Destiny 2: The Final Shape

The campaign is the best thing Bungie has written and the game around it is still the most hostile onboarding in the genre. Both of those are true at the same time and they are why this scores where it does.

The shooting has never been the problem

Ten years on, nothing else in the genre feels like this. Weapon feedback, movement, the specific weight of a hand cannon — Destiny's fundamentals remain untouchable and The Final Shape's new subclass, which lets you borrow abilities across elements, is the most interesting build system the game has ever shipped. I spent perhaps fifteen of my sixty-one hours in menus rebuilding characters, happily.

The campaign missions themselves are structured rather than generated for once, with set pieces that use verticality and light in ways the series has not attempted since the first game. The final mission is genuinely superb.

Campaign difficulty

Legendary, first run

Raid clear

Week three

Hours in the inventory screen

~15

The story lands

Ending a decade of accumulated plot in a way that satisfies people who were there and does not completely alienate people who were not is close to impossible, and this mostly manages it. Characters who have been standing still since 2017 finally move. Two of them die properly. The Witness turns out to have a coherent argument, which is more than most antagonists in this space get.

Where it slips

Everything outside the campaign. A returning player faces a New Light experience that still does not explain power levels, seasonal currencies, or which of the eleven activity types on the map are dead content. I introduced someone to this game during the review and spent two hours doing what the tutorial should have.

The episodic content that followed also thinned out fast, and the raid — excellent as an encounter design — sits behind a difficulty and coordination wall that most of the audience for this campaign will never clear.

The verdict

If you have history with Destiny, this is the payoff and it is worth sixty hours. If you do not, there is no honest way to recommend starting here, and Bungie has spent a decade failing to build a door.

The campaign alone is an eight and a half. The game it lives inside pulls it down.