Original Destiny 2 review posted on www.xboxplayers.com our sister site
- Developer: Bungie
- Publisher: Activision
- Genre: Action Role playing game
- Release Date: 5th September 2017
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows
- Game Supplied by: Xbox
Bungie……. Creators of Halo……..Bungie……..Creators of Destiny
Gotta love them haven’t you, two of the most iconic games in gaming history and now Destiny 2 arrives to huge speculation and hope that it improves on the original title, fixes bugs and offers more than it’s predecessor.
With many players in the 1000+ hours on Destiny, myself included there are scrutinering eyes all over this and here are my opinions and views on what could continue to be one of the best games ever
Is Destiny 2 better than the original? I know that’s the burning question, I had the same question. So I’ll save you the long read and say it in simple terms for you.
YES HELL YES it’s better in so many ways and offers so much more, why are you still reading this go buy it now and start your new journey.
Good that’s that bit done, so for those of you interested in a few details, here are a few sections broken down for you.
Overall game mechanics
Obviously not too much has been tweaked, the game itself is what made it such a success but there are elements that have been added, others tweaked and some removed, all together due to better mechanics being applied.
One example of this would be the ammo synth. Something I’m sure all guardians could agree came in extremely useful due to lack of ammo in many cases.
Well it’s gone, yeah they took something we used and loved and dared to rebalance the ammo drops in game. I applaud you Bungie as you’ve nailed it. A few times i have wished for a synth, but in general I have had to weapon swap and be more adaptive as a player to succeed and after speaking to other guardians they seem to agree.
This is a general basis of many of the changes you will find in Destiny 2
The worlds you visit have a vendor you can visit and earn rewards similar to the factions in D1 (Original Destiny title) however this time you do not level them up as such.
Once you hit Level 20 and you are now dependant on you light level rising and your faction rewards that come in the form of Engrams will decode at an appropriate level (unless you have bonus mods applied – More later) to your light to enable a constant level up of your character.
Obviously as this is Destiny this is not the only means to level up general engram drops during activities, Quests, public events, Patrols, Treasure chests, maps, Strikes, Raids, Crucible and milestones (CAN ANYONE THINK OF ANYTHING I’VE MISSED HERE)
All the usual engrams are available from grey, green, blue, purple and yellow are back but, yes there are new Bright Engrams.
Bright Engrams are rewarded when your character levels up, even after you reach level 20 playing the game will actively continue to “level up” although for now you cannot go higher than 20 and you receive various rewards from ships, sparrows, consumables and more.
Speaking of more, one of my favourite introductions is the new Mods. Available from the gunsmith to purchase or receive via one of the other methods above like engrams here you can choose how to improve the gun you have. This may be simply to change the burn of the weapon to Arc from Solar or even over to Void but you at least have options. Perhaps you would like more ammo, better stability, faster reload. I could go on but i don’t want to tell you everything. Needless to say they are not infinite though, discard your weapon and the mod has gone, they are one time use so be sparring at first until you find weapons you like and want to stick with (unless you have loads of glimmer to buy more random mods (slight hint here everyone, look into it)
Crucible:
Not much has changed here really, different modes such as clash, supremacy all return and the ranking system is disabled or enabled depending on your choice of mode. Both quick play and competitive are available too with fireteams of up to 4 players a lot of fun is to be had here with rewards going as high as exotic engrams it could really help you out.
Nightfall:
Much better, currently varied burns as time progresses and a time limit to complete it in, what else will bingie add? I can see nightfalls being a highly anticipated challenge each week this time round. Rewards from it are also good so make sure you don’t miss out on them.
Clans:
Fantastic addition, join your fellow Guardians and complete nightfalls, raids and other challenges to earn your clan XP and be rewarded for your efforts with boosts and other rewards. A small team won’t level up very fast here so grab as many as you can but it’s been great so far to hear people talking about the clan level and rewards.
Adventures and Quests:
Adventures appear on each world and can be replayed to earn additional rewards, they are for the most part quite short and simple, an easy to complete challenge if you’re into that but the quests is where the rewards are at, exotic guns and high light level rewards are in store for those that complete them and better still one of them rewards you with the Midas Multi tool and a mini SMG (yeah personal favourite loadout) so make sure you complete the quests as they will help you massively.
Treasure maps and lost sectors:
These appear on your world map, find them and complete short challenges in lost sector for quick rewards, not the best gear but they help. They do however grey out once completed.
Treasure chests and maps, two of the same thing but with very different rewards. Chests in general just give world reputation points and again appear on your map, easy enough to find and they disappear once looted, the treasure maps obtained from Cayde though at a costly 4800 glimmer each can reward you very highly. Well worth the glimmer spend if you can afford it.
Raid:
The pinnacle of every guardians game, can you defeat the raid, work out the challenges and game mechanics to overcome the raid challenges and ultimately enemies.
This raid bring a lot to the game.
Not just the difficulty and varied challenges that await you but additional exploration.
We spent days working out the raid mechanics and then more exploring the raid.
I’m not going to give it away there are youtube videos for that but I will say that dependant on your light level it’s challenging but extremely enjoyable once you have it mastered.
And the weekly reset cannot come soon enough to have another crack at it and improve our raid skills.
So just from the few points from above as you can no doubt tell I’m trying not to give anything away but give you the outline of a greatly improved game that hasn’t changed too much but in a lot of small ways to make it better.
Yes servers are a little shaky right now but with that many people on it’s to be expected, this will fade out as weeks go on. Yes there are still the odd bugs in the game that can seem frustrating, but for a game this big that looks this good, has this much to do and a typical epic soundtrack from Bungie you can’t complain, they have even practically got rid of the mid world map loading, very few times have i seen it kick in and added in the ability to fast travel around the map just makes exploring and getting things done that much better.
SUMMARY
It looks amazing, the tweaks are brilliant, the story is brilliant (didn’t want to give anything away here hence it’s not mentioned) the playability is almost overwhelming and it just feels like there is a extremely good foundation here to build onto for future expansions and changes.
Destiny 2 is a must! Good luck out there Guardians