It’s finally here.
Lightfall is the much-anticipated expansion of Destiny 2, featuring whole new areas, a robust story, complete reworks and quality of life changes, among many, many other improvements.
And it’s…uhh…not bad!
There’s a whole lot to cover, so let’s jump right into it.
Of note, I am a long-time Destiny 2 player, having mained Hunter since launch. I have completed all content in almost all difficulties when I have played, and I am one of 10 players that actually enjoy Gambit. While I am an off-and-on player, I am one who goes very deep into the content when it's released. This review will be from a Hunter class’s point of view, and although I have been primarily a Void main, I do keep all specs and many builds in mind when giving an opinion.
Going into the campaign, I was pretty excited. The introduction to Strand felt pretty epic, temporarily replacing whatever spec you were in before with a grapple in the grenade slot, a modified knife that ricochets back to you and restores some melee energy if you “catch” it by pressing the keybind again at the right time, and one of the coolest supers in Destiny 2 bar none, a conjured whip that has massive single target damage and an incredibly wide circular AoE alternate attack. It’s so powerful, I was able to cheese some mechanics in legendary and straight-up skip some parts. When a spec feels this powerful out of the gate, you know you’re going to be in for a good time. It’s that good, and that much fun. The way the campaign is sort of molded around Strand is very interesting as well. It did feel a little bit forced in some spots, and there was even an instance where I opted not to use it because I needed the crowd control in my build more. Even then, I thoroughly enjoyed using Strand in the campaign.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t quite hold up as well as the gameplay of the campaign. It’s not a terrible or even mediocre story. It’s just…okay. It was a bit hard to follow at times, with some very confusing elements thrown at you, especially going towards the end. I didn’t really connect with anything or anyone at any point, and I came out with many more questions that I didn’t really want to find the answer to.
It’s a shame, because the hype coming off the Witch Queen and how everything culminated at the end of that expansion’s run left me very hyped to know what was going to happen next. I ended up wondering if I had missed something when I had completed the campaign because of how incomplete it felt. There were some highlights that were really cool, and the pacing of the campaign as a whole was brisk and had little downtime. I finished the whole campaign on Legendary in about 5-6 hours.
Even though Strand was the focal point of the campaign, and the expansion as a whole, the fundamental foundation of Destiny 2 was shaken up with a massive mod and balance overhaul, as well as some new fragments introduced to Solar, Void, and Arc sub-classes. Fragments are an integral part of any build, as they further allow for customization and additions to stats abilities, passives, and even core gameplay. Many of the new ones are pretty damn good for Hunter, with one of my favorites being Echo of Cessation.
As far as mods go, Warmind Cells and their mods, which were notoriously difficult to balance, have been removed entirely. Charged with Light, Elemental Wells, and similar effects are now consolidated into Armor Charges. While Orbs of Power effects are mostly the same as before. This cuts down on so much of the bloat from before, without completely killing off much of anything. Mods that affect armor charges are color-coded now; white mods just give you an effect, clean and cut. Blue mods give your Armor Charges a decaying effect in exchange for a unique or more powerful ability. Yellow mods will consume an Armor Charge for a powerful effect, and green mods help your Armor Charges in some way, like being able to carry additional Charges, or the decaying effect from a blue Armor Charge mod taking longer. It’s so much cleaner to navigate and customize.
Seasonal Artifacts also got some love, and are now applied without the need of a mod slot at all. This means when you put your points into a Seasonal Artifact, you get its effect there and then. I still have minor complaints about how Seasonal Artifacts tend to favor different builds for different seasons. Still, it appears that the general options are much more effective this time around. A huge upside to this change is how you can apply Overload, Barrier, and Unstoppable effects without worrying about where it’s going to fit in your build. You can just do it. One of the best changes in this expansion.
What takes the cake for me is the addition of loadouts and an entirely separate mod menu.
This is huge. Very huge. Mechanically, they are very easy to navigate and customize, but we’ve needed both of these for so long. I cannot believe we’ve gone this long without them. They aren’t doing anything drastically different compared to other games with these features, but they don’t need to. Building your character has never been easier and more fluid.
So far, Lightfall has been quite enjoyable, and despite the main story being the low point, I’m coming back for more gameplay and constantly wanting to play more. When a game is making me want to continue playing it, it’s probably doing something right by me. It’s definitely a shame that it got off to a rocky start, but this will be an ongoing review, well into the raid world first race and beyond, so stay tuned!
