Recent reviews by Loot Legionnaire

So i have over 1k hours in this game and have stuck with the series from the D1 beta so I think my opinion is a qualified one.

TLDR: Sub par narrative but excluding that its not as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

Lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first the narrative:
WTF is the veil? We spend the entire campaign being told by everyone and have our objectives always somehow revolve around getting to, or defending, the veil. But we are NEVER told what it is and have NEVER had it mentioned in the lore until this point. This is the main point everyone holds onto, that compared to more or less, every other dlc and story that has come out of bungie over the past ten years (especially Witch Queen) this is by far the weakest of them all.
They are right. The problem is everyone holding onto that over everything else. Let that go and you have a damn good dlc, if overpriced.

The campaign:
This is easily one of the best campaigns the game has had especially compared to witch queen, The refinement of the legendary difficulty should be the standard imo for a campaign as its just the right amount of difficult, tanky and fun wrapped into some of the most vertically challenging environments outside of jumping puzzles, and with the introduction of strand its a genuine joy to grapple through. Highlights mainly focus on the final mission which involved a wave based survival moment which throws ungodly numbers of enemies, tanks and tormentors at you with plenty of room to play how you want. Another being the tormentor fights in mainly small rooms, their massive scythes and suppressing attacks making them seriously tricky and fun to fight for however many tries it takes. Tormentors however show a very obvious flaw when you actually face them enough, they are useless at range. Slow moving and mainly melee focused combined with a very open room ,like the campaigns final boss fight, really show this off as my team didn't touch the 2 in the final fight since we didn't need to, we just hopped around them and avoided their slow ranged attacks.

Strand:
One of the biggest selling points was the introduction of the strand subclass and its main focus being on the grapple hook. Overall its decently well balanced imo as what it lacks in damage it makes up for in crowd control, with abilites such as suspending enemies in a weakened state, reducing enemy damage or spreading a swarm of small strand creatures called threadlings to jump at and explode on anything in their path. Each subclass feels unique in their abilities but their supers (especially titans) feel... Reused and generic to say the least giving us nothing memorable. Overall its the abilites, not supers, that make strand feel unique and a welcome inclusion.

Exotics:
Every dlc releases with 5 exotics and usually 3 armor pieces (one per class) on launch with more following and since you need lightfall to use them lets talk about them. You get a strand sidearm that acts more or less the same as the smart pistol from titanfall, neat. A glaive that shoots giant exploding ice crystals, okay? Another glaive that give you an overshield when blocking, honestly why is it not just a glaive perk? And an LMG that causes every 4 shot and 16th fired without letting go of the trigger to do a void weakening or volitile effect, meh? An assault rifle that fires mini rockets and can switch into a grenade launcher if enough of those rockets hit targets, :D. Overall the weapons are a mixed bag of why and meh with the only exceptions being the Winterbite glaive and its explosive ice being a decent damage option, and quicksilver storms ridiculous amount of explosions for an assault rifle, everything else though feels like a gimmick in one form or another.

The armor however feels a little like the good, bad and ugly. Warlocks get a pair of boots that greatly benefit an entire playstyle with their class involving threadlings, which feels amazing sending out armies of threadlings to do your job for you. The hunter gets a helmet which gives you a defensive boost after grappling. It sounds good but since grappling gives the least benefits in a fight compared to the other options at your disposal this exotic feels niche and more focused around Pvp than the pve sandbox. Finally the titans boots which are a carbon copy of another titan helmet which sends out a stream of energy infront of you when you place down a barricade. Admittedly this new exotic does more, the parallels were drawn immediately and the damage done as it feels like they just reused the exotic and changed the color of it.

Endgame (pvp and the raid):
Pvp received more or less nothing in this with no new maps and the introduction of stand making the sandbox feel both new and old at the same time, I don't play pvp too much so I'm not going to touch anymore on that.

The new raid however I will. It is extremely beginner friendly with almost all encounters involving at LEAST half of the team sitting around killing stuff instead of being involved in the encounter, this to me, is NOT what a raid should be, it should involve everyone contributing to the fight, doing SOMETHING, instead half the people end up doing nothing as there's nothing TO DO. To be fair their are a load of enemies in those encounters but to me it just feels lazy instead of intentional (even though it is intentional) to have over half the team killing stuff instead of being useful or having something to do. Excluding my rant it is a good raid, decent mechanics (if very basic) damn weird and cool armor, top tier weapons and a VERY unique exotic with plenty of synergy with 2 different elements.

Overall don't let the negative reviews disuade you from trying the game out, it is free after all. And if you want to buy the dlc ignore the story as bungie have only hit that mark a few times in 10 years but do wait for a sale as what you get if you do ignore the story is not worth the $100 price tag and if including the story still doesn't warrant paying full price.

I have nearly 40 hours of playtime and have completed the campaign and am currently in the endgame so i think i have a good opinion on the game.

TLDR: Wait for a sale or a LOAD of bug fixes

Long version

Combat
For starters the combat, gunplay, enemies e.t.c. are not too bad with weapons feeling solid as hell, heavy hitting when necessary. Main pros of the combat have to be gunplay and the abilities as they have short cooldowns compared to destiny and even borderlands with the longest being roughly a minute and can be shortened with the right perks. They feel absolutely amazing when you gib something with a ground pound or freeze everything around you with the push of a button. The weapons feel amazing with shotguns and smgs being the true spotlights as they seriously excel in their desired ranges compared to sniper rifles and assault rifles.
Cons sadly outnumber the good as the enemy AI and balancing especially in the late campaign are genuinely terrible with enemies being complete bullet sponges, 1 shotting you and pushing you all the way back to your spawn in a matter of seconds not to mention they throw WAY too many at you and it only gets worse if you have friends with you since it roughly doubles and triples depending on your squad size and on top of that BOOSTING the already tanky HP making every small fight a real slog with friends. Weapons also get into the list as the entire sniper rifle category is useless with so little damage on some and damage drop off (seriously) on others, and if you actually try to use them the AI will just rush you or elite enemies will use abilities to get you moving making precise shots next to impossible which penalises players who want to play the dedicated sniper class, like me. The lmg category is a fun choice but the lack of damage and perks namely armor penetration make them complete pea shooters in late game only used to dunk half a mag into a minor enemy and realise that you have barely any ammo left and 20 more enemies to kill.

Graphics
The game is beautiful when it comes to the skyboxes and areas with heavy anomaly effects such as the opening battlefields with blue particles and rubble lying around you. Sadly the transition is very meh as you go from battlefield to battlefield to mountain peak battlefield to forest battlefield and feels like the previous area with a different color chosen instead of brown and grey with a splash of blue.

Bugs
Ok this game being out for over a week by now has some serious bug issues even for being out for a week.
For starters enemies have spawned inside walls for me or even inside each other multiple times, areas don't load as they should or register that something has happened. A certain bunker you clear you have to press a button to open the window shutters and vault the wall to get through to the next area but the shutters kept not registering they were down making me restart the game constantly until they actually went down which made me kill the same wave of enemies roughly three times in one playthrough. The cutscenes have constant audio sync issues and the characters have their mouths closed half the time when they are talking making the game a weird ventriloquist act and my favourite helmet constantly clipping my characters hair through it and even changing the model of the helmet from a mouth covering balaclava to a full blown military helmet. Not to mention my hud not loading in every. single. time. I boot up the game.

Conclusion
I wanted to keep spoilers out of this so all i will say is story wise it is extremely meh and underwhelming especially since half the boss fights include the certain bastard somehow running away despite them exploding and taking out a mountain or having a giant stone pylon dropped on them.

IMO this game is 6/10 at best 3/10 at worst with poor optimisation and AI which makes cyberpunk look good. I'd wait for a sale or the game to drop in price before buying but since i already own it I can't.

Buggy and glitchy in certain areas: blacked out text, amounts glitched to say the wrong amount and nowhere near enough instructions

Great skin for the wings but the weapon is terrible honestly i just use the lava cannon but the skull is just innefective and overpriced