Old Review: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e35qh_c0rWQlAeG_F-aqsbuztY1dAfe6GlDh1h_oio8/edit?usp=sharing

Alright... As someone who's been hard-dedicating himself to this game as his "go-to" since Destiny 2: Warmind, done nearly everything this game's gotta offer from waking up to the Cosmodrome to getting Solo Flawless in Trials, with the recent news of Bungie's mass-layoffs, I think it's time to be real with myself; I can no longer defend nor recommend this game.

It's frustrating. I don't think I've given other games nor franchises anywhere near as much as I did Destiny, but with, again, the recent news of mass layoffs on TOP of Lightfall being Destiny's rock-bottom year EVER...

Pros:
+ Visuals are some of the best in the AAA industry. To say they're gorgeous is an understatement.
+ Music is a solid banger thanks to the hard work and vision from Michael Salvatori, amongst others, behind music since Halo ***COMBAT EVOLVED***... who are now *laid off*. Often the best part of any Destiny content, both good and bad.
+ The gunplay is some of the smoothest, punchiest, satisfying, consistent aspects of the game. There's no gunplay quite like Destiny's in the FPS genre.
+ Raids: are some of the most engaging, rewarding and unique pieces of content that other loot games and MMOs DREAM of having.
+ Sound design: is very immersive, realistic, crunchy and diverse.
+ Buildcrafting is some of the most intricate, fun, min-maxing that leads to creative, crazy builds.

Mid:
+- Content: There's almost always things to do. For a very long time, from the amount of raids to individual loot and farms to seek after, there's lots of weapons, armor, etc. to aim for. Replayability is some of the best in the industry, utterly hampered by a now-repetitive seasonal structure and gameplay loop.
+- Gambit: The concept of a PvPvE coopetition mode is brilliant, but the execution ends up involving a really boring PvE combat loop mixed with hillariously (and pathetically) one-sided PvP instances.
+- Story/Writing/Lore: The lore behind the game's many loot, planets and characters builds the world in a very diverse manner, but the campaigns of most expansions (outside Red War, Forsaken and Witch Queen) are overtly simplistic, trope-infested and don't do any of the worldbuilding justice.
+- Cosmetics: they look nice and you can get in-game currency called Bright Dust at a frequent enough rate by playing the game. However, they don't give you enough of said currency at said rate to compensate, incentivizing use of real money to buy cosmetics.
+- Loot: While Bungie has been working towards making rewards less of a chore to obtain and loot showers more satisfying to obtain, this is utterly hampered by the two highest rarities being handed on a silver platter, godroll rates being utterly terrible for modes like GM Nightfalls and Trials of Osiris and both the seasonal and gameplay loop, which have become utterly repetitive.
+- Crafting: While Crafting is a welcome addition that mitigates the pain of farming for godrolls, the massive oversight that is both this goodwill incentive, alongside the introduction of enhanced perks, no longer gives people reasons to replay certain endgame content such as raids once they receive all craftable weapon blueprints for said activity.
+- Accessibility; lots of options in settings to cater to your playstyle and optimize towards your PC. However, the tutorials are utterly terrible at introducing core mechanics and how to approach content and set goals towards loot as a new player and the leveling system is painfully grindy, scaring new players and returning veterans who haven't caught up in a while, away.

Cons:
- Servers: The stability has progressively been getting worse, to the point where disconnects, error codes, maintenances are unacceptably long and frequent. The lack in stability also ruins any consistency of hit detection and rollback of certain player or enemy movement.
- P2W: It started at a semi-mild level when weapons were locked behind expansions. Now, P2W has seeped to the point where premium battle passes offer twice the deepsight harmonizers for faster crafting progress, outright overpowered weapons like The Immortal (Adept) from Trials (which require the latest expansion of each year) demolish playlist activities and stray newcomers and veterans further away from them, etc.
- Monetization: Battle Pass, Expansion and Cosmetic prices go up, yet Battle Pass and Expansion quality go down. Bungie's excuse of forcing an inclusion of a Battle Pass with an expansion to justify raising the price of an expansion is pathetic. The modeling of the expansions are so blatantly designed around being confusing to force players to spend around $60 - 200 for all expansions JUST to access most of the content.
- Staff Treatment: Mass layoffs, including longtime veterans such as again, Michael Salvatori, and newcomers with potential, for the sake of cost-saving and further loading up suit pockets, ignoring all of the staff's accomplishments across the years and further depreciating assurance of quality for the consumers as well.
- Matchmaking (Especially for PvP activities): have become Overwatch 2-levels of one-sided curbstomps, resulting in a increased influx of leavers who abuse the queue system and making matches progressively pointless and unrewarding. This is especially apparent in Iron Banner, Gambit and Trials of Osiris.
- Community: are now filled with some of the biggest, dissatisfied group of speedrunning elitists who demand perfection and metawhoring at the cost of fun and risk of being booted from fireteams, yet unwilling to guide new players into new content. Which leads to...
- ...Balancing: Atrocious. Especially now, where Well of Radiance Warlock is now the must-play infesting PvP AND PvE playlists everywhere. We now also have SMGs that can 0.67 sec. TTK players off SUPERS, shotgun that 1-shot freeze burst into another 1-shot ignite burst a player off a super and has made PvE content trivial.
- Champions: are poorly designed "skill checks" that further force a limit on your equipment, on TOP of equipment-locking in PvE activities, to use a certain rotation of weapon archetypes to stun minibosses that can instantly regen health to max if not killed on time and/or if they beam you faster than an Immortal (Adept) does with its ridiculous 0.67 second TTK.
- Optimization: We're in 2023, an year where next-gen consoles are now more accessible, yet Bungie wants to continue catering towards the now-oversaturated-and-outdated PS4-generation of consoles, leading into performance issues in crowded areas like Neomuna, longer loading times into matchmaking and endgame instances, etc.
- In-Game Economy: the effort-to-reward ratio in endgame content sucks complete ass outside of raids (and sucks harder in harder content than raids for WHATEVER reason), the frequent removal of currencies and Bungie's lack of competence yet over-urgency to patch exploits make purchasing and upgrading gear a monumental pain in the ass.

A game with so much to do, with so much a creative sandbox, worldbuilding potential and some of the best aesthetics in gaming is now hampered by a repetitive gameplay loop and boring seasonal structure, Bungie's over-urgency to set limits on EVERYTHING from currency to loadout setups, incompetency of this game's stability, increased and blatant greedy monetization, lack of accessibility to newcomers and returning players and now, mass layoffs of talents and thus, lying about not doing so on TOP of the WORST year of this franchise's history (*cough* LIGHTFALL).

After being dedicated to this game for so long, giving this franchise and Bungie so many chances, I think I'm officially ready to say goodbye with the Final Shape, and GOD knows if that expansion will or won't flop as hard as LightFAIL. What a waste of potential, time and talent.

Old Review: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e35qh_c0rWQlAeG_F-aqsbuztY1dAfe6GlDh1h_oio8/edit?usp=sharing Alright... As someone who's been hard-dedicating himself to this game as his "go-to" since Destiny 2: Warmind, done nearly everything this game's gotta offer from waking up to the Cosmodrome to getting Solo Flawless in Trials, with the recent news of Bungie's mass-layoffs, I think it's time to be real with myself; I can no longer defend nor recommend this game. It's frustrating. I don't think I've given other games nor franchises anywhere near as much as I did Destiny, but with, again, the recent news of mass layoffs on TOP of Lightfall being Destiny's rock-bottom year EVER... Pros: + Visuals are some of the best in the AAA industry. To say they're gorgeous is an understatement. + Music is a solid banger thanks to the hard work and vision from Michael Salvatori, amongst others, behind music since Halo ***COMBAT EVOLVED***... who are now *laid off*. Often the best part of any Destiny content, both good and bad. + The gunplay is some of the smoothest, punchiest, satisfying, consistent aspects of the game. There's no gunplay quite like Destiny's in the FPS genre. + Raids: are some of the most engaging, rewarding and unique pieces of content that other loot games and MMOs DREAM of having. + Sound design: is very immersive, realistic, crunchy and diverse. + Buildcrafting is some of the most intricate, fun, min-maxing that leads to creative, crazy builds. Mid: +- Content: There's almost always things to do. For a very long time, from the amount of raids to individual loot and farms to seek after, there's lots of weapons, armor, etc. to aim for. Replayability is some of the best in the industry, utterly hampered by a now-repetitive seasonal structure and gameplay loop. +- Gambit: The concept of a PvPvE coopetition mode is brilliant, but the execution ends up involving a really boring PvE combat loop mixed with hillariously (and pathetically) one-sided PvP instances. +- Story/Writing/Lore: The lore behind the game's many loot, planets and characters builds the world in a very diverse manner, but the campaigns of most expansions (outside Red War, Forsaken and Witch Queen) are overtly simplistic, trope-infested and don't do any of the worldbuilding justice. +- Cosmetics: they look nice and you can get in-game currency called Bright Dust at a frequent enough rate by playing the game. However, they don't give you enough of said currency at said rate to compensate, incentivizing use of real money to buy cosmetics. +- Loot: While Bungie has been working towards making rewards less of a chore to obtain and loot showers more satisfying to obtain, this is utterly hampered by the two highest rarities being handed on a silver platter, godroll rates being utterly terrible for modes like GM Nightfalls and Trials of Osiris and both the seasonal and gameplay loop, which have become utterly repetitive. +- Crafting: While Crafting is a welcome addition that mitigates the pain of farming for godrolls, the massive oversight that is both this goodwill incentive, alongside the introduction of enhanced perks, no longer gives people reasons to replay certain endgame content such as raids once they receive all craftable weapon blueprints for said activity. +- Accessibility; lots of options in settings to cater to your playstyle and optimize towards your PC. However, the tutorials are utterly terrible at introducing core mechanics and how to approach content and set goals towards loot as a new player and the leveling system is painfully grindy, scaring new players and returning veterans who haven't caught up in a while, away. Cons: - Servers: The stability has progressively been getting worse, to the point where disconnects, error codes, maintenances are unacceptably long and frequent. The lack in stability also ruins any consistency of hit detection and rollback of certain player or enemy movement. - P2W: It started at a semi-mild level when weapons were locked behind expansions. Now, P2W has seeped to the point where premium battle passes offer twice the deepsight harmonizers for faster crafting progress, outright overpowered weapons like The Immortal (Adept) from Trials (which require the latest expansion of each year) demolish playlist activities and stray newcomers and veterans further away from them, etc. - Monetization: Battle Pass, Expansion and Cosmetic prices go up, yet Battle Pass and Expansion quality go down. Bungie's excuse of forcing an inclusion of a Battle Pass with an expansion to justify raising the price of an expansion is pathetic. The modeling of the expansions are so blatantly designed around being confusing to force players to spend around $60 - 200 for all expansions JUST to access most of the content. - Staff Treatment: Mass layoffs, including longtime veterans such as again, Michael Salvatori, and newcomers with potential, for the sake of cost-saving and further loading up suit pockets, ignoring all of the staff's accomplishments across the years and further depreciating assurance of quality for the consumers as well. - Matchmaking (Especially for PvP activities): have become Overwatch 2-levels of one-sided curbstomps, resulting in a increased influx of leavers who abuse the queue system and making matches progressively pointless and unrewarding. This is especially apparent in Iron Banner, Gambit and Trials of Osiris. - Community: are now filled with some of the biggest, dissatisfied group of speedrunning elitists who demand perfection and metawhoring at the cost of fun and risk of being booted from fireteams, yet unwilling to guide new players into new content. Which leads to... - ...Balancing: Atrocious. Especially now, where Well of Radiance Warlock is now the must-play infesting PvP AND PvE playlists everywhere. We now also have SMGs that can 0.67 sec. TTK players off SUPERS, shotgun that 1-shot freeze burst into another 1-shot ignite burst a player off a super and has made PvE content trivial. - Champions: are poorly designed "skill checks" that further force a limit on your equipment, on TOP of equipment-locking in PvE activities, to use a certain rotation of weapon archetypes to stun minibosses that can instantly regen health to max if not killed on time and/or if they beam you faster than an Immortal (Adept) does with its ridiculous 0.67 second TTK. - Optimization: We're in 2023, an year where next-gen consoles are now more accessible, yet Bungie wants to continue catering towards the now-oversaturated-and-outdated PS4-generation of consoles, leading into performance issues in crowded areas like Neomuna, longer loading times into matchmaking and endgame instances, etc. - In-Game Economy: the effort-to-reward ratio in endgame content sucks complete ass outside of raids (and sucks harder in harder content than raids for WHATEVER reason), the frequent removal of currencies and Bungie's lack of competence yet over-urgency to patch exploits make purchasing and upgrading gear a monumental pain in the ass. A game with so much to do, with so much a creative sandbox, worldbuilding potential and some of the best aesthetics in gaming is now hampered by a repetitive gameplay loop and boring seasonal structure, Bungie's over-urgency to set limits on EVERYTHING from currency to loadout setups, incompetency of this game's stability, increased and blatant greedy monetization, lack of accessibility to newcomers and returning players and now, mass layoffs of talents and thus, lying about not doing so on TOP of the WORST year of this franchise's history (*cough* LIGHTFALL). After being dedicated to this game for so long, giving this franchise and Bungie so many chances, I think I'm officially ready to say goodbye with the Final Shape, and GOD knows if that expansion will or won't flop as hard as LightFAIL. What a waste of potential, time and talent.