Early Impressions
Beyond Light is certainly different compared to the previous two expansions Forsaken and Shadowkeep and it can easily stand out on its own. This new expansion is definitely moving in the right direction, at least for now, but not everything is so simple.
Just like the previous expansions, Beyond Light offers reworked UI, reduced loading times, and many technical tweaks.
Shadowkeep was a mess, and since Bungie separated their ways with Activision, Beyond light has big promises for new and veteran players. Quality-of-life improvements have definitely satisfied a lot of players, but some are still left disappointed.
As a player, who has played this game since the initial launch on Steam, I can definitely tell that Beyond Light deserves enough attention, but at some point after diving deeper into this expansion, some questions start to appear.
New Content
Things done right
The developers promised new planets and a new so-called Stasis element, and they made this real. Players are now able to discover the dark side and finish a new storyline on Europa. The story is fine. It is much longer than the Shadowkeep storyline with tedious quests for Dreambane armor.
Apart from the story, players can now try out reworked Patrols, a new subclass with several artifacts that require some routine work, a new strike, lost sectors, raids, exotic gear, and many collectibles with triumphs. Players can now also customize their ghost, adding new modifiers like bonus XP, glimmer, or search range.
Classic gambit has also been slightly reworked. It is literally the same Gambit Prime now, but without Set-roles and leaving some players disappointed.
Things done wrong
But here are some bad news, the rest of the game remains the same. It is the same online looter-shooter with daily routine quests that you have to complete for XP and Bright dust (to purchase cosmetics). If you have big plans for any season to get all the rewards, maximize your gear, increase Light power and compete in Osiris competitive mode, then each time the season starts you have to do this over and over again.
Some more bad news – The previous content like Leviathan and Vanilla planets, including the original story were scrapped completely. This questionable move made many players confused and sad. Although Bungie promises to return this content later in the future.
For this occasion, Bungie introduced a new monument in the tower, from which players can now purchase Legacy weapons. They mostly have no use, since their Light power is capped and most of them are no longer useful in the current seasons. All these items can be purchased with your resources just for collection. This of course doesn’t apply to Exotic weapons, as they have no limitations. However, this monument still doesn’t allow purchasing catalysts for Exotic weapons.
With the recent changes, Bungie has also nerfed Bright dust rewards from finishing Weekly quests. They now grant only 100 Bright dust, forcing players to grind more quests to get their desired cosmetics like Ghost, armor piece, emote weapon ornaments.
Brief Conclusion
The game in general keeps stepping on the same issues as many years ago. Beyond Light have no solution on how to get rid of the massive amount of blue items, repetitive daily quests, typical story quests where you have to kill specific enemies 100 times, or finishing public events that have not been updated since then.
That’s pretty much the whole endgame progression – Farming repetitive quests on 3 classes, clearing strikes, gambit, and Crucible for extra weapons and armor which later become useless with new season and the artifact power also resets with it. Pretty fair, isn’t it?
Overall, Destiny 2 is a great looter-shooter game with great combat mechanics, classes, visuals, storyline, gunplay, raids, and itemization, but the actual repetitive end-game content feels like a second job, and it makes this game average.
Video-review
This is my personal Destiny 2 Beyond Light video review prior to initial release on November 10, 2020.
I no longer play this game, so I doubt that there will be any guides or reviews for this game in the future….
