If you liked Destiny, you will love Destiny 2. If you didn’t like Destiny, you might like Destiny 2 now. This will be a spoiler free first impressions article, allowing you to understand the game further before you decide to get this game. Destiny 2 is very much Destiny as I remember, and that is a good thing. Destiny’s game developer, Bungie has nailed down what made the game great in the first place. This time, they came out with a sequel that is more cohesive in its narrative and more open. This made a far better launch than the original game three years ago.
The game starts with a recap, a time stamped look back at everything you’ve achieved during your time with the original game, including who you completed landmark missions with. It is a nice throwback just to highlight the best times you had with your fire team for the past 3 years. At the start of Destiny 2’s campaign, you will see the tower, of which you served and protected for the past 3 years, infiltrated and destroyed by the Red Legion. Their leader is Ghaul, of whom you met at the end of the beta campaign. The Red Legions aimed to take the Traveller for themselves, leaving all guardians stripped of their light. Without the power of light, the ghosts can no longer revive guardians, and the guardians lost all their space magic.
When you reach a certain point in the story missions, you can start teaming up with your friends and play together. Co-op play missions is what I love most from the franchise. The option of just spawning into the map where your friend is playing and joining in their activities is great. One troubling thing that I noticed from my campaign play through is that, there is no introduction to sparrows, the floating speeder bike that gets you from point A to point B with style. Players can find themselves finishing the story without having a sparrow. Just make sure to get that from your vault on your second characters.
As previously found in the beta, the skill tree system have been revamped, now the skill tree is made easier, with the main option of the skill lumped into 2 groups, so you can only choose 1 to be active. As you progress with the story missions, you will find yourself levelling up to a level cap of 20. This is where you will rely on weapon drops to increase your power level, which will improve your effectiveness against the enemies. The game now has weekly refreshed “milestones”, of which grants powerful gears. Powerful gears basically will power level your character to a higher light level, granting better loot as your go on. Loot is the bread and butter of the game, so if you get your hands on this game, rest assured that you will be spending a lot of time grinding the gears necessary for your character to be raid ready.
In the open world map, you can now see when and where the next public events can happen, and they are so much more fun that what was available while doing patrols in Destiny. You may encounter a Vex, Fallen, Cabal or even Taken themed public event. On each of the public events, you can trigger a heroic mode, of which grants more EXP and better loots from the completion chest. There are countless times where my fire team and I were on a mission, only to find ourselves drifting away to a nearby sector to clear the public event before continuing the mission.
The gunplay still feels amazing, one of the best thing that can’t be replicated in another game. Be it the kickback from a shotgun, or even the recoil from holding onto the trigger of an auto rifle, the game does not disappoint in delivering the variance of feedback. The sound that the weapons made the experience better, delivering an engaging and exciting gameplay. As of the time of writing, the raid have yet to be released. A comprehensive review will be written after I’ve went through all that Destiny 2 have to offer. Regardless if you are new to Destiny or a Veteran Guardian, there is something to enjoy in Destiny 2.
