Destiny

If Destiny started with its endgame, it would have been an easy game to 5-star. The best parts of Destiny, however, are being played after you've completed the game. For better or worse, the relatively short experience Destiny offers at roughly 12 hours to finish the story, flips to being absolutely amazing post-endgame with a Raid that might take you as long or longer to finish than story, and that is a blast to play from start to finish. If you've got what it takes to grind your way there that is.

What is Destiny?

A question many had before the game was released, is what Destiny actually was. We knew it was a videogame and it had guns, but it was hard to compare it to anything that had already been out. That is because Destiny cannot be compared easily to another game. It has really interesting ideas and doesn't try to copy any other game on the market. At least, not any other shooter. A common comparison being made is that to Borderlands. Destiny has loot. It has guns. It is first person. An understandable comparison to make, but understand that Destiny is nothing like Borderlands. Borderlands is a loot driven game. The drive to move forward is to collect more loot, to level up and acquire more skills. You do that mission to gain XP and get loot drops. This is Borderlands' core. Destiny features loot drops and XP, but it is as far away from its core as it could be. It is a component of the game, nothing more. Destiny's core lies in cooperative play. The entire game can be played in singleplayer, but you will be missing out. A lot. Destiny is best played with others. This is an easy thing to say as it is true for almost any game. But Destiny almost 'has' to be played with others.

'Destiny is a cooperative, challenging shooter'.

The game does not scale. Strikes, the game's challenging 3 player co-op missions, can only be completed solo if you are extremely overleveled for them. And even then, the sheer number of enemies might still overwhelm you. The Raid, by far the game's best content that will take you anywhere from 8-18 hours to complete, requires you to have 5 other friends join in. No matchmaking. That might sound like a crazy oversight, but trust that it is in your best interest. The Raid is comprised of complicated battle puzzles. If any one of the 6 people does not fully cooperate, you will fail horribly. It will drive you insane. When you have a good crew, however, it is very possible it will be the best multiplayer coop experience you'll have had to date.

'If you are going in expecting loot drops every minute and keep getting new interesting weapons you haven't seen before, you are going to be disappointed'.

Destiny is a cooperative, challenging shooter. You need to level in order to be able to do enough damage and you need loot in order to be able to take and deal enough damage as well. But there are no insane guns like in Borderlands. Levels and loot are there to have you keep up to the challenge and that is it. At least, for the story mode. If you are going in expecting loot drops every minute and keep getting new interesting weapons you haven't seen before, you are going to be disappointed. It is not a matter of expectation though. It is a flaw that Destiny has; it doesn't have enough. Not enough weapons, not enough armor, not enough interesting missions. The gun you shoot in the first hour of the game will most likely resemble the gun you shoot in the last mission of the game. There are some minor variations, but it's not varied enough. Destiny is not about loot, but on some level it tries to be. That shot is missed.

'Destiny tries really hard to set up importance of its universe but completely avoids any chance to shed light on them'.

Destiny's base experience, the story, is not its main attraction. What the game is about, overcoming challenging with other players, is almost all done in the post-endgame. Strikes can be played during the story, but each planet only has one or two Strikes to play. This doesn't need to be a problem per se, but these Strikes are 'easy' versions of the type of Strikes you'll be playing post-endgame. It is missing the crazy, tremendously satisfying, challenge. Which isn't a bad idea to get you started on them, but it takes too long for the harder versions of the Strikes to be available for play. Only at Level 18, with a soft level cap of 20, are the harder Strikes available, and even then you will not be able to play those, because you will not have the gear necessary to survive them. What is left are story missions that are nothing but fetch quests, with possibly one exception in the entire game. Every story mission follows the same structure. You spawn on the planet, you go somewhere, hold down square to make your Ghost show up, fight off waves of enemies and then possibly go some place else to do the same before the mission is over. There is no good story to be found in Destiny. All of it's lore is tucked away in cards that you'll unlock during play that you cannot even read in the game itself. You need the companion app or website to read your unlocked cards that provide backstory. The game itself is shockingly thin on story, yet it conveys many terms as if they are extremely important. The Traveler, The Speaker, The Darkness, The Fallen, The Hive, everything is mentioned, nothing is explained. Destiny tries really hard to set up importance of its universe but completely avoids any chance to shed light on them. What helps is that Destiny is a gorgeous game. The artstyle is flawless and it performs as you'd want it to.

Post-Endgame

Going through the story is tedious. You will visit the same area's 2-4 times for different missions. Following it will get you to Level 20, the game's soft level cap. This cap can be reached earlier because the Crucible, the game's competitive multiplayer, also awards XP. As do Strikes and completing random missions in Patrol, the game's exploration mode. Destiny allows you to replay any mission on any difficulty at your command. New, uncompleted missions award bonus XP, but you will still be able to earn XP from previously completed missions. Upon reaching Level 20 and essentially finishing the game, Destiny truly starts to be great. The mentioned Strikes are a blast to play on higher difficulties. There are daily story missions that award bonus XP, loot and upgrade materials. Similarly, there is a weekly Strike that practically does the same with even greater rewards. The game has a Raid which is by far the best content the game has to offer. It can be finished in an hour, yet your first attempt will likely take anywhere from 8-18 hours as it is a mystery what you are supposed to be doing. Figuring that out with 5 friends (or randomly acquired Raid partners through forums) might be the most fun I had with a game all year. The Raid requires you to be Level 26 however. The harder Strikes, dailies and weeklies also require you to be upwards of Level 24 all the way to Level 28. Getting there is once again a tedious task.

Higher level armor has a stat called 'Light' on it. Increasing your total Light will allow you to level past the game's soft cap of 20. If you equip armor with enough Light, you will be Level 21. Increase it further by finding more or better armor with Light and it will go to 22. You can increase the armor rating of the armor itself to increase its inherent Light, thus increasing your level even further. Take that armor off and you will be back to Level 20. Put it back on and you'll be back to whatever level your Light allows you to be.

'It will be a serious grind to get geared up to even participate in the Raid or high level Strikes'.

The 'problem' with this system is that the higher level the gear, the more Light it gives. Gear that is more rare further increases Light. Rare gear of the highest level, Level 20, can give enough Light to get your character to Level 24 when fully upgraded and you have one piece in every slot. You will not be capable to do the Raid with this set up. Legendary rarity gear is needed to increase your Light beyond 24. Here is where it gets tricky. The chances of you getting a Legendary armor drop for the class you are using is so incredibly low, that it is pointless to try and farm this gear out. In over 100 hours of play, I have not had a Legendary armor drop for the class I was using. In order to acquire this gear, you need to buy it from a vendor. However, these specialized vendors only accept Marks, a special currency, as payment. Legendary armor costs anywhere from 65 to 120 Marks a piece. You can acquire between 2-6 Marks for each Strike you do depending on the difficulty. You also gain Marks for doing public events, the daily and the weekly. As you can imagine, it takes hours to acquire the Marks needed to buy a piece of Legendary gear. If that wasn't bad enough, the maximum amount of Marks you can earn is 100 per week. A cap to slow your progress. You could argue it would take you at least 3 weeks to get a full set of Legendary gear and that gear will need to be upgraded in order to bring you to Level 28. Upgrading it is slightly less, yet still a complete hassle. It requires specialized upgrade materials that are only earned through public events by random chance or completing the daily and weekly on higher difficulties. All in all, it will be a serious grind to get geared up to even participate in the Raid or high level Strikes.

Once you get there though, Destiny will be one of the best multiplayer experiences you'll have. It is a shame that the game is designed to slow and prohibit progress at every single turn; at the same time gates all its best content behind relying on you to get through to it.

'One slip up on your part can make the remaining 5 fall as if they were nothing'.

It should be clear that the road to getting to Destiny's prime, is a tedious one that is okay, but definitely not great. What is harder to explain is why the post-endgame is so good. It is an easy excuse, but you really should experience it to know why it is so great. Without spoiling anything, imagine a challenge that is literally impossible on your own and with random people barely yield any better results. Yet when you work as a team, doing the exact thing you agreed to do, at the exact time you should be doing it, it will be a struggle but it will also let you emerge victorious. Especially in the Raid, a boss that horribly destroyed your 6 man fireteam and appeared near invulnerable, suddenly becomes susceptible to your strategy. The strategy you agreed on to follow with your friends and execute it exactly as you should. One slip up on your part can make the remaining 5 fall as if they were nothing. The Raid does not offer matchmaking for a very good reason; one person not following the plan will cripple your run to the point of impossibility.

If Destiny started with its endgame, it would have been an easy game to 5-star. The best parts of Destiny, however, are being played after you've completed the game. For better or worse, the relatively short experience Destiny offers at roughly 12 hours to finish the story, flips to being absolutely amazing post-endgame with a Raid that might take you as long or longer to finish the story, that is a blast to play from start to finish. If you've got what it takes to grind your way there that is.