-wise, the DLCs can be hit or miss. When they hit, they hit, but when they miss, they miss hard. The Shadowkeep DLC is probably the best example of a miss, with Beyond Light and Lightfall having a fair share of boring or confusing storytelling (but also having good parts). Same deal for the seasons, but if a seasonal story sucks, it's never getting any better.
- Despite what I said above about lore, its accessibility is...difficult. Most of Destiny's storytelling is in its written lore, and thus you may need to actually read it in order to provide much-needed context to the campaign itself, instead of the campaign providing all the context you need.
- The weapon and ability meta goes topsy-turvy incredibly often, usually updating around seasonal release lines. One season a gun might be broken and ability spam may be bonkers, the next season, the gun is useless and the abilities have been nerfed into the ground. This problem is magnified if you spend a lot of time grinding to get a piece of gear, just in time for the devs to make it worthless.
- While the community for this game can be equal parts welcoming and toxic, in general if you don't have anyone to play with, this game can feel very lonely. LFGs (manual matchmaking) can be very elitist, and finding a nice group of players to play with might be hard. The game does have a clan system, but getting into one of course necessitates someone offering to let you in. And even if you find a clan, if it is sufficiently large, you might still feel just as alienated as you did without one.
Objective rating: 3.5 stars
Subjective rating: 5 stars
Pros:
- This list could be massive
- The story has spanned 6 years (plus 3 years if you count Destiny 1) and if you enjoy in depth lore, there is absolutely NO shortage of story for you. You could write research papers on the history of various topics in Destiny's universe. YouTubers that detail the story and lore of this game have made several hour-long videos that explain it all. From the histories of all the alien races, to the development of the current human society, and the origins of cosmic powers, this game has it all. Detailing the theme and setting would take way too long, just watch a trailer to get the gist.
- When it comes to the narratives presented in the game, they can be varied in terms of quality but in general are pretty interesting. The "yearly DLCs" (with a lion's share of content that forms the foundation of the year's gameplay loop) form the majority of the narrative, with "seasons" (3 month period, small-scale stories and activities that slowly advance the game's narrative) filling in the roughly 11 month gaps between yearly DLCs. The Witch Queen DLC is probably the best out of all the campaigns, with Beyond Light and Lightfall also having very engaging moments. Seasonal stories also vary in quality, but unfortunately lean more towards worse.
- The gameplay spans two major fields: gunplay/abilities and “activities” (you know, what you’re actually doing in-game), of which detailed analysis in this review is impossible. The gunplay in this game is incredibly satisfying (and probably what most laymen will praise about this game), with a myriad of weapon classes, rarities, archetypes, perks, and modifications that allow you to play quite literally any role you may want.
- Abilities are centered around elements (of which there are currently 5: Solar, Arc, Void, Stasis, and Strand), which not only feature as damage types in Destiny’s guns, but also in “classes”: Hunters are your classic rogues, who are nimble, stealthy, and fluid; Warlocks are space magicians that augment others with cosmic buffs and debuffs; and Titans are tanks that excel in both holding ground and taking with overwhelming physical force. Each of these classes have “subclasses” with various utilities (grenades, movement skills, melee attacks, various buffs/debuffs). Long story short, you can live your ultimate cosmic power fantasy because you could spend hours customizing your build (or even minutes if you’re looking for something simple but effective).
- I have literally never seen ANYONE criticize the art of this game. The environments are disgustingly gorgeous in this game. You could take a screenshot of virtually any backdrop on any planet and have it look beautiful. Every ability cast is fluid and sometimes even mesmerizing; and the armor and weapon designs range from intricate, to rugged, to otherworldly—and all of those are compliments. The music is also amazing as well, though most people never stop to think about it.
- Speaking of armor, your appearance in this game is very customizable (but is unfortunately part of the grind). The character customization (body type, facial features) is very barebones, but since most of the time, you’ll be covered by armor, that’s not the focus anyway. There are hundreds of armor pieces obtainable from all activities and you can make yourself look as scary, cool, majestic, or ugly as you want.
- If you have friends that enjoy multiplayer games (or Destiny lol), playing with them makes like half the fun of this game. So many different ways to occupy yourself (maybe too many at times) and just have a blast with everyone. From goofing off in patrol zones (basically free roam on each planets), to fighting in Gambit (PvPvE) and Crucible (PvP), to challenging yourselves and chasing the strongest rewards in non-matchmade activities like Dungeons (3 player, communication and mechanic heavy) and Raids (6 player, communication and mechanic heavy), this game is great.
- I know not everyone cares about this, but this game has pretty good representation, though you wouldn’t be able to figure it all out just by playing the game. You’d have to read (yes, read) the lore for most of it.
cons:
- God this list could ALSO be massive
- The biggest flaw of this game is how much money you are expected to spend if you want the full story (and you cannot even play the full story anymore, see below). It is upwinds of $200 dollars to purchase all DLCs with relevant story content. While the base game is free to play, it isn't super deep and may bore people looking for an engaging experience.
- Keeping in line with the absurd amount of money that could be spent on this game, it has a seasonal gameplay model where after purchasing a "yearly DLC", one can purchase "seasons". You can play without purchasing seasons, but will be stuck with the yearly DLC's content to play for a whole year, with only occasional content drops for free-to-play players.
- The new player/free-to-play experience is fairly bad. In the third year of the game’s release, it introduced the “Destiny Content Vault” (see below) and replaced the vanilla campaign (which continued Destiny 1’s story) with the “New Light Campaign” which gives players new to the franchise a rundown of the setting. The story of this campaign is pretty boring and does a terrible job of actually giving you the story; not to mention the tutorials present during the New Light campaign suck hard, leaving many new players in the dark on how they are supposed to play. The latest DLC introduced a rank system that attempts to ease players in with tooltips about the new things they unlock as they progress, but all it amounts to is brief sentences about some of the more basic systems. If you don’t have a friend (see below) to explain things to you, put your thinking cap on because you’re about to go through a baptism by fire to figure out how the hell you’re meant to play.
- The time sink you will find yourself in if you play this and like it is utterly bonkers. The grind is eternal, sometimes entertaining, sometimes not. Flip of a coin if you enjoy the grind on any given day. Plus since this game runs on a seasonal model, after a year, their content is no longer playable, so FOMO (fear of missing out) is a plague. The RNG in this also leans to unlucky, since there are so many variables that can make a piece of gear good. If you enjoy looter shooters, you might like this, but even die-hard fans of that genre may find it too much.
- The "Destiny Content Vault" includes the following things which are no longer accessible: 4 campaigns (vanilla campaign and 3 DLCs), 4 locations (widespread shared-space planets), a bunch of things such as strikes (3 player low intensity), raids, and Crucible maps, and an incalculable amount of weapons and armor pieces (like 100+). The official reason for the devs removing this content is because the game literally got too big for consoles.
- Story-wise, the DLCs can be hit or miss. When they hit, they hit, but when they miss, they miss hard. The Shadowkeep DLC is probably the best example of a miss, with Beyond Light and Lightfall having a fair share of boring or confusing storytelling (but also having good parts). Same deal for the seasons, but if a seasonal story sucks, it's never getting any better.
- Despite what I said above about lore, its accessibility is...difficult. Most of Destiny's storytelling is in its written lore, and thus you may need to actually read it in order to provide much-needed context to the campaign itself, instead of the campaign providing all the context you need.
- The weapon and ability meta goes topsy-turvy incredibly often, usually updating around seasonal release lines. One season a gun might be broken and ability spam may be bonkers, the next season, the gun is useless and the abilities have been nerfed into the ground. This problem is magnified if you spend a lot of time grinding to get a piece of gear, just in time for the devs to make it worthless.
- While the community for this game can be equal parts welcoming and toxic, in general if you don't have anyone to play with, this game can feel very lonely. LFGs (manual matchmaking) can be very elitist, and finding a nice group of players to play with might be hard. The game does have a clan system, but getting into one of course necessitates someone offering to let you in. And even if you find a clan, if it is sufficiently large, you might still feel just as alienated as you did without one.
Objective rating: 3.5 stars
Subjective rating: 5 stars