Review: Destiny 2: Beyond Light

For those who want to know what they sign up for, here we go! I enjoyed playing Destiny 2: Beyond Light, which is the latest expansion in the Destiny universe! And arguably the biggest sone yet! The first real content that Bungie brings out as an independent company! For those who want the short answer: As a seasoned Destiny player, I loved every bit of it! But let’s explore this statement a little bit more, shall we?

We played Destiny 2: Beyond Light for 37 hours on PC and Xbox.

What we liked!

• New supers: This will be a long point and split up for each class, so stay with me! First of all, we really needed a new significant change in the game’s pace, and we got it with 3 new darkness supers! But here you get a short breakdown of each super, and my personal opinion about it:
  – Warlock: Ah, my favorite class! I love flying and launching big beams of power! So when I got my hands on this ultimate, I literally jumped up from my chair! This ultimate is what I would think of when I hear the idea of a dark warlock. You freeze everything, and with a secondary action, make all frosted targets explode. And did I mention you fly during it? (It also makes a fantastic sound!)
  – Hunter: Hunter feels mostly the same as with the light subclasses. You get an ultimate that generates a lot of orbs. With that comes a dodge to reload and a grenade that freezes. It feels like the hunter was last on the development list because it doesn’t feel too overwhelming. Yet, it is an excellent ultimate to play around with.
  – Titan: This dark superpower surprised me the most. I was expecting the usual run and gun titan. Hence that is what we know our best class for. Instead, we got a mix between an ice cube and a wall breaker? It feels good to use once you get used to it, but it can be a little hard to get the hang of it.
• Newest content: As with every expansion in Destiny, you are well settled for extra content. Sometimes, you only get some events and additional depth to the game, but rarely do we get this much content! We got 3 new supers, a new planet, new PVP maps, new weapons, a new raid. It felt overwhelming at first, but I must say the story is insanely well written. (Yes, I admire the story a lot) You really do get pulled in the journey which your guardian undergoes to wield the power of darkness. Something you really should give a try yourself!
  
• Next-gen performance: This is a significant change compared to other iterations of Destiny. Bungie has really put forward the effort to break free of the “Destiny is a loading time simulator-meme.” Loading into activities while playing on next-gen hardware is so much faster. Also, the graphics that come with this type of hardware are absolutely stunning. I always thought that I was lucky playing Destiny on my computer (using a GTX1080 + Ultrawide) because it just looked stunning and was fast as it is. But giving it a go on Xbox series X was absolutely breathtaking. It loaded quickly, and the ray tracing and shadowing are stunning. It will make you realize that the future is here today.
• Exotic Archive: I never had the friends to play those fully stacked raids. And I know I could have joined a Sherpa clan to resolve this issue. Still, I never found joy in having 3 or more different players explaining these activities to me. So for me, most exotic and special weapons were unobtainable. But now, you can acquire these vaulted exotics and pinnacle weapons straight from the Exotic Archive! Although it will cost you quite a bit of in-game grinding to get all the required materials. Also, Mountaintop (a PVP weapon I couldn’t be bothered griding for) is there. As an added bonus, you can now complete quests from Xur to get exotic Cyphers. These can then be turned into a random exotic you don’t own or be used at the Exotic Archive to buy the exotic of your choice!
• Balance patches: I have noticed the most with Blizzard’s big move to Bungie because the game feels more balanced and ever-changing. Updates get rolled out quicker, and the team is clearly trying out different buffs and nerfs. Lately, hand cannons are being buffed to be meta again in PVP, which is a welcome change. But other classes and abilities get nerfed quicker. All combined, it is clear that Bungie has their finger on the game’s pulse and is willing to give the required care to the game.
• Compensation: The content removal (more on this later) made us miss some of our old classics. But these locations are not entirely gone. We got compensated with content that felt too new to Destiny 2 players but felt familiar to Destiny 1 people. We got new stuff and old stuff in a new jacket. And after a while, you will get soo caught up in your new loot that you won’t even think about the scenery and dialogue you won’t hear again (for now)

Somewhere between

• Content vaulting: I understand that most people don’t really care too much about removing Mars, Mercury, Titan, and Io. Hence these are mostly mission planets where we never went anymore. But I must say, I will miss Mercury. Yes, it was the biggest planetary failure in the Destiny universe. Hence it was the smallest one with 2 real activities. But I will miss glazing my eyes on that place. It was just so gorgeous! But luckily, we get a new way to get these weapons from the planets.  But this brings me to the biggest question: How will new players level up now?
• Item power caps: I was just utterly shocked when I found out that some of my favorite weapons are capped in maximum power. For some of these weapons, I literally spent 20+ hours on acquiring the perfect roll. My hammerhead, Breakneck, Ikelos shotgun, Blast Furness, all with god rolls, are now capped in light level. I understand the idea behind it, to shake up the meta and make them less useful. But I would have rather seen them nerfing the weapons for PVP / invading. If you aim to play a PVP activity, you are making yourself weak by using them. Which renders the item useless? If they had removed them, it would have felt the same? Now you can at least play with them when you want, to feel what they used to be.

What we disliked

• The Dawning: Somehow, I still don’t get this event, and I always thought it was enforced by Blizzard. If we are all honest here, why would you want to go ahead and collect countless materials to make cookies for NPCs? Yes, you get extra loot and shiny new armor, but that is it. I was hoping to see this one removed, to be fair.

CONCLUSION

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