Recent reviews by ♿ sec loosely ☪☯✟ (heada

my honest opinions post lightfall
campaign:
campaign difficulty on legend mode was fun and engaging, most of the missions were fun and some were a challenge. the obsession around strand which wasnt even given to you until after the campaign felt frustrating and side-questy and took away from the whole narrative. the actual story of the campaign was hard if not impossible to understand. with an expansion of this scale, new and returning players would have wanted an easy to understand campaign to get into the game, however they were met with a confusing "thingamajig" that we were assumed to know all about. i wouldnt be surprised if these new players voted with their feet and left.

core gameplay:
the core gameplay has been the same since forsaken. strikes, gambit and pvp plus some other scattered activities to meet a level cap for harder content. whereas this is not a bad progression system, it feels stale after all of this time. this is not helped by the state of the core playlists which now feel un-fun to do. the vanguard ops playlist now feels like 90% battlegrounds which are not very enjoyable in my opinion, and the fan favorite strikes have been modified and feel much worse to play. the gambit playlist has been left to rot since late 2020 and pvp has had 1 new map in 3 years which is widely disliked by the community. add skill based matchmaking onto this and you can see why the core playlists feel frustrating.

endgame content:
at this point it is beginning to feel like fashion is the endgame. the changes to grandmasters to lower the entry barrier are good changes, although with the overall powercreep felt in the game, very little feels difficult anymore. for the past 3-4 seasons grandmasters and master raids have been dominated by ability spam and powercreep, and now with surges being implemented i feel this may only get worse with this season. battlegrounds entering the grandmaster rotation also feels like a bad move although we will see when it comes out. as for the new raid, root of nightmares is a beautiful expansive location with overly simple mechanics. i believe initial frustration comes not simply from the easy mechanics but from the lackluster combat difficulty under contest mode due to power creep. this made the whole contest raid feel easier than a legend difficulty mars battleground which is not a great sign for the difficulty of the endgame going forward.

final thoughts:
if you are a new player and are willing to overcome the initial barrier of the confusing lightfall story, there is lots to do and much of the content is engaging. there is no other game that feels like destiny. however for most veterans of the game, the core systems are beginning to feel overly stale and therefore i am beginning to lose interest in the game. the additional pricewalls for an already expensive game in the dungeon key and the event cards also leaves more to be desired, considering this content used to be served within the expansion cost or in some cases for free.
my main problem is with the stale delivery of content. every raid since garden of salvation launches with the same formula of 2 mechanic encounters and 2 boss encounters. every season for the past 2 years has been a 7x3 grid to upgrade (this is being changed), and the seasonal model of 1 story tidbit a week is getting repetitive and boring.
this game has such high potential but i am finding myself burnt out more often than not and my love for the game is beginning to turn to disinterest.

TL:DR: pretty good if you are a new player, not so great if you are a veteran