Review for Destiny 2. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 06/09/2017 The version for PC came out on 24/10/2017
Eight months after a launch full of expectations, Destiny 2 faces one of the darkest periods since its release. The second expansion of year one of the Bungie MMOFPS, called The Warring Mind, arrives charged with responsibility precisely because a process of change and improvements requested by the community and promised by the same house in Bellevue must begin. Let's see if the path we have taken is the right one, waiting for the probable major autumn expansion.
Welcome back to Mars
The Warring Mind restarts where we left off, that is with the Vex threat of The Curse of Osiris averted and humanity once again saved thanks to the Guardians. However, the effects of the Traveler's awakening are still in the making and many of them still need to be addressed; one of them is the rapid melting of the glaciers of Mars at the Hellas Basin, which together with the Warsat rain on the Martian surface are awakening ancient threats and revealing the true position of the most powerful weapon of all: Rasputin. In short, Bungie continues what it started with The Curse of Osiris, which is the use of well-known elements of Destiny lore often shrouded in mystery and loaded with meaning for the community. So after the most powerful sorcerer in the universe (Osiris, ed) comes this time the basin of Hellas, the Golden Age, the Bray family, the Hive Worms and Rasputin.
If the narrative premises seem to be the right ones, Bungie once again falls into the error of not exploiting everything that in the four years of Destiny has created with sweat and effort. Five campaign missions cannot be enough especially to enhance such important elements of the game's lore. Although these topics are substantially explored, they are still not sufficiently valued: the choice of a short campaign, in fact, accentuates one of the problems that have arisen since the launch of the base game in September, consisting in the lack of an in-depth narration of the in-game lore, in the absence of the grimoire of the first Destiny. It is clear that minor expansions such as those that act as a link between year one and year two cannot have the same articulated structure as The Taken King, but it is also true that five missions are too few to tell, for example, the return of a fundamental character. like Ana Bray.
End-game expansion
Having finished the campaign and narrative issue, which is the most negative side of this expansion, let's focus on the new management of end-game content. One of the great problems of the Destiny 2 vanilla end-game was precisely the management of the latter with contents that, albeit in a fair numerical quantity, had a rather low level of challenge. If we add to this the strong influence of microtransactions towards most of the cosmetic objects, we arrive at the genesis of the criticisms that in recent months have caused the depopulation of the Bungie title servers. With this new expansion, the Bellevue house has rethought the difficulty of end-game activities starting from the assaults, passing through the Cala la Notte and the patrols; It also introduced the second and final lair of the Leviathan raid and a new activity called the Intensification Protocol.
If there is not much to say about the new management of the difficulty, except that it is actually more stimulating and satisfying, it is good to dwell more analytically on the two new activities. The Intensification Protocol is the main novelty of this expansion: difficult, challenging, rewarding, ingenious and well thought out, it is today the best end-game activity that the Bungie game offers its players.. In its simplicity it is basically a seven-wave Horde mode with mid-bosses and a very strong final boss (who will alternate with four other "colleagues" for five weeks on a rotating basis), presents several internal and mechanical challenges inspired by raids and / or assaults . To complete the activity you must be at least at level 350/355 out of 385 (the new level cap) and, unless you are four people at level 370, the gang of Guardians must consist of eight out of nine people available (3 teams of 3 maximum). The Escalation Protocol rewards players with unique weapons and armor that increase the replayability factor, with each weekly boss dropping specific pieces of such gear; in short, an activity capable of proposing what an MMOFPS must offer to its users to continue to populate the servers.
The second focus is on the new raid lair, called the Sidereal Pinnacle. This mini-raid offers new challenges, new Leviathan rooms to explore, new mechanics even more structured than the previous one, but once again we are faced with an activity that does not renew itself, remaining anchored to concepts already seen and reviewed in summary. leaders in everything that has characterized the Destiny 2 raid experience. This factor, negative or positive whether you evaluate it, is more than in its predecessor justified by a narrative component that supports the choice: Emperor Calus calls us to defense of his throne, threatened by the remaining forces of the Red Legion. You understand well that this contextualization of the events not only puts a gloss on the events related to the figure of Calus, but also enhances those plot choices just mentioned in the description of the armor obtained with the main raid.
Exotic Weapons and Crucible
As promised by Bungie before the release of this expansion, the PvP sector and exotic weapons would also undergo structural changes in order to lay the foundation for subsequent changes. The Crucible saw the introduction of ranking systems (as happens in any other competitive FPS) both for fast games (Valoroso) and for competitive games (Glorioso) with a ranking of ranks so arranged: Neophyte, Audace, Prode, Bestial, Myth and Legend. As for the Valiant system, it will increase in rank upon reaching a threshold of points earned by participating (victory or defeat only changes the amount of points obtainable) in the Quick Match, Brawl and Pandemonium playlists. Furthermore, the first achievement of each rank on the Valiant leaderboard will grant you reward packs. The Glorious rank, on the other hand, has the same rank system, but every defeat unlike the Valiant system will take away points, series of victories will therefore increase the points earned and vice versa series of losses will make you lose as many.
Anyone who makes it to the Legend rank on the Glorious leaderboard will get a special weapon called Redrix's Greatsword at the end of Season 3, a very powerful Pulse Rifle with a unique perk called Desperado that will increase the rate of fire when the Outlaw perk is active. In short, a simple novelty in the imagination (a ranking system in an fps is certainly not new) but which the competitive players of Destiny 2 felt the need.
As for the exotic weapons, Bungie has opted for a complete overhaul in order to truly make them the strongest and most unique weapons in the game. In addition to introducing some new subordinate weapons to their quests to be completed on Mars, Warhead finally brought some of Destiny 2's most distinctive weapons to the level they deserved: Scarlet, Roaring Lion, Graviton Spear, Oath of the Burners, the Traction Cannon are all examples of revisited weapons that now have a decisive impact on the gameplay of the game. All will also have a Prodigious version (some not right from the start of Season 3). Now, therefore, the weapons will have an extra slot in their settings, which will allow you to equip a droppable catalyst through the completion of specific actions (for example for the Scarlet you will get randomly killing enemies in the various worlds); the only obstacle will be the fact that before you find it you must have dropped the weapon in question at least once. This catalyst, therefore, in addition to improving the weapon's statistics in general, will allow you to give it an additional boost in terms of statistics after completing one or more requests depending on the weapon. Such requests may involve a set number of precise kills, double kills, or kills without reloading, but in general they will take a fair amount of time to complete. This choice was made precisely to make the link between weapon and player unique as it was thought at the beginning of the development of exotic weapons.
Destiny 2 has begun its path of rebirth with La Mente Bellica, an expansion that lays the foundations also and above all in view of the autumn. If from the point of view of end-game content, improvements to the PvP sector and the revisitation of exotic weapons, Bungie has taken the right path by finally providing content that can occupy players for a good number of hours, with the management of the narrative and of the countryside seems to be navigating on sight waiting for something big. Even if we want to extrapolate the new assaults (there are still a couple of them) from their context to include them in the campaign, the scarcity of missions and the superficiality with which certain issues have been tackled still remain incomprehensible.
► Destiny 2 is an Action-FPS game developed by Bungie Vicarious Visions and published by Activision for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 06/09/2017 The version for PC came out on 24/10/2017
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