*As of writing this I haven’t put much time into events, such as raids and strikes*

I am having a fun time with Destiny 2, and though I feel it made improvements some areas, there are still some areas that are lacking.

So, what did I like about Destiny 2? The first notable thing is the story. Destiny 2 has a descent story right off the bat with a beginning, middle and end. The Traveler is attack by a group called the Red Legion and it results in Guardians across the system to loss their light and their powers. Your character regains their light and becomes the main force to free the Traveler. Story wise, this single player campaign is short but a good portion of Destiny was always been the multiplayer gameplay. During the story you will run into similar faces and some new characters such as the A.I. Failsafe and a Hawthrone, a renegade that has been living outside the wall. Enemy wise, nothing really different here. As you play, you will be re-introduce to the Vex, Cabal, Fallen and Taken, and you will mainly deal with 2 factions per planet you visit. Personal, would of been nice to see a new race be at the center but the main villain of this story was good. Ghaul is the leader of the Red Legion and I think Ghaul is a good villain. It would of been nice to interact with him more as he is the big bad boss to beat is the major thing I would change about him. The game play of Destiny 2, to me, polished and change some things from the first one.

Destiny 2 still has some fun game play as it goes with classes and gun play. Players still have the 3 classes of Warlock, Titan and Hunter to choose from. Every class has several abilities to alter to allow different builds. Also each class has 3 sub-classes, where the 2nd and 3rd has to be found in the world and then have requirements met to unlock. Things you can change are grenade types, class abilities, movement type, super ability, melee type and give you two focuses of the class that will give you other perks. So let’s look at Warlocks, since that is the class I have played the most, Warlocks are more of the support class as they have the ability to summon a rift that can either heal or power up other players. A sub-class of Warlock is Voidwalker, your super ability is launching a nova bomb at a group of enemies. As a Voidwalker, you have 2 attunements to choose from: Chaos and Hunger. Chaos is all about increase damage of your class abilities while Hunger focuses on recharging, extending and healing. A nice touch and makes building fire teams interesting. Next major thing to focus on while building your character is weapons and armor.

Weapons fall into 3 categories: Kinetic, Energy and Power. Kinetic is your general damage weapon. Energy weapons are your shielded enemy slayer and Power is low ammo bigger hitting weapon. Energy and Power have either Solar, Void or Arc damage type. The weapons have built-in mods to increase damage and range. Your character will have 4 pieces of armor to utilize and increase recovery, mobility and resilience. One thing to keep in mind when you as your are selecting weapons and armor is Power Level. During the Taken King expansion a new stat called Light Level was introduced. Your light level was based on your weapons and armor. Light was replaced with Power at the beginning of Destiny 2 and will need to be maxed out so you can take on the raid. One last thing about weapons and armor is of customization. One of the major items in the game are engrams. Engrams are ways players will get new weapons, armor, mods and skins. Mods will add addition perks to your weapons and mods such as increase of a damage type or being able to move faster. Skins are ways to change your appearance of armor, weapons, sparrows and ships. Though keep in mind, it will cost you to equip both mods and sins so make sure you have enough glimmer to spare.

As I said before, your weapons and armor will determine your Power Level. That means, there is a grid for better gear in this game. In the first Destiny, weapons and armors were dropped by enemies and reward for missions, and since it is a random drop it required redoing the same missions over and over until you got something you like. In Destiny 2, there is still a grind but it increase the ways to collect items. One way is reputation. On each planet, there is one NPC that will collect tokens and the planets unique collectible as a way to increase your reputation. Once you have filled the bar up you will decrypt an legendary engram and gain it’s reward. The tokens are the best way to do it as it is the most common reward for patrol mission, public events, hidden crest on the planets, and completing challenges. Doing this over and over will increase the power of the engram meaning better gear. Also since enemies have a chance of dropping engrams, there a chance to get gear that way as well. Flashpoints are weekly events that if complete will also get you a engram if you complete it. Lastly after you after you reach level 20, your character will still level up, but you will earn a bright engram from it. Bright Engrams are the purchasable loot boxes of the game, though I tend to get mods and skins from most of thing. Grinding is one thing that kills my drive for the various games but that is a personal issue.

Another issue, and this is from someone who plays a lot single player games, is the lack of game play for people who want to or often play by themselves. I understand the single player content for MMO’s may be little to ask for, however I feel I should be able to go off and do more thing without having a party or random players surrounding me. In Destiny 2, outside of the campaign, there are sub-class quest, but that is usually unlocked after taking part of public events. This isn’t so much amount about just single player content as after a good while, you just going through the motion of completing the same things week after week. Again, most of my gaming experience is single player games, but it is something I often run into when I give a MMO game a chance.

So to finally wrap this mess up, Destiny 2 has had some major improvements that puts it in a better starting place than where the first Destiny did. The campaign is fun and I really enjoy the characters, though not sure enough to replay it 3 times (one for each class). It gives you plenty to do, but be carefully of burning through everything at least the first expansion. Lastly, I would recommend you have a group of folks to play this regularly. Lot of the stuff that will keep you playing is team base so have a group that you work well with is going to help.

If you like these type of games and have a good group to play with then I think you will enjoy Destiny 2 a lot.

Thanks for reading and you can check out Destiny 2 here for more info!

Until next time, keep gaming and have fun.

-Mike