When I originally reviewed Destiny after its release I mentioned about the gaping holes and lack of content. The rotation of strikes was poor and it always seemed like you were getting The Archon Priest.
A year has since passed and I’m checking out the game with the expansions and the newly released Taken King addition and the 2.0 update.
The first thing that has been brought to my attention, are the little details that have been added. At the tower, you can check out at various points all the different Exotic Armours and Weapons you have had and recreate them if you were mad enough to break them down originally.
You can also check out different shaders and Title backgrounds, all very useful as there is a nice selection, again though you have to have unlocked these first before reclaiming them. Good thing though, if you have several characters anything you have unlocked with one character is available for all the other characters that you have. Nice touch!
The game still looks as good as ever and is a joy to play to look at, all the various worlds giving their own element of eye candy to players. One of the biggest changes with 2.0 is how your character levels up, previously you had to use light from any exotic armour that you had.
While light does still play a part in the game, it’s based on a whole bigger range of things, such as the strength of your weapon and the still the armour you have on, but it now takes into account the defensive figures and puts them to your light rating.
Your ranking up to the new level 40 rank is now XP based and is earned as you light through all the planets and go through missions etc.
The menus have had a little spruce up as well and look really nice and tidy for the amount of info that is on them, especially the Solar System screen when your picking your destination. Things have been shuffled around and look a lot neater.
My only beef with this is I found it way too easy to rank my character up. I managed to get my Character to 34 before The Taken King was released, and it took me a couple of hours to get from that to 40.
A few bounties and playing through The Taken King story and I was at level 40 already. One bonuses of this, there are little things to keep you going with the character such as little missions which you can collect from the Vanguards, most of which have multiple steps to them but you are rewarded kindly at each stage.
Another beef I had this time with the original game was that the items you were getting from the loot system when you were a lower level character were rubbish, and it always made me think, how am I meant to power through and get another character done with this?!
Thankfully this has been changed and the Year 2 items that are now part of the game are actually helpful and I’m finding rare items being better than the exotics that I currently have, which again as I stated above has helped loads with my light level!
There was a nice little touch from Bungie in that you were given a token that you could use on a new character or one lower than level 25. This would then boost that character up to level 25, unlock a few things for them, more importantly it would allow you to use that character to play through The Taken King story with. However, it is a one-time only deal and can only be used on one character, so if you are making a new character, choose wisely.
The story element of The Taken King, I found to be very good. Again though in true Destiny style, there was a lot of toing and froing between places I’ve been loads, however there was a nice touch in that Saturn was added to the game for this element.
The story is made a load better by the Nathan Fillion who plays Cayde-6, the hunter vanguard. The dialect for this part of the story is amazing, and this is made by Fillion’s quirky take on the Hunter Vanguard.
It was nice to see the story being built on from the end of the last expansion after the take on Crota. There was a lot more meat to the story and it was nice to see a lot more characters getting involved such as the cut scenes with the Vanguards and Eris Mourn getting involved too.
Overall, this is a very good expansion to the game, however the changes they have made in 2.0 I can help but think that this is what the game should have been like when it was launched. It feels fuller, with more content and not as repetitive as it was from day one.
However, paying the price of a full game for an expansion at £40? I’m not sure whether or not this would be worth that money. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good, but I’m not sure it’s £40 worthy.
