perhaps still in my honeymoon phase with this game but i think it’s pretty good. i was fortunate to have an experienced friend walk me through the first month, but even that aside i was interested enough in the game to look (many, many) things up myself.

prefacing my review by acknowledging this game is definitely massively better with at least 1-2 friends to play with. that’s just how mmos & life in general are, though.

destiny 2 is perfectly geared towards my current personal interests in live service games. it has an incredibly strong aesthetic sense, blending together fantasy and sci-fi admirably; and it’s very easy to hop in this game, occupy yourself for however long, and hop out. lore is a bit all over the place but i find it fun to puzzle it all out, keeps me engaged with the part of the community that loves this game enough to record and archive everything about it. and to be honest - i never expect anything with game lore anymore, so at this point convoluted piecemeal lore that hits the baseline for consistency might be better for my enjoyment than straight dumping it all on me lmfao

i should also mention, i typically hate mmos with a long leveling grind from start to endgame bcs i almost always start playing games later than my friends & i would like to try different characters without feeling bored as hell, so the horizontal setup of d2 is much appreciated.

what else. combat is so fun and satisfying you kind of forget to even praise it, it does its job so well. pve content can reach surprising levels of complexity even when it still appears simple, and as long as you can pick up a few cues you should be able to recognize when you’re getting into more difficult content. haven’t tried pvp but from my friends’ experience it has options for casual and more hardcore pvpers.

bungie could definitely improve on certain aspects of the game like the new player experience, updating old missions, etc, but you know how games are. coming from someone that’s not used to devs communicating with players, having weekly updates and devs that actually bother talking to players at all (much less tell them what kinds of feedback are helpful, what they had in mind when developing a certain thing, being transparent about when they need more time for an update, etc) is a fucking miracle… lol

oh and the pricing model - it’s also perfectly suited for my interests. i like being able to access the game whenever i feel like playing, compared to a subscription model, where my schedule is absolutely not consistent enough to justify buying game access per month. i initially played during the 1-month everything-free trial period and thought the game was pretty sick, so i got the older expansions during the -70-80% bulk sale and then the new final shape dlc (1st season pass alone version).

but yeah, fun game, i appreciate the effort devs are putting into the game (even if bungie executive choices leave much to be desired… as usual), i’ll probably become more cynical over time but for now i’m enjoying it.

also, final shape was good. love the traveler. not so much in love with how bungie backseated ikora's character but maybe one day game writers will suddenly wake up and figure out how to write women without tripping over themselves. lol