Destiny 2 Gameplay And Performance Review: A PC Gamer's Delight

In Destiny 2's world, the Last City of Earth is protected by Guardians, beings who have been granted a variety of abilities by the magical Traveler’s light. There are three classes. The Titan is somewhat of a soldier class that has a variety of high damage and defensive abilities. The Hunters is a sci-fi spin on the classic ranger archetype with more stealth, crowd-control, and mobility-based skills. Finally, the mage or Warlock is a caster-healer class with high-damage, ranged attacks. 

In the very early stages of the Destiny 2 campaign, the light is stolen, ripped from each Guardian by the leader of the Cabal Red Legion – Dominus Ghaul. Your job is to find out how and why, by visiting the different planets and environments to rally the forces of the Vanguard – the three key NPC Guardians from the original game -- while also slowly rediscovering your light-bound abilities, so you may retake the city.

It’s a rather short but stylishly presented story, with great characters voiced by some familiar Hollywood talent like Nathan Fillion (FireFly) and Lance Reddick (The Wire). However, completing the campaign opens up the larger world of Destiny 2, where there are a wider variety of missions, strikes, impromptu public events, and massive, intensive raid assaults to test your skills solo or with a group of up to four friends. Complete these missions and players are rewarded with Rare (blue), Legendary (purple) or Exotic (yellow) loot.

Because this is an open-world action-RPG, you can freely roam the landscape, engaging enemies as you see fit and / or use your handy Sparrow hoverbike to jet off to a public event scheduled to happen nearby. you can explore and loot the world as you see fit. Just be prepared to rinse and repeat many of these missions in your continual search for ever-better loot. Games like WarFrame, The Division, Borderlands and even Diablo share a similar grind-heavy, loot-driven game-play format. We love gathering loot, though we suspect many gamers may not have as much time to grind through collecting it as much as they would like. Still for those that love to uncover new guns and gear -- to rebuild and fine tune their character loadouts -- Destiny 2 scratches that itch very well.
  

You can also earn some loot in the game’s robust PvP mode, where you compete against other Guardians in 3v3 Deathmatch or Objective-based game modes. To give you an idea as to how some loot can affect the game, we recently cashed in a “Bright Engram” to one of the many vendors in the game’s social area. The deciphered Engram gives a randomly generated reward. We received a bad-ass, high-speed Sparrow hoverbike to blast around the game world, but that wasn’t the only drop from the Engram. The game just keeps on giving. Soon, we’ll be geared up to the point where we can take on that ominous Levianthan raid to gather some of the best loot the game has to offer. #guardiangoals

Destiny 2 throws more cool weapons, mods and gear at the player than you mayknow what to do with. True to Bungie form, all the weapons – even those quickly dismantled for parts – feel very satisfying to shoot with a staggering degree of variety in both conceptual design and sound.

You may not get a deep 30-hour campaign with Destiny 2, but the story of Gaul’s rise and eventual fall is told very well, even if the fine points are somewhat forgettable. Still, the campaign does serve as a great way for new players to learn the world, mission types, and game-play mechanics. Moving on from the story, the main focus of the game is squarely on exploring every corner of the vast world, including the fortresses on the fringes, the hidden caverns and caves, raids, strikes, patrols and more.