Destiny 2: Lightfall Review
Bungie’s latest Destiny adventure
Destiny’s Light and Dark saga continues with Lightfall, the second final expansion before the end.
In this expansion, the Vanguard has to defend the Traveler from the Pyramids and the mysterious “Witness” from taking the light or whatever The Witness wants from the Traveler.
Neomuna
With Lightfall, Destiny 2 has gained a new world to explore, welcome to Neomuna.
While Neomuna looks fun, has fun events, fun traversal with Strand and lost sectors that can challenge if you do Legend Lost Sectors, the world of Neomuna share one similar thing from all worlds in Destiny, it’s a circle.
While it’s still the same circle map formula, at the start of expansion, it feels interesting and very foreign. In a game like Destiny, where you fight aliens and travel from planet to planet and even taking part in a Cosmic Game Show to entertain a cosmic horse, that’s a very good thing
In terms of things to do in Neomuna, it’s pretty much the same as the other planets. While Bungie keeps saying that Destiny 2 isn’t an MMO, you can’t deny the fact that Destiny 2 is an MMO and with it being an MMO, it’s pretty much a small and barren MMO.
When it comes to the aesthetic of Neomuna, it gets half point but since it’s similar to many other planets in Destiny, that’s all it gets
Changes in Gameplay
With the start of Lightfall and Season of Defiance, many changes were made to gameplay and most are great changes!
Firstly, the best change was the ability to add loadouts (for a FPS game, they really took their time with this one) and another was to be able to see and change all your mods in one screen.
They have also added Guardian Ranks to showcase how well-versed each player is in the game. The higher the Guardian Rank, the more that player would know about the current season/expansion in the game
Eliminating blue drops after you hit the soft cap of 1750 for Season of Defiance
Another huge change also brings Nvidia Reflex for the first time to Destiny 2, which is a huge change for an FPS game, especially now that Destiny 2 has a competitive mode
And lastly, all the mods are the same! That means, no more running to Ada-1 every week to see what mods she is selling, you just have to run to her to see what shaders she is selling, that’s right. Ada-1 now sells Shaders instead of Mods
In terms of the bad changes, I can’t really think of anything. The game feels more welcoming to new players or as they call them, New Light players.
Destiny 2 is officially the easiest MMO to get into thanks to these quality-of-life changes
Because of these brilliant changes to the gameplay, I give it 1 point
New Characters in a New World
When it comes to the new characters introduced, there’s some people seem to dislike Nimbus but I personally love him. He is a fun character that is interesting and playful, literally what the kind of character that I love in video games, someone fun and different.
The other character introduced is Rohan, he is a think first, act second character which makes him the type of character you would actually meet in the real world but in game, we tend to not listen to that kind of person but he worked perfectly into the story. A brilliant character that worked in Neptune and the city of Neomuna.
Rohan and Nimbus are part of the cloud striders, warriors that do not have the power of the Light and only live to be 10 years old. Only two cloud striders can exist at any given time, One Mentor and One Pupil and in the case of Rohan and Nimbus, you have Rohan the Mentor and Nimbus the Pupil
In terms of the other characters, majority of them are from previous encounters.
You have Emperor Calus, The Witness (Which we get to see more of), Osiris and the Vanguard. Surprisingly, we barely get to see Zavala or Ikora after the initial cutscenes, which is pretty sad if you ask me.
Amanda Holliday is also in the initial cutscene but after she gets shot down, we don’t get to see her but she does show up in the Season of Defiance story so, if you love Amanda, don’t worry she is alive and well
While we get to see the characters of Neomuna, not more interesting was shown, it’s pretty much the rinse and repeat that Bungie always done so it’s a 0.5 for me on this
A great story that doesn’t explain the main plot
Yea, so the story is awesome and excellent, there’s a lot to talk about how it progresses the Light and Dark saga but in terms of explain what the main plot is about, it falls short.
Spoiler Alert
When it comes to the main story, you have the Witness attacking the Traveler for the first time since Destiny 1 in the PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One era. It was an all-out war and The Vanguard fought hard to protect The Traveler but when it comes to The Witness, he showed exactly how powerful he is. With a flick of his hand, he killed a bunch of Guardians and their Ghost, Amanda Holliday was lucky to escape that
But fast forward, the main problem with the story is that both The Witness and Emperor Calus are after The Veil and the Cloud Striders, Osiris and you are out to defend it from the The Witness but even after completing the story, no one bothers to explain what it is to you.
Heck, Rohan died in his mission to protect it from letting The Witness from getting it and no one still didn’t think to, maybe even try, to explain it to you.
The only thing we know about The Veil is that The Witness kept talking about needing it to make The Final Shape (Yea, that’s….some serious upselling for their final expansion)
In terms of why they did it, it might just be because they wanted to explain The Veil and much more in the Seasons to follow, like Season of Defiance and Season of the Deep. Not to forget, we still have Season 22 and 23
End of Spoiler
So with all that said, I think the story is good when it needs to be but when it comes to the ending, it didn’t do the one thing that needed to be done and that’s explain the main plot
That’s another 0.5 from me
Strand makes a huge difference
While the core combat of Destiny 2 still remains the same, you know, all the pew pew and such. Strand being the new sub-class makes such a new way to play the game and the combat is brilliant with Strand.
I’m not sure why some people online absolutely hate it, it’s by far one of the best and most fun sub-class I’ve been able to enjoy so far. Grappling towards your enemy or just grappling onto tangles that you throw just so you can move quickly is the best thing ever
Strand ultimate is also the best for all classes, they deal a ton of damage and majority of the bosses are pretty much weak
I truly do feel like, once you get used to Strand and learn how to properly use it, it’s so much better than any other sub-class (until Bungie decides to nerf it)
I have barely switched to any other classes after fully unlocking Strand and I’m usually the one killing ton of enemies when I’m teaming up with people using other sub-classes so you can see that, if you really know how to use it, you can go through Nightfalls and Missions like nothing.
In terms of how strong it is? Well, I was able to go through the entire campaign like it’s nothing. Every mission was simple and easy because you can just grapple away from danger and if you are about to fall out the map, you can just grapple back up.
So yea, Strand changes the game in such a good way. I love the how much better the combat is and I’m happy that Lost Sectors and other missions like the Raid has changed to reflect how strong Strand is.
I give Combat 1 point
Conclusion
While Lightfall isn’t the most perfect expansion, it does bring some features that’s very much needed like Loadouts and the story was good for what it was but without explaining the main plot and leaving it for, what seems like the Seasons, I just don’t understand how you could buy the Campaign (that comes with Season of Defiance) and be happy with it.
The review is only about Destiny 2: Lightfall expansion and not the Season of Defiance, we will do the review for Season of Defiance after it ends on May 22, 2023
