Destiny 2 Review

The shooting is the reason this thing survived everything that followed. Recoil patterns, sound design, the weight of a hand cannon and the way a super discharges are all calibrated with an obsessiveness that no competitor has matched, and the raids remain the best cooperative puzzle design in the medium. The opening is genuinely strong too, giving the franchise the villain and the personal stakes the first game forgot to include. Then the loop ran out.

Static weapon rolls removed the reason to chase a drop, the fixed loadout slots stripped the build variety players had spent three years assembling, and the first expansion offered a few hours of story in exchange for a full price. A background system that quietly reduced experience gains the more you played turned a design complaint into a trust problem, and Bungie's apology did not put it back. Later expansions repaired most of this and the studio left Activision in 2019. What shipped in September 2017 was a masterclass in feel attached to an empty structure.