I’m gonna break this review down into multiple parts to address the different aspects of Lightfall; pointing out where Bungie succeeded, failed, and where they have room for improvement. If you just want a very quick TL;DR: story is alright, Neomuna is neat, gameplay is incredible, Strand is fantastic, mod system feels good, difficulty could use some tweaking, and the raid is simultaneously good and boring.

STORY
The story swung wildly in quality for me. I know Bungie addressed in a TWAB that Lightfall would leave players with unanswered questions, but I’d never imagined it was in this sort of context. I was expecting to be confused in an excited sort of way, like I was at the end of The Witch Queen which had me questioning “who/what/where is the Witness” and “what do Savathûn’s riddles mean?” These were healthy questions to have — especially considering how solid and complete the campaign was overall.

Lightfall left me with more questions than answers, but moreso in a negative way. I’m still unsure of what the Radial Mast truly was. I have a vague idea of what the Veil is, but it’s still largely a mystery. Where did the Witness go inside the Traveler? And more questions similar to that. I obviously don’t expect an immediate answer to some of these, but I would have liked some clarification on a lot of them. Undoubtedly this will be answered in future seasons, but it’s going to leave a pretty bad taste in most players mouthes for the time being.

Now, to talk about the campaign itself, it… was alright. I think most of the community is far too negative about it. It certainly wasn’t great, but I don’t think I can personally call it bad. I got legitimate enjoyment out of a decent chunk of it, and that’s enough for me as a baseline. It’s far from Bungie’s best work, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not garbage like the community would lead you to believe. I’ve enjoyed the lore entries so far, and it’s nice to see a change in Osiris’s behavior. I also enjoy Nimbus as a character, but I often felt that their personality, coupled with the silliness of the campaign, threw off the tone of the expansion. I felt that the trailers and finale of Season of the Seraph set a rather grim, serious tone that Lightfall only somewhat lives up to, and that’s me being generous. And man, don’t even get me started on how disappointing the final Calus fight was.

I think the thing that annoyed me the most about the campaign was the lack of communication between characters. The story mostly focused on Osiris and Nimbus, with the occasional interjection from Rohan and Caiatl. I know most of the Last City was likely on lockdown but… nothing? Radio silence? Not a word? It’s not like they couldn’t communicate with each other (e.g. Osiris could call Saint and we could page Zavala), so why was there not more communication? Maybe it’s just a me-thing, but it made the expansion feel a bit empty.

NEOMUNA
Neomuna is an unfortunate case of Bungie’s false advertising. The trailers portrayed it as this location with immense verticality that we would use Strand to traverse and… well, that wasn’t it at all. Neomuna, like most patrol zones, is largely flat with arguably a little more verticality than most other destinations. That’s about all it has going for it. Before Lightfall dropped, I’d envisioned that we would be swinging from rooftop to rooftop, when in actuality, it feels like we’re using Strand to get to one ledge higher than our normal jump can take us. It’s disappointing to say the least. But the question is, is Neomuna bad?

The short answer: no, far from it. I would have much preferred what I thought we were getting, but what we did get is still incredibly solid. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it’s my favorite destination or anything, but it’s certainly not my least favorite. I think what I enjoy the most about Neomuna is how much interaction you have with the city and its civilians. I love getting the Jisu Calerondo From Neomuna Civil News voiceovers, or picking up patrols from civilians on the front lines, or helping the archivist with her records, etc. And man, have you guys been finding those Cloud Strider action figures!? They’re actually little mini public events that has the Guardian helping out the city by doing generic civic jobs. It’s actually a ton of fun! I love stuff like that!

So yeah, Neomuna isn’t the best, but it’s far from bad!

GAMEPLAY
Let’s be honest here: the gameplay of Lightfall is simply excellent, with very few exceptions. Strand feels incredible, not broken, not weak, just right. Suspend feels great, grappling feels solid (albeit a little buggy at times), supers feel powerful, threadlings are lethal (and adorable), tangles and woven mail feel impactful — it all adds up to a fantastic experience. I really have no current gripes with the new subclasses in the slightest.

The new mod system is something I feel I’m not qualified to discuss, simply because I’m not a nerd who crunches numbers to find out what’s optimal. Does it leave a bit to be desired? Sure, but it’s not bad, and if anything this makes Destiny a SIGNIFICANTLY more accessible game for new players. I absolutely loathed having to have several different armor sets for each different subclass, to the point where I scarcely engaged with the previous mod system because of it. Now, it’s far more simple and streamlined, which I really enjoy. It still very much has the potential for completely busted builds just as the previous system did, not to the same degree, but it’s still there. And hey, that’s good enough for me!

Now, to talk about what’s not so great about the gameplay: difficulty. I have no issue with Destiny becoming more difficult. It’s no fun to just steamroll through content all of the time, but man… whatever they did feels bad. Real bad. I shouldn’t have to dump multiple magazines into a red-bar enemy. Combatants just feel like extremely lethal bullet-sponges, and it just doesn’t feel good engaging with Legend and Master content. I think what really throws me off the most is that some Legend/Master content feels significantly worse than others, so it’s this constant guessing game of “is this going to be a challenge,” or “is this going to be borderline impossible?”

Not a good feeling. Would love to see some fine-tuning of the difficulty soon, because other than that I think Destiny’s in an incredibly solid spot.

RAID
Let’s talk about the raid. I’ve completed this raid on both contest mode and normal mode. Yes, it’s easy, but nobody is properly discussing why it’s easy, plus everyone keeps equating “easy” with “bad.” Hell, this may be one of the most accessible raids in Destiny 2 and that is a VERY GOOD THING. Destiny is entering its finale of the light and dark saga, and the more people it can have engaging with its end-game content means there are more people who will likely stick around for the long haul. This is a good thing.

My issue with the raid, as someone who runs raids weekly and has sherpa’d countless of them, is that Root of Nightmares’s simplicity is too boring for me. Most encounters have over half of the fireteam on add clear, with 2 people running the mechanic. The third encounter is the “hardest” not because of any genuine difficulty, but because it has double the amount of people running mechanics. I’m all for raids being accessible, but with Lightfall having a rather disappointing launch, a boring raid does nothing to help motivate veteran players to stick around. It’s great for newcomers, but Bungie is running the risk of losing some of it’s more long-term, dedicated players.

CONCLUSION
As I stated in my TL;DR at the beginning, the bulk of this expansion is fine. The community will have you believe that Bungie purposefully set a dumpster on fire and slapped a $60-$100 pricetag on it, but that’s not the case at all. It’s an alright DLC that has the potential to be a great one depending on how the year progresses. We all collectively set our expectations (understandably) too high on this one. We didn’t approach Lightfall with the expectation that, yes, this DLC will largely be filler. I think there was a miscommunication between producer and consumer on this one, and I hope Bungie rectifies that going forward.

At the end of the day, it is what it is, and though Lightfall isn’t perfect, now I at least know to set my expectations especially high for the Final Shape!

IN MEMORIAM
I started writing this review before the news broke out. It’s with a heavy heart that I say this, but I want to honor the passing of our Vanguard Leader, Lance Reddick, the voice of Commander Zavala. I started playing Destiny about 10 years ago, and it was the Titan class that got me into the game. Zavala is a character I’ve grown to love and appreciate over the years, and it’s Lance’s incredible work that brought him to life.

I’m utterly devastated to hear of his passing; it’s like saying goodbye to a childhood hero of mine. Rest in peace, Commander. I’ll see you star-side.

I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but I was totally enamored with this season in the beginning. I absolutely adored what felt like everything about it for the first month or two, but the last month or so I was running into extremely severe server lag. I play on a PS5 with a solid Internet connection, so I had no clue where this was coming from. Had asked some friends if they were experiencing it too, and many of them were running into it as well. Mind you, it wasn’t a one-time thing, I was running into said lag fairly regularly (with some stabilization at either very late or very early hours).

Aside from that, kind of reflecting on the season as a whole, I just wasn’t invested in the story, or characters, maps, mechanics, etc like I was in seasons prior. I really love the RPG feel of augments, and I love the graphics and battlepass updates, but that’s… kind of it? Once the luster of it all wears off, you realize there’s not much substance there to sustain player engagement. Overall I did get some enjoyment out of it, but it was rather disappointing by the end.

You know, the bulk of this season was rather underwhelming. The cast for Season of the Seraph included not only some of my favorite Destiny characters, but some of my favorite characters in general, and yet it still felt lackluster. Though Spire of the Watcher was a neat dungeon, it’s far from my favorite. Heist Battlegrounds were solid, and I adored the dialogue between the characters, but they often overstayed their welcome. Seraph’s Shield was fascinating, and serves as a phenomenal introduction to Deep Stone Crypt’s mechanics and map layout, but after running it a few times I was bored of it.

So, the question is, why 5 stars? It’s clearly something that was good, but most of the season was rather subpar for me, so why rate it so highly? Well, because of the finale.

Bungie loves to play the long game when it comes to Destiny. Little tidbits and story beats that may seem irrelevant or incomplete, but they have purpose. They have meaning. There is something almost like nostalgia that tugs at my heartstrings when we had to say goodbye to Rasputin. He’s been around ever since Destiny 1, yet watching a machine designed for war, destruction, and even conquest gain humanity, sentience, and learn to love invokes a feeling in me that is equal parts indescribable yet unparalleled. Watching Osiris lecture Ana about the importance of a single cup of tea, and acknowledging the presence and compassion of the person behind it, then later seeing that manifest in Ikora’s speech on the gravity of their situation, and that everyone should stop and spend quality time with their loved ones because they may not have that opportunity again… just, wow. That got me. Not to mention that scene is then followed by a touching, long overdue heart-to-heart between Ana and Elsie. Perfection. And you can’t forget that shot of the Traveler being lifted from Earth’s atmosphere being foreshadowed on the Destiny 1 box-art. It’s simply astounding to me.

So yeah, this season wasn’t perfect but I never expected it to be, and despite its flaws I really loved it. I love Destiny, and I’m so excited for Lightfall!