Auri O’Neill – Irrational Passions: Recent Episodes
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To my dear readers, listeners, and friends,
I really never thought I’d write this letter, or that when I shared this news, it’d be under very different circumstances. But people change, and time flows endlessly in new directions. Here is the TL;DR:
I am leaving IrrationalPassions.com. I am stepping down from shows, podcasts, and writing, and I am leaving the video games industry as a whole. This is not a bad blood situation, this is a choice I have reflected on and made on my own. The website will continue to exist, and the capacity to which it will continue to operate is in good hands.
I wanted to take this final letter and reflect a bit, to explain why I made this choice, and where I’m at on a personal level. In my mind, it’s a drop in the bucket, who cares right? But after talking with some people I do realize that, even in some small way, I have likely had an influence on some of you and I want to say and give a proper goodbye. Did I ever think I would make this choice? No, but a lot has changed, particularly myself, and especially in the last 6-12 months.
First of all, I want to firmly say I am doing fine. I am healthy, the healthiest I have ever been actually, and I have never enjoyed life as much as I am now. If you follow me on social media, which you can anywhere at @AuriMeansWind, you know that discovering I am a trans woman and transitioning has been a massive part of my life. It’s been a joy too, and I have never felt this good about my identity, my future self, and my personal happiness ever. I can say with confidence, my mental health is better right now than it ever has been before. I am a new woman (literally).
Through that, I have learned and grown a lot, and my relationship with video games has changed as well. Honestly, I am a lot less interested in them at the moment. Part of that may be it being an off year, part of it may be me in my 30s, part may be my transitioning, and part may be the absolute dogshit year the games industry has had in regards to taking care of its people. Another part of it is my dear friend Brian Jackson passing this past February, and him being my go-to person to talk and be passionate about games with. All of it together has led to me just… not really care anymore. I’ve felt very lost when it comes to games for a while now. I don’t listen to gaming podcasts, I feel checked out on the podcasts I am a part of, and I could not give any less of a shit about video game “discourse” anymore.
Things like genocide in the world, rampant transphobia across the United States and wider world too, and so much more occupies my brain and keeps me from engaging with gaming as a medium and a hobby in the capacity that I was before. That, and I just haven’t been enjoying them as much. I can’t put a firm hand on the empty feeling I get with them a lot now, but it’s been a pretty big bummer for me.
This isn’t at all to dismiss the people within the gaming space, or those staying here at IP, this is just the internal conflict I am going through right now. Some members of the gaming space are doing a ton of amazing activism within it for Palestine and for Trans Rights, but the dissonance of it all has completely disengaged me from the industry. I have changed. And I am not the person passionate about writing about games, about being an editor, or about being a host in this space anymore.
To be fully honest, I’ve been pretty checked out since I burned out in 2020. Obviously Irrational Passions hasn’t taken as many shots, done as much production, or made as many exciting moves, and I can’t help but blame myself for just being an obstacle in the way of the people that did want to expand and try new things, but as the decision maker I just held things back and prevented those opportunities from happening. I’ve decided to listen to what my heart has been telling me for years, and officially step down and walk away because it’s simply what I need to do right now. It is definitely a choice that makes me very sad, but it is one I am certain I need to make.
Does this mean I won’t ever write or podcast about video games again? Or find some place in gaming that fits who I am now? No, probably not. That being said, I currently have zero plans to do any of that, and that’s kind of exciting. I’ve been doing this since I was 17, and I’m 31 now. I haven’t ever really had a time as myself, both as an adult and as Auri, to just be a fan and enjoy video games. I’m really excited to be able to do that. Hell, I might even listen to a podcast to find out what the hell is going on in a way I haven’t since high school.
Does it mean I’ll never go to a PAX or a Summer Games Fest? Maybe, and even though it was always my dream to sit on the GiantBomb couch with my friends and colleagues, seeing some Irrational Passions alum make it there has filled me with a pride that I cannot describe to you.
To know or at least even believe that I have had a positive influence on anyone within the video games space, or that something I have written has been something someone out there has loved, makes me radiantly proud. I loved what I did when I was doing it, loved finding new and diverse voices in video games and helping bring them to the forefront. I wish I could have done more of that in particular. But for a kid from Maryland who had absolutely no fucking idea what she was doing from the jump, and figured it out as she went thanks to amazing friends and even better colleagues, I think I did all right. I mean, 14 years is nothing to scoff at.
Before I go, I want to take some time to thank the people that deserve to be thanked, and as far as I have ever been concerned, the real stars of the show:
First, and maybe the biggest thank you, to Scott Guthier and Evan Wall. Three friends from middle and high school go on to start a podcast and it is the best decision I ever made. I am infinitely grateful.
Tony Horvath and Joseph Fait, who took a risk and joined in the show and helped drive it and me forward. Most importantly they just showed up every week to have a good time and talk about video games, and they were damn fun to do that with.
Kam, Jacob, Quin, Brendan, Aneudys, Zack, Niall, Billy, Youssef, Logan, JC, and Jess, for their many contributions to the site, their individual and unique voices, and for believing in me.
Jarrett Green is one of the best humans I know, someone I consider a close friend, and honestly, family. He is out there killing it every week, and I am so proud to just know him, to be able to read his words before everyone else on occasion, and bask in his hilarious and pointed prose.
Mike Burgess is the hardest working motherfucker I have ever met. He is an incredible friend, an amazing video editor, one of the most fun people to talk to, and someone I will continue to annoy to play Destiny with me until the day I die.
Scott White is one of the warmest and most amazing people I have ever had the honor to know. He is kind, gentle, funny, and a staunch ally. Watching him become the amazing dad I always knew he would be has been a special treat. I’ll always make time to talk about Trails with you Scott, don’t ever doubt that.
Jurge Cruz is a treasured friend, and was there for me through some really difficult times this year. He is a hard worker and an even better human, and continues to inspire me just as a human being, as a person in video games, and as a dear friend. I am so incredibly proud of you Jurge.
Brian. What more could I say? You were the best of us. I can’t thank you enough. I will treasure your friendship forever. I miss you so much. I hope I made you proud.
Some other folks I wanted to thank, outside of the ragtag group of incredible people who have passed through this site:
Greg Miller, thank you for believing in me. For being a friend, a confidant at times, and just one of the warmest and most supportive people I have ever known. They say never meet your heroes, I’m glad I have one that’s actually pretty fucking cool.
Thank you Ryan Davis. I can’t believe it’s been 11 years since you passed, but you were the first person in the video game industry I met at PAX East 2012, and you mentioning me on the Giant Bombcast will never not spark joy in my heart forever.
Roger Pokorny is one of my best friends and one of the best people I have ever known. Thank you for being the first person I told I was stepping down, and for being kind and listening even though it was so hard for me to talk about. You’ve been with me for so much of this, and I can’t tell you how inspiring you always have been. You’re a star, and I’m so proud.
There are more people and they deserve a better thank you, but I still hope to get out there and give some hugs in person. My mom, my real life friends, everyone who supported me on this journey, it feels so strange to walk away, but sometimes the strangest things make the most sense.
It’s crazy to think that my first ever thing I wrote here was 14 years ago, a Blacklight Tango Down review that was not very good to be honest, you can’t even read it anymore. I was just a dumbass 17 year old boy. Now I am a markedly smarter 31 year old woman. I wouldn’t change any day here for the world. I’ve had some incredible memories, like every PAX, every PSX, every Extralife, including one where Greg Miller, his wonderful wife Gen, and their dog, flew across the country to hangout at my house for a weekend. Some favorite moments here below:
- Being on KFGD, still and always forever a highlight. This was so much fun.
- PAX East 2018, I really think we did some great work in this time.
- PAX West 2022, post-the end of the world. My last PAX I attended.
- PAX East 2019, I remember how much planning we did for this.
- PAX East 2020, who knew it’d be just a few weeks shy of a global pandemic!
- Recording a podcast during KFL2, for the chaos factor. Don’t look this one up, I told a bad story on it.
- A little side dinner with the IP family at PAX West 2022! This one is special because it’s when I came out to the IP folks, and they were wonderful <3
- Hanging out with Justin, who I miss dearly.
- PAX East 2014, the first group of writers IP had, and this was a real proud moment for me.
- Roger Pokorny and I relaxing in the early morning hours at ExtraLife 2018. Always the best.
- A little shot from the podcast when Greg Miller sat at my podcast table.
- Jarrett Green is just the best. Truly you can see the quality of every bit of writing on the site go up starting in 2014. He taught me soooo much of what I know now.
- The squad at PAX East 2018. I love this silly picture.
- PAX West 2018, the big IP/OKB crossover episode.
- Ryan Davis was the best, and he was so damn photogenic. PAX West 2012
- The final hours crew saying goodbye on the stream of ExtraLife 2017. One of the best weekends of my life.
- Wrapping up ExtraLife 2013, so many people here I love.
- The all-told group photo of ExtraLife 2017. This was my magnum opus.
- The recording of IPP Episode 100. Way back in July of 2012, oh how young I was. :)) I’ve met incredible people through writing, social media, and even just playing games, and proved to myself and the wider world that true, precious friendships can be made in an online space, and become some of the realest you have in your life. Video games are more than just a distraction, they’re a gift, worked on by sometimes one, and sometimes thousands of people that pour years of their lives, their hearts, and their souls into these beautiful miracleworks that make magic real, fantasy tangible, and dreams a reality. I love them, and will keep them in my life forever, of that I am certain.
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And here we are. This isn’t goodbye, of course not. It’s just an “until we meet again” type-deal. I’ll be around. You can follow me @AuriMeansWind, it’s certainly true that I’ll have a lot more shit-posting time on my hands. Thank you for reading, and listening. Every piece, every word, every dumb little tangent and four hour show. Thank you. As I’ve always said, with a bit of a twist, play your games, stay passionate, follow your heart, be kind, and I’ll talk to you again… next time. <3
Yours forever grateful,
it has been my honor,
Auri O’Neill
Destiny, in its many forms, has been around as a living game for 3556 days. That’s just shy of 10 years, and The Final Shape expansion of what Bungie is calling “The Light and Darkness Saga” acts as the end cap of these ten years of Destiny and Destiny 2.
So, how’d they do? There are a lot of factors that go into your enjoyment D2: The Final Shape. Do you play a lot of the Seasons in Destiny 2? Do you care about the story? Are you really into playing around with gear, weapons, and abilities? If you’ve been keeping up with the game on these fronts, it’s gonna be a hit. But that’s a lot of factors that ultimately feel secondary to the feat of just having a living world tie up a story after so long. I am one of those folks that plays every seasonal story, that is hanging on the edge of every word in every cutscene, that gathers my group of five other friends together on a sometimes weekly basis to tackle Destiny’s premium end game content.
So for a player like me, one that started with Destiny’s first expansion, The Taken King, I can say with certainty that they absolutely nailed it.
This is going to be a long one, so I’ve split things up into categories. Let’s start with the first thing you’ll do in The Final Shape, the campaign.
The Campaign
Setting the stakes very high with “The Final Shape” (concept) looming over everything in the universe Bungie has built up in these last ten years. In short, it is a calcification of all things; a freezing of all time, space, and creation into a condensing nothingness of vivisected life that the series’ antagonist, The Witness, has pursued using the powers of Light and Dark, and is so very close to enacting. We, after over 16 months since the Lightfall expansion, finally follow The Witness into the Traveler, a concept that has been knocked around for the better part of a decade, to end its scheme once and for all.
This takes us to the new destination, The Traveler’s into the beautiful and thought-defying Pale Heart. The campaign is a series of seven missions, with a little break in the middle to run around the world a bit and do the new Strike somewhere in the middle, and your first brush with it is just a bee-line for the end. Each mission is to be immediately followed by the next, and even if you try and go somewhere else mid-campaign the game warns you, “hey you’re leaving The Final Shape campaign and you should really do that first.”
The Final Shapes campaign starts out a little slow, recreating some of the original Destiny 2 campaign by having you reassemble the Vanguard, with a recently resurrected Cayde-6, and try and bring the team back together. Thematically, it is exploring the old crew along with Crow, a seasonal character that finally gets his time to shine in a proper campaign, and having them confront their greatest fears. On one hand, seeing all of this again after it felt pretty explored before is where some of the early slog was most felt, but on the other, having the focus on the characters be front and center is exactly what The Final Shape needed. I love that the moments shared between Cayde, Zavala, and Ikora feel pulled right out of the lore cards, which often feature some of the most interesting or unexpected “moments” in the series hidden as a text block in some menu somewhere. Here, they are front and center. This is some of the most direct and best storytelling Bungie has put into a campaign, forgoing the need for someone to explain to you what is really happening.
It’s interwoven with some of the best mission structure any campaign has had yet. There are mechanics to almost every mission, and unique mechanics, symbols, and encounters throughout the campaign that you don’t see anywhere else, which previous campaigns have all shied away from. Even the replayable campaign missions you get access to after you finish the story have more new mechanics layered on top of these, just underlining Bungie’s commitment to integrating some of the best Destiny has to offer, which are it’s unique raid mechanics, into the part of the game you spend much more time playing.
The seven story missions are often focused on close encounters, with massive threats provided by the new enemy race, The Dread. They can push you out of cover, either by using crowd control techniques we as Guardians have employed over the years like massive area of effect grenades, by freezing you, or even just yanking you out of cover with their Strand pull. They feel like DOOM-like high pressure situations, where you need to think fast and slay quickly to survive while demanding you either work with your teammates or remember the ongoing mechanics to progress. Some of the later missions have some of the most satisfying fights and arenas I’ve seen outside of a raid in Destiny, and after two very fun campaigns back to back in Witch Queen and Lightfall, that’s saying something.
I really think the campaign is electric due to the strength of Zavala, Cayde, Crow, and Ikora as characters, complemented by the new subclass Prismatic, which you unlock right at the beginning and expand as you play each mission. These are the heart of every assault on the tower, every mission and Strike, and all of the expansions and seasons leading up to this moment. I may have been worried that there would be too much “do you remember this??” with the environment design, as you start in an overgrown version of the Destiny 1 tower, but right off the bat the level design meshes familiar and surreal to a really astounding degree.
Prismatic
Let’s sidestep to the new big feature introduced within the campaign, and that’s the Prismatic Subclass. You unlock and can fully equip and customize Prismatic about 90% through the first campaign mission, and you just have it from then on. This feels like a direct response to how both Stasis and Strand, the two most recent subclasses, were teased throughout the Beyond Light and Lightfall campaigns, but not unlocked until after the campaign was completed.
I cannot overstate how good of a change giving it to us right away is. A big part of Destiny 2 since the introduction of Stasis has been “buildcrafting”—customizing the different core and passive abilities of your subclass, alongside your armor, weapons, and armor mods, to create a machine of enemy slaying that fits the situation at hand. While you really don’t get a full scope on everything you can do with Prismatic until after the campaign is done, just having the freedom of both tinkering with it, and also using it while exploring and moving between mission objectives, is so liberating.
The idea behind Prismatic is combining “light” and “dark” into a wholly new power, Transcendence. Prismatic gives you a list of five aspects on each class, which don’t fully pull from the five subclasses, but give you a slice of each so as to create a sort of custom, multi-class that can fit the needs of multiple situations. To give a brief example, because these get pretty complicated pretty quickly, on Warlock you start with both Bleak Watcher and Feed the Void, which lets you both turn your grenade into a freezing-ice turret, and allows ability kills to fully heal you. Quickly you can populate the battlefield with a Stasis turret, freeze a group of enemies, and then shatter them, with the shatter damage causing you to fully heal instantly.
After the campaign is done and you can unlock all five aspects, supers, and grenades available on Prismatic, the amount of wild combinations any player who has been invested in the game for the last few years can explore is vast and super fun. These kinds of combinations have only been dreamed of, and through the last year in particular, Bungie has introduced different keywords from each subclass into weapons that have allowed for some of this multi-class dream to feel possible. Now, in the chaotic post-Prismatic world, I don’t think we can ever go back.
On the level of what’s unique to Prismatic, you have a mini-super called Transcendence, that is a separate meter you charge by dealing both Dark and Light damage, either from subclass abilities, or from your weapons. Once both meters are charged, you can Transcend, and enter a state of heightened power, allowing you to throw a special class-unique grenade to deal both Light and Dark effects. It also bumps up your damage and resistance, and I love how this loop of dealing different damage effects becomes a new focus of your gameplay. You really need to reactively work toward building Transcendance, which can be super easy depending on your weapons and set up, but can also be a challenge if you aren’t distributing your damage correctly. The result is a wholly unique gameplay loop on the game’s already most-unique subclass, making Prismatic feel like such a fresh addition to any and all gameplay loops Destiny has seen. It also lets you create builds within Prismatic that let you play to that specific strength, going Transcendent, and can have you ability-spamming to your heart’s content in no time.
The Post Game
After completing the campaign, The Pale Heart destination opens up more fully, littering itself with secrets and also more pieces of Prismatic to unlock. Everything here is maybe the best part of The Final Shape expansion. You have new Exotic quests, some obvious and some hidden, you have a totally new progression system in Pathfinder, and a completely new way to engage with combat on the Pale Heart itself with the removal of Patrols and the introduction of “Overthrow”.
Firstly, The Pale Heart is a completely solo instance-destination, a first for Destiny, so you don’t need to be competing for kills like you normally are on destinations. You’re completely free to take your time, explore, engage with pretty fun combat that isn’t too challenging, and find the litany of secrets strewn about the world. There are Prismatic fragments everywhere, and you have just tons of objectives to engage with to find them, whether they be the Cysts, which are like mini-challenge rooms that each have two versions, or Overthrow, which is an escalating public event that has no time limit and you can execute on in each of the three main areas of The Pale Heart. Then there are extra mini-objective challenges strewn across the entire map, like Darkness chests that require you to complete small minigames to open.
All of it is a rousing success because it’s all fresh and new ideas, sometimes even incorporating raid-like mechanics into trivial tasks. Plus, it’s all doable at your own pace. There are very few timers, few pressure points, few things that demand multiple party members (though there are definitely some). It’s hard to describe how special that first week was, because the Campaign ends with effectively a huge set up for the Raid, which launched the first Friday after The Final Shape released. There was a massive countdown timer to the moment the raid went live right on the directory map, and a mission objective in your quest log asking if you’re ready to take on The Witness.
That leads us to the more unique activities the Pale Heart offers after the Raid launched and was completed. One is the Dual Destinies Exotic Mission, which launched the week after the raid, and is the first ever two-person only activity in Destiny. It is an ingenious mission that has you and one other player moving through several extremely fun combat scenarios, performing unique duo-mechanics, that reminded me a lot of things like It Takes Two, ultimately leading to a very fun twist at the end that I refuse to spoil if you haven’t seen it. The reward here are the Prismatic-only Exotic Class items, which can be infinitely farmed from this mission with no weekly limit, and introduce double-exotic perks that allow Pirsmatic to even further bend the rules of the game. Some Exotic Class items can combine perks from other classes’ exotic pool, with over 60 possible combinations per class.
The other activity is called Excision, an activity that launched after the World’s First clear of the Raid, Salvation’s Edge, which we’ll discuss in a moment, and acts as the “true final mission” of Destiny 2 The Final Shape. It is Destiny’s first ever 12-player PvE activity, allowing you and 11 other Guardians to enter a battlefield to finish off The Witness once and for all. To say that this is a fantastic and bombastic finale is honestly an understatement. It’s incredible, focusing more on fun and fan service than actual challenge (although there is a very difficult version of the activity you can play as well) and is a perfect capstone to the expansion. The conclusion that plays at the end of it is emotional, poignant, and beautiful. It’s a wonderful ending to the expansion, and helps solidify it as maybe Bungie’s best Destiny expansion ever. I cannot wait to see what other 12-person activities we may see in the future.
The Raid
That brings us back to the raid, Salvation’s Edge, the final ascent to confront The Witness, and it’s a best case scenario of a raid: an absolute banger. We’ve really seen the gamut of raids from Destiny, with epic and massive raids like The Last Wish from Forsaken to even most recently the frenetic and combat-focused “assault-the-keep” style challenge in the reprised Crota’s End raid from Destiny 1. This takes all the lessons learned from these raids to create an extremely challenging and memorable experience, that feels like you’re ascending Ganon’s Tower to fight the final boss. It’s really all I could have wanted out of a “finale raid” for Destiny.
The encounters are built around team-coordination, this time layering fast-paced objective completion. Almost every encounter demands that every member of the fireteam participate in some way, whether it be because players are chosen for rolls randomly, or because there are six different things to do in the fight. It’s pretty incredible how much this escalates, culminating in Encounter 4 of the raid, Verity, which is a “puzzle encounter” that requires three players to coordinate on one half a puzzle, and the other three to coordinate on the other. This is one of the most incredible Destiny experiences I have ever had, going so far as to incorporate each individual Guardian’s appearance into the mechanics of the battle, as well as each Guardian’s unique ghost.
Salvation’s Edge is also beautiful, encompassing this massive area that overlooks the entire Pale Heart destination, at one point allowing you to see the entire destination from a single spot. The whole raid is entombed in a massive tower, and ascending it is the most video game final-boss-approach we have seen in Destiny. It’s all just awe-inspiring. It’s a real treat, and is maybe the hardest raid Bungie has ever made. It’s an excellent finale, but the Excision mission lets players engage with the final boss of the raid on a more approachable level, so everyone can get a taste of it, which I also really love.
Final Thoughts
Destiny 2 is still a lot, it’s still a complex, action-MMO, and it’s still very hard to penetrate if you’re new to the franchise. But The Final Shape feels built from the ground up for the players who have stuck it through, who love the secrets, the mechanics, and the buildcrafting. And it’s a better expansion for it. I’d even go so far as to say, it’s the best expansion because of that.
The ending is poignant, emotional, and one I’ll remember for the rest of my gaming days. After playing this franchise for nine years, I walked away extremely satisfied, and also hopeful for the future of Destiny.
This game was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 system with a review code provided by PR.
As someone who was quite young at the time, it is hard for me to identify what the magic sauce of Super Nintendo RPGs of 1991-96 was. It was an era of video games when Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Secret of Mana and Dragon Quest 5 & 6 were all released in the same span of years, there was a breakthrough. There was excellent pixel art, there was more bold storytelling, there were new ideas to the turn based systems, and there were a lot of people just enjoying RPGs. There’s something that’s hard to replicate about that era of role playing games that is missing from the modern 100 hour odysseys but still exists as a foundational memory for generations of RPG players.
Sea of Stars is as if you reached into the past and grabbed that underlying feeling and really channeled everything you had into making the 2023 version of that video game formula. Sea of Stars brilliantly feels like one of those Golden Age JRPGs of the Super Nintendo, but made with the benefits of today. On top of that, it’s unique, it’s heartfelt, and it’s so so fun to play in a time where there are tons of fun RPGs to play. Sea of Stars is different from all of them, and excellent in its own ways.
From the beginning, Sea of Stars’ story is framed around a sacrifice. Valere and Zale, blessed with lunar and solar-based superpowers related to their births on the Winter and Summer solstices, are separated from their childhood friend Garl and are locked away in a tower to train for ten years to become Solstice Warriors. Despite this strong background Zale and Valere struggle to develop as charages during the journey in comparison to later additions to the party like Garl, or the mysterious Pirate/Ninja Seraï, who are far more interesting and elevate the plot a lot more. I think there are some missed opportunities with characters broadly; I would have liked more time with characters just talking to one another, building up the tension and relationships so that when the biggest story beats happen, they’d hit even harder. Still, it feels like a more traditional approach. It feels classic and streamlined, and it helpsSea of Stars separate itself more from modern contemporaries.
I really like what Sea of Stars does story-wise, because it feels very relevant. It reads like a pandemic game to me. It deals a lot with trust, what it means to break trust, and earnest frustration with why the people with the power to change things seem to refuse to do the right thing, all themes that really resonated with me. Multiple crucial points of the story had me absolutely devastated and sobbing. For everything familiar in the larger narrative, something wonderfully earnest and to the point happened to surprise and delight me.
All of these are complemented by some of the most impressive and polished visuals of a pixel art video game I have ever seen. Sabotage’s previous game, The Messenger, leverages dueling 8bit and 16bit styles to create intricate backgrounds to great effect, but Sea of Stars just goes extremely hard into this unbelievable amount of detail in the world, characters, and every animation. There are too many moments of incredible animation to capture, but I wanted to include some as animated gifs that certainly won’t do the game justice, but show off just how much variety of visual presentation there is.
Then there is the soundtrack and this one is killer. Eric W. Brown works with Chrono Trigger composer Yasunori Mitsuda to make some simply legendary music. From the expected areas, like a beachy series of waterfalls, to underwater, to the desert, every necessary touchstone of a SNES game is here, but the surprises that come into the music as the game gets darker and weirder in the later chapters are just excellent. The boss-specific tracks are all so very good, and the amount of music here is just as surprising as the number of locales. There is just a ton packed in here, all of it very memorable, and some of the music even calls back to The Messenger and its soundtrack too.
Most RPGs live and die by their combat, and Sea of Stars not only lives, it thrives. It leans in the direction of the Mario RPGs, with action commands available through timed presses with every attack, requiring different timing for each character’s unique attacks and specials. It also throws in combo attacks, which don’t use MP but rather a sort of “special meter” you build by staggering opponents and landing action commands. Then the third and final pillar is “live mana,” which is effectively three charges of energy you get from just using basic attacks that you can absorb almost anytime to power up whatever your next move is, be it a big attack or a super-powered heal.
All of these systems are very basic, and introduced gradually through the first four hours of Sea of Stars, but continually become satisfying strategy-makers through dozens and dozens of hours of combat. Not only does each boss have some special mechanic or structure to it that makes it more of a unique fight, but with free party member switching almost any time, combat always feels like you have tons of options at any given moment. Maybe you have a boss that is weak to poison damage, but has three arms that will buff it each turn. You can use Zale and Garl to attack the arms and destroy them, build up some mana charges, then absorb them as Seraï and land an extra-strong poison attack with the additional charge. That or you could prepare one of the full-screen super moves or a combo attack. There is plenty of strategy with such a straightforward system, all the while new enemies are being introduced constantly, all with different attacks and weaknesses that require new timing to be learned all the time.
Sea of Stars is constantly adding fresh and fun ideas to its turn based battles, all while building on things you’re familiar with. Entering new areas is extremely fun, because you’re getting new music, new visuals, and new little puzzles with each enemy to solve. I felt this 40 hours later when I was wrapping up all the secret and optional areas at the end of the game.
You’ll go from one stop to the next with the perfect topper to any 90s-inspired RPG, the world map. Each area flows into the next, as you eventually travel from continent to continent, from the Coral Cascades, to the port town of Brisk and its lovely pirate music, to Wrath Island, the land of dark curses. Just as you start to feel the world is small, something changes, a new part of the world map opens, or puzzles on the map itself light the way to the next adventure.
All that care into the music and the visuals of each destination carries over to exploring them too. Not only are they full of little puzzles, secrets, and extra treasures to find, but you actually have to explore, interact, and maneuver your way through the world. It’s more than just finding keys and hitting buttons, and I am just so grateful for it. It was super fun cleaning up the enemies in an area and circling all around it to find hidden areas, things you didn’t know you could interact with, and optional little paths to secrets.
Truly, the environments are just so stellar, and it extends to walking around them, exploring them, fighting in them, and of course hearing each area’s different theme music.
Closing Comments:
Sea of Stars gets to be amongst that cherished few that feels like a game ripped right out of another era, with the benefits of time and modern design, and just so much love. It’s one of the most polished, fully-featured and jam-packed games I have played, and I was so happy to turn every corner, find every combo move, and explore every environment endlessly. The story, the experience, and the heart coming off of Sea of Stars is so potent, it rocked me emotionally. I loved every time I got to sit down and play this game, but left supremely satisfied by the end. It is a masterful RPG, video game, and indie title, and one that I would happily recommend to anyone and everyone.
This game was reviewed with a review code provided by Public Relations for Sabotage Studios, on a PlayStation 5 Digital console.
Hello all, editor-in-chief here, checking in with a little bit of business that I consider important and would like to make the occasion of with a small post just outlining the info. If you haven’t heard, I am transgender! Yay! It is something that’s been going on in the background for a little while, and…
A little over two months after Destiny 2 Lightfall’s launch, I finally peeled my feelings off the wall and decided to turn them into words. I think my conflict over what to say and how to say comes a lot from the community’s mixed and often polarized response. When you’re so invested in a game that lives and breathes like this, a lot of what you see or hear day to day is from that community. It was exhausting. It was hard for me to parse how I felt with the constant overreaction in places like Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube, that went from excited theorycrafting of what Lightfall could be to a hot or cold war very quickly.
The community response had a huge effect on how much I enjoyed Lightfall, which is of course partly my fault but it complicated my feelings enough to where I needed to take a break from Destiny and mull over how I felt about Lightfall, Season of Defiance, and what is to be the coming year of D2 seasons and content leading into “the finale” of the current Destiny saga.
Let’s start with The Lightfall campaign itself.
The Campaign
The center of the division I think is with the campaign, which most long-term Destiny players blasted through on that first day of release. Your Guardian heads to the newly discovered city Neomuna on Neptune to stop The Witness’ plan to link themselves to The Veil. Finally our enemy is at our front door, but while the seasonal story covers the war at home, the campaign is our second-front war to deal with a mcguffin.
I think a lot of expectations going into Lightfall were that it would be some tragic but massive war that ends in our enemy’s favor. It’s more of an action-movie romp across a neon-city, trying to beat the enemy away on all sides from taking the thing that the bad guy wants. It’s not complicated, I don’t think it’s reinventing the wheel, but it sure is fun. The eight missions really lean into different types of action-cinema influences, from jumping around on the edges of skyscrapers (albeit too briefly) to secluded beachfront lookouts that turn into a warzone, to huge tank fights through the backstreets of Neomuna. They ended up being my favorite front-to-back series of missions from any campaign yet, including the final boss. There is a frenetic nature to them that is exhilarating, especially in the updated Legendary Campaign mode, which has been tuned since Witch Queen to be a bit more forgiving.
For what it is, the campaign is a great, fun time. Does it make for a good penultimate event to the end of the “Light and Dark Saga”? I don’t really think so. The Witness’ endgame, The Veil, has some deep roots in Destiny history from some old concept art for the first game, potentially being a full new enemy race. But even though it’s been the subject of conjecture for years, and used in promotional materials and positioned as a very important thing, we get no answers about what it is or why it’s important by the end of this section of the story.
As a long-time Kingdom Hearts fan and also a fan of Destiny’s long-term storytelling, this didn’t get under my skin really at all. But it did for a lot of folks and they made that very audibly clear in every space a conversation about Destiny was happening in regards to Lightfall. It is certainly some kind of storytelling sin to refer to your mcguffin many, many times and never really explain what it is or why it’s important. It is set up as a mystery to unravel over time, but I think in a penultimate story, it’s a very risky move to do something like this. It leaves you wanting after the campaign is finished.
A lot of the narrative time in the campaign is used to connect with Strand, the new subclass added with this expansion. It’s been two expansions and two and a half years since Stasis, the first “darkness subclass” was added to Destiny back in 2020. For me, Eramis taking the darkness and us kind of unceremoniously “taking it too” felt like a pretty hollow introduction to using the powers of the darkness. Stand gets a lot more love, but it feels like a right thing, wrong time situation.
Strand represents the “weave of the universe”, very similar to the idea of threads of fate you might see in a Dungeons and Dragons setting. This kind of thing is exactly my shit. Yet even though it’s treated like an unwieldy weapon we must master that represents something, we don’t get as deep into its mysterious nature as I would have wanted within the scope of the story. So much of the time of the campaign is us playing with our new power and not really explaining it or the purpose of the Veil. Too much cooking at once.
Fighting Tormenters is a highlight of any given mission.
Overall the Campaign is a fun action adventure with killer setpieces, but the story doesn’t deliver what I was expecting. Did it crush my love of Destiny? No, but it sure seems like it did for a lot of loud people, and that certainly hurt my relationship with consuming Destiny and Destiny content. I think for what it is, Lightfall is super fun, and for what it needed to be, it’s a miss. I won’t lament the success of Witch Queen versus Lightfall because they feel like two totally different things, but if Lightfall built its storytelling around one of the two things it tries to juggle, I think it would have felt more satisfying.
Strand
I’d say the second pillar of Lightfall is the addition of a new subclass. To me, this is the most special of events in Destiny, and it served as a major vehicle for me getting into more endgame activities back when the first Darkness Subclass, Stasis, came out in 2020. Strand is a huge part of the campaign, with you accessing charge points frequently throughout at least six of the eight campaign missions. These points temporarily give you rapidly charging abilities and supers, allowing you to spam-magic your way through fun setpieces. This time in Lightfall, instead of just doing this, there are lengthy sections, like the final boss encounter, where you do get a Strand setup that has slightly more resemblance to the endgame suite of abilities, but just like Beyond Light, you must finish the final boss and campaign mission to fully unlock Strand.
I didn’t like this introduction before with Stasis, and I don’t like it here. It’s handled marginally better, where over time each of the two starting aspects and one different fragment per class is introduced and explained so you do learn the abilities of the subclass. Stasis’ hollow ability-spam boss sections didn’t give an accurate impression of the class at all. Still, the decision to hold back the Subclass until post-campaign was the wrong one, and I think in the expansion that introduced Loadouts, a huge quality of life feature I’ll talk about a bit later, this was the perfect opportunity to break the mold and let you feel like you’re unlocking parts of a skill tree through the campaign, instead of gating it into post-campaign filler grind.
Also like with Stasis, you need to farm a lot to unlock all 14 of the fragments for Strand, which make up the major modifiers. Again, it’s easier here, you get the currency to buy these fragments by doing just about anything with Strand, and more so on the new Destination, but it just feels a lot like a half step forward. Unlocking things may not be a problem for long term players, but this is the brand new toy and you’re holding it back from everyone until they commit several hours to the campaign and beyond.
But these are all the negatives I have to say about Strand, because to get into the introduction of the class, the element, and the damage type across the game, it’s been surprising and excellent.
The surprise comes in with how well it fits into the play of the other subclasses. From the outside looking in, my concern was would Strand have enough of its own identity, ability-wise, to not just feel like “Green Void” or something like that. Strand introduces many interesting new interactions, first of which is the grapple. While it is a grenade ability and does fall victim to cooldowns, Strand as a whole gives you a ton of interesting ways to charge your grenade abilities faster. The grapple doesn’t change Destiny into the vertical, sky-bound grapple-fest of Spider-Man, but it gives you a really intricate tool; one you can use aggressively, to gain that height and distance you want in short bursts, or even just as a speedy means of escaping harm. It fits well into Strand’s overall kit, which is harassing your enemies from all directions.
One of those tools comes from “unraveling” your opponents, which makes small needle-like threads shoot in and out of them, doing extra tick damage, spreading to nearby enemies, and creating a buzzing storm of damage over time that gives Strand its own identity amongst scorching Solar or jolting Arc. It serves a diametric pair of buff and debuff, with “Woven Mail”, a temporary 60% damage resistance, and “Severed”, which forces enemies to deal 33% less damage. This trio of verbs exist alongside each class’s strength, and I got to play two of them, Warlock and Hunter, Warlock being my main class. This all goes without mentioning “Suspension”, where you can use threads to pull up just about any non-boss enemy and hold them in the air, absolutely bullying them in a way you just couldn’t in Destiny before. It’s phenomenal.
The Warlock serves as the master of threadlings, creating small mobile creatures that attack enemies you shoot. Broodweaver feels like an appropriate class name as you are conjuring up these little guys all the time, and I really like it. There is certainly more to Strand, different grenades, throwable objects you can create, but each class touches these effects differently, and from playing alongside each, and as each, the full picture is very well realized.
Like Stasis before it, Strand won’t be fully released until the end of the year; I’m definitely excited to see what gets added to Strand, but the subclass released with Lightfall feels full and interesting, with a strong identity that makes it a competitive choice amongst four already very good elements to choose from. That, and it didn’t break PvP, which is basically a miracle.
The Quality of Life
What makes Lightfall significant beyond other expansions in my eyes is how it revamped Destiny 2 as a whole. So many changes to the menus, the interface, and visuals that really shake up the routines long-time players have with the game. I’ve split this into the quality of life things I want to highlight, and the changes to the way things work, like difficulty, existing strikes, for down below.
The champion of Lightfall for me is Loadouts. Every previous player will get six loadouts right away, and ten are unlockable. This was the first thing I grinded, and having a loadout that features your armor, the mods in them, even the ornament choices, shaders, all the aesthetics, plus guns and exotics tailored with aspects and fragments of the subclass; it’s the whole package. I immediately made a loadout for each of the five subclasses, and it has made it a delight to jump between them, grind out playlists with easy change ups, and just run raids in different moods thanks to loadouts. Up until Lightfall’s release I’d keep the same loadout on for weeks because I just didn’t want to change everything around for the tenth time that day.
This couples a bit with the new mods system. It definitely felt weird at first, but it fits a new modular style that can simulate what mods were before their rework in Lightfall, but also allow for min-maxing certain abilities in a way you couldn’t before. Want more weapon damage for as long as possible with each multi-kill? That’s doable. Want to focus completely on grenades, either through using them or saving them for the right moment? Also doable. It makes it harder to jack-of-all trades a class, certainly not making it impossible, but I do look forward to them adding new mods in coming seasons.
The true impact of these reworked mods is offset a bit by the also-reworked artifact mod system. Before they were mods exclusive to the current season that were on some level required for higher level play, and now they are passive perks that unlock permanently until you reset your artifact and change them. For example, instead of slotting in the “Anti-Barrier Pulse Rifle” mod into your arms armor, when it’s unlocked on the artifact, all your pulse rifles will just be anti-barrier, no arms-mod required.
This certainly frees up a lot of space, but part of this season’s artifact lowers the cost of many subclass-specific mods, like all Void Mods, or all Grenade Mods, which means the impact of the new mod system is certainly going to fluctuate season to season. It also feels like a slightly-forceful push of the only viable subclasses for High Difficulty content, considering the same subclasses incorporated into the artifact are the ones you’re directly rewarded for using in all of this season’s end-game activities. There is more to say about this, but to summarize it succinctly, the artifact this season makes it pretty hard to run Stasis and Arc, and you really feel that when putting together loadouts and using mods geared for those subclasses. It inherently divides the subclasses you should be using because of this, and I don’t feel great about that.
Overall, the quality of life introduced by these features is genuinely game-changing. When you’re just doing regular playlist activities, it is a lot more fun for me because I am jumping around classes and really reaching into the depth of my massive arsenal I’ve accumulated in the last few years of Destiny, and that is an exceptional feeling.
Changes to Content
Now to touch on the more controversial aspects of the Lightfall expansion, which I’d say starts with a complete rework to difficulty across the whole game.
Previously, Destiny worked off your level, and generally if you grinded things out so you were over-leveled for activities you could play them at optimal-level. They’d still be hard, moreso because of modifiers like extra damage from certain enemies or elements, but they’d be manageable because you put in some ugly amount of time to give yourself an edge.
There were very specific activities that actually ignored your power level, instead setting you at a specific power below the activity, essentially leveling the playing field, making it the same difficulty for everyone who entered. Grandmaster Nightfalls, generally the hardest content in Destiny 2, set you 25 levels below the activity. Then there were Contest Mode Raids, which was the raid during the first 24 (now 48) hours of release, so everyone racing to be first was on the same difficulty curve, a slightly lower 20 level disadvantage. Then, with Witch Queen, we got Legendary Campaign Difficulty, threading a pretty magic needle with difficulty setting everyone at 10 levels below the activity, creating what I’d call a fair and fun challenge through both Witch Queen and now Lightfall.
Lightfall has now reworked all activities to use this same scaler for difficulty, where the Power Level of the activity always puts you at a disadvantage. Legend and Master Nightfalls, Master Raids and Dungeons, activities that did not impose this level disadvantage, now do.
A place where this has worked for me is Nightfalls, now feeling more in line with recent Seasonal Activities. This was discussed before the release of Lightfall, where those activities had imposed a 5 level disadvantage, making them challenging but only enough to make them feel a bit more special and engaging. Nightfalls now have that same feeling, and I like it a lot. I certainly have Grandmaster Nightfall experience, though I’ve gone on record saying the difficulty curve there specifically made them more slog than fun for me, but I enjoy them from time to time.
Where this hasn’t worked as well is in some of the more casual activities that feel really off after longer time is spent in them. I think it’s contributed to some accelerated fatigue with the game, and makes it a little more tiring to play. I don’t completely mean this in a negative way, but Destiny takes a lot more out of me through certain grinds because I feel a lot more pressure in those activities because of difficulty spikes.
Dares of Eternity, one of the optional weekly Pinnacle activities, went from a bonkers six-person activity on Legend difficulty to an absolute slaughter, teammates going down left and right. What used to be 15 minute runs have become 24-27 minute activities that don’t ever get easier because it’s just always that difficult now.
Bungie has already communicated a lot about this in their wonderful stream of information on a weekly basis since launch, and adjustments have already been made and will continue to be made. But currently, to grade the state of Lightfall in these first few weeks, that exhausting feeling has definitely left its impression.
This comes alongside the rework of two older strikes, essentially making them modern by using newer Cabal units, and improving them a lot. It gets muddy with the difficulty balance being adjusted here and there and into the future, but I am excited about playlist activity updates, and I am excited to see this approach return for the first time since The Taken King.
What the introduction to the ranks looks likeWhen you rank up, it does feel like a big event.The other major rework outside of difficulty is a sort of reworking of Triumphs. They have been effectively folded behind a new screen in your menu, The Journey tab, that is the home of Guardian Ranks. This is another one of those half step forwards, as these ranks are supposed to act as your introduction and effective post-game tutorial of what you’re actually supposed to do in Destiny.
The first six ranks, which are skipped by veteran players, act as a, “Hey, here is how you actually play Destiny 2,” tutorial for new players. It has them visit destinations, loot Lost Sectors, claim and complete bounties, and those parts of it I think are well made. It’s the latter half, ranks 7-11, which will apparently reset every season, that is where I feel a little confused.
Many of the tasks to advance these ranks are things like “Complete Nightfalls” or higher-difficulty activities, and some are even tied to the new accommodation system, but that’s already been reworked pretty heavily in the six weeks since release. It all just feels weird, and tedious, and so far hasn’t been a system I’ve felt the need to engage with. The only reward here is clout, which just doesn’t do it for me personally.
The Raid
The new raid, The Root of Nightmares, is an absolutely great time. It will forever live in the shadow of Vow of the Disciple, a top tier raid I think that felt like a cherry on top to Witch Queen, but RoN has its own strengths.
The Raid centers around Nezarec, who has been teased for a long time in Destiny 2 and especially over the last year of Seasons. It’s really cool to see a boss built up like this, and while the fight with Nezarec is kind of easy, considering the whole “Final God of Pain” thing in the name, it has multiple facets to it. Your role in the fight can certainly affect how fun it is for you, and as the player who gets to tank Nezarec’s attention like a true Raid Boss, it can be quite fun going head to head with Destiny’s Boogie Man.
The real treat here are the story told and the visuals to behold. Nezarec’s story ties very intricately into the mysteries of Lightfall. It calls back to The Witch Queen, continuing the mystery set up by Savathun at the end of that campaign, and really makes Nezarec out to be the Boogie Man lurking in every shadow of this universe. The destination itself is The Witness’s pyramid ship, which gets a big moment in the opening cutscene of Lightfall, and as you traverse it you spread Light and Dark throughout it. It has some amazing visuals, combining the Darkness Architecture established in Vow of the Disciple, and introducing a kind of madness to it that makes it feel like a Part 2 to that story.
The encounters are fun, but simple, using much more straightforward mechanics. It was nice to take a break from having to memorize 20+ symbols, but most of the mechanics in RoN are not the blow-your-hair back creativity of past encounters. It sits cleanly in the middle of my favorite raids in Destiny, but I’m excited to run it more and more, and I’ll say this, the weapons across the board are excellent. I don’t think I’ve liked this many raid weapons in a single release. It makes up for the more lacking arsenal of the rest of the expansion features, and makes the crafted weapon chase all the more sweeter for me.
Season of Defiance
The last thing to touch on here is Season of Defiance, which is included with the Standard Edition of Lightfall this time around and much like previous Expansion Seasons of Destiny, is shorter and serves more as a companion to the expansion.
The story has already played through by the time of this publishing (which is, in fairness, pretty late into the season) excluding a potential end of season set up, and it served its purpose as an introspective and somber story. I’ll revisit the season likely in a future and more regular column but it is a weaker expansion season. It does have a pretty killer exotic mission that also suffers a bit from recent difficulty changes. The base secret mission itself though is excellent, and felt like the cherry on top after I had wrapped up most of my post-Lightfall activities.
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Closing Thoughts:
I still feel frustrated with the state of the Destiny community. I don’t think I’ve quite found my catharsis with the just weird vitriol and distrust against a game that wears its heart more openly than most live games out there. I certainly have my qualms with Lightfall, but the state of internet toxicity has bled into it to exasperate the feeling. I’m glad to have taken a break, revisited activities and parts of Lightfall, and found it very, very fun.
Lightfall feels like a big stepping stone, and overall more a half-step forward rather than the full step it could have been–even still, Loadouts, Strand, Root of Nightmares–it all helps Destiny refresh some things it really needed to. There is still more change that needs to happen, and the wonkiness can certainly be felt here, but I’m still happy to log in every week and see what comes next.
This game was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 system with a retail copy of the title purchased by the reviewer.
Alex O’Neill is joined by Raccoon City Radio Cohost Andrew Taylor to discuss their thoughts and feelings on Resident Evil 4 Remake.
1:11:10 – Spoiler Conversation Begins
1:37:56 – Spoiler Conversation Ends (Still some boss video playing though!)
Audio Version:
MP3
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Reviewer’s Thoughts:
Andrew and I well discuss it in the video here, but what makes a 10 a 10? Especially for a game that, in its time, was well considered to be a 10. Well I had some issues with the original Resident Evil 4, coming to it a few years later with the Wii release, but this Remake reimagined the game into a non-stop thrill ride that I just absolutely adored. My experience playing on Hardcore for a first run through felt like a tense, unending battle for my life and survival, and I loved every second of it. Even when I was pushed against a wall and died multiple times on any given fight, the dynamic nature of the encounter design in RE4 kept every run a little different, equally as exciting, and super rewarding to finally beat.
The game certainly isn’t for the feint of heart, but every added fight, room, encounter, and mixup for returning players I found to be a treat, and even as a standalone sequel to 2019’s Resident Evil 2, this is one masterfully crafted successor.
This game was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 system with a retail copy of the title purchased by the reviewer.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is the latest release from NIS America that exists in that weird space of essentially being a “Part II” game. Playing Trails from Zero, which finally made its way West last September, is a must. Keep that in mind because some of the major points of this game hinge on having played the first, and so this review will necessarily touch on some of those plot points.
As the second half of the so-called “The Crossbell Arc” in the Trails series, Azure takes place two months after the ending of Zero, and picks up where the four core characters left off, in the The Special Support Section, or SSS. Lloyd, the charming and heroic leader, is closing up loose ends from the cult that tore through the city of Crossbell the previous year. His cohorts have been busy as well. Elie is tending to the political tensions, Randy is training up new recruits for those lost from the incident, and Tio is abroad with intent to return in a few weeks. Two returning characters, Noel and Wazy, join the SSS permanently in the meantime.
Much of the groundwork is laid out in all previous Trails titles, if you’ve played one, you tend to know how the game is going to play out. Each major chapter, your characters get support requests that act as the major quests in the game, with the freedom to explore Crossbell City and the surrounding area to complete those quests. Trails to Azure, like other Trails sequels, has your characters starting at level 50, with kitted out orbments and magic attacks all set up already, with only more and more to unlock as the game goes on. It furthers it as a “Part 2” style game, and thankfully saves a lot of the time spent on introducing mechanics and quests, how to turn in quests, and all of the systems from the first game by just introducing them all in the first couple hours.
I’ve always appreciated how Trails approaches its sequels; it doesn’t waste much time assuming you’re just skipping the first Crossbell game and jumping into this, because that would be insanity. Instead it warmly eases you back into the world of Crossbell, there are characters to check in with, old friends and faces to see, and in this case, new members of the party to introduce them. Above all else, Azure and Zero have made Crossbell one of the most interesting locations in this world.
The geo-political landscape of the continent is the heart of the story in Trails to Azure. Crossbell is stuck right between two huge countries, The Empire and The Republic, and they both are vying for territory in Crossbell, both on the surface, with political pressure and lobbying, but also in the seedy underbelly of Crossbell. The SSS is always acting in the best interests of the people of the city, with the first major event that happens in the story being a massive and tense trade conference between all the major countries of the continent, and takes place within Crossbell. It helps set the stage for all these political tensions, and these moments of interconnectivity and realism between the different locales in the Legend of Heroes world is maybe my favorite part about them.
On the surface, it may not seem interesting to invest yourself in the political climate of this world, but Trails always paints it from the perspective of its lead characters. Most of the SSS are from Crossbell, and of course have a vested stake in its politics. You see how the tension of the past has trickled down to normal citizens through the core characters, their relationships, and the people they’ve lost. When the new mayor declares independence for Crossbell, against the wishes of the Empire and the Republic, it sets the stage for the big drama of the story to happen. It feels like a big moment because it’s been built to, not only within this game, but in Trails from Zero before it.
Without getting too in the weeds with spoilers, I’ll say that there is definitely a tonal shift from the down-to-earth storytelling of moment to moment questing, and then the big, over the top, larger than life villains and plots that come into play later in the story. There isn’t a perfect transition here, with characters having reveals of being some bigger player in the world all along, or turning coat into a villain, which sometimes feels more in service of the plot than the characters themselves. What I loved most about Trails from Zero was its focus; it had the four main characters and it developed their relationships really well, both individually, and as a team. With two new members of the SSS, I was hoping Noel and Wazy would get the same treatment, but I don’t think they do. They have reveals and moments, but it feels more beholden to the extremely over the top antics of the villains and their secret plot. Wazy barely gets any time to actually develop, and it made both him and Noel feel more like side-characters that just happened to be party members rather than true new recruits to the team.
This is a bit of an issue with the Trails series as a whole, where magic and history play a huge role in the stories taking place across the continent, but it faces a good amount of friction with the much more grounded storytelling that happens before things hit the fan. Most of your time you’re just helping people fight monsters, or find lost family members, but now all of the sudden there are ancient magical runes throughout the citystate and super-monsters appearing all over the place. The two don’t bridge to one another as well as I’d like, and while I think the characters are also exasperated by this, I don’t think it lends itself to as strong an overall story.
Still, the human heart of it all is grounded by KeA, a character the SSS saved in Trails from Zero, and usually little kid characters you want/have to protect are hit or miss with me, but I think KeA is fantastic. She is super lovable, has great interactions with all the party members, and feels like a good emotional anchor for the storytelling, even if the villains are much less interesting.
Trails isn’t just its big story though, the little stories are just as critical to enjoying the experience. I went out of my way to play this like the old school RPG it is, and tried to talk to every ancillary character whenever I could. There are several “Hidden Requests” throughout the chapters of the game that make up the bulk of the optional content in Trails to Azure, and they’re some of the best parts of the story. Many of them just flesh out characters or parts of the world that are more in the periphery, but what I loved and appreciated was how doing these optional objectives would change or enhance the dialogue that happens along the main story. So much optional dialogue opens up by just talking to key characters after important events happen. This goes as far as an optional series of quests that helps the main characters solve the mystery before it is revealed as part of the main story, changing the dialogue in a pivotal cutscene. In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty small, but Trails to Azure respects the player’s investment; if you spend time learning all the secrets of Crossbell, you’re absolutely rewarded for it. This is a lot harder to do with big budget modern RPGs, and seeing what feels like a “small game” achieve this so well is precisely what goes to make the Trails games so special.
Another personal favorite “side story” so to speak are the Chest Messages. Both the Crossbell games and the three Trails games before it feature funny little messages hidden in treasure chests that you can read in empty chests after you’ve opened them. These range from terrible puns, to meta humor on the storytelling, to even a whole mini-story told through 61 separate chest messages you have to piece together. Moreover, toward the end of the game, they become a message from the fan-translation team, The Geofront, that helped make the original translations for these games and were brought on to ratify that translation for the official western release of Zero & Azure. It’s a wholesome thank you to the fans and to Falcom that made this happen, since these games have been missing English releases for over 10 years, and even if you don’t know the circumstances of how these games finally got translated, for the fans that do and have been waiting, it feels like a little love letter to them.
On the actual mechanical side of things, Trails to Azure introduces a new type of Quartz, which are the equippable items that let you cast magic, called Master Quartz. These are huge passive buffs that can help fill in the gaps in a character’s repertoire and also help them specialize a bit more when it comes to combat. Turns out, this is the first Trails game to introduce them, as Master Quartz are present in some of the future titles, and as a system it makes a huge difference in combat.
Having passive buffs, in addition to just way more flexibility to the combat, since you start at a pretty high level, led me to understanding and getting much more invested in combat. To me, this will always be the weakest part about Trails, considering there are just so many status effects, and often the challenge of combat is just crowd control before you get overwhelmed. I don’t love and will never love entering a normal mob combat with six enemies and they all go before my team and just wipe me before I even get a chance to attack, and that still happens in this game, but you’re also given a lot more tools to combat that.
Giving a character a passive evasion buff, giving them all armor and accessories with evasion buffs, and casting spells that make them more evasive, can turn an ally into an “evasion tank”, where they are pulling all the enemy attention away while also being basically untouchable. You can then spec other characters into spellcasting, allowing one member of the party to pull aggro, and the rest of the party to do damage from range. The different quartz and orbment options allow for something like this a lot earlier on in the game, but this is just one example of a build you can make, just a very effective one. There is a lot more experimentation available to you, but also because the game kind of opens up at the end, you’re free to power yourself up a ton before some of the final challenges, and I really appreciate this. Most Trails games lock you into the story at a point, but here you can get better gear at any point through the final dungeon, so if you’re struggling you have plenty of options available to you.
Closing Thoughts:
Trails to Azure is a great sendoff to the Crossbell arc. It’s wonderful to finally see these games get translated and officially brought to the West, as the missing middle piece to The Legend of Heroes: Trails series. The overarching “big bads” are not great, and there isn’t a seamless jump from the down-to-earth plot into the more anime, over the top finale, but it’s still a fun time because the characters provide the heart of it. If you’ve never jumped into the series before, I think Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure are a great, consumable, and much more approachable mini-arc to start the series with, and I don’t think you’ll leave disappointed.
This game was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 system with a review code provided by The Publisher.
Welcome back Guardians! It’s another month, and we are on the precipice for what may be Bungie’s biggest expansion to Destiny 2 ever, at least on a mechanical and story level. I’ve had a lot of great conversations about the state of Destiny 2 with Mike Burgess on our D2 Podcast HELM to Tower, which if you’re curious you can see here (and on podcast services). The feeling is, if you want to get in on Destiny before this 10-year story arc comes to its full conclusion next year, there is no better time than with Lightfall.
For this rendition of my still-to-be-named Column, I want to talk about some of the things you may want to do before Lightfall launches, starting with the more casual activities and progressing to the more hardcore or resource-heavy preparation. I also want to talk about what you should be doing on Day 1 of Lightfall, where you’ll want to start and hopefully help with some priorities to chase. So let’s get to it!
Getting Ready For LightfallThe day this goes up we should be just under a week away from the servers of Destiny 2 going offline for the 24-hour downtime before Lightfall. That’s Monday, Feb. 27th at 10am Pacific Time. There is certainly a ton of over-preparing you can do, if you’d like, so like I mentioned before I’ll start with some of the more general things you may want to do, and then escalate up to things that newer players need not worry over.
Missing Weapons
So “Weapon Crafting” got it’s big introduction when Witch Queen came out, and while some hate the system, some (me) love it, and I want to universally shout-out at least one gun from each of the last four seasons, that may not be easily accessible anymore after Lightfall launches and these seasonal weapons are sunset. Bungie has updated D2 so you can buy one piece of each gun’s pattern every day at respective vendors, as opposed to one a week, which will require you run some of the activities from corresponding seasons. But with the time left, if you’re reading this when it comes out, you still have time to buy out at least one crafting pattern for each season, so here are four guns I recommend getting. You don’t have to craft them now, but you can get the patterns and worry about that later by just dismantling five red border rolls!
Here are the four I’d consider must haves:
Sweet Sorrow is from Season of the Risen, and it’s one of my all time favorite add-clearers in the game.Season of the Haunted has a few goodies, but Calus Mini-Tool is considered one of the best add-clearing weapons in the game. It blends perfectly with Solar 3.0Arguably there aren’t many great weapons from Season of the Plunder, but I really do love Blood Feud. It’s a beast with the updated Stasis fragments and is so fun to overflow the magazine of.While everyone else is going to tell you to get the IKELOS SMG from Season of the Seraph, I wouldn’t be a proud member of the Glaive Gang if I didn’t vouch for this Glaive. Get it!Keep in mind, gaining the ability to “buy” these red borders and earn progress toward each pattern will require you to play or have played each respective season, but if you’re trying to get stuff before Lightfall, these are the weapons I’d consider worth it.
Bounty Prep
One of the most quintessential “Destiny 2 Prepper” activities is going to destinations, grabbing and completing bounties from them, and then hoarding them in your quest tab to redeem after the expansion releases. This is absolutely not necessary, in fact, I fettered on putting it this high on the list so as to avoid giving any newer player the fear of having to do tedious bullshit before an expansion… but, here is my thought on it: it’s tradition!
I know it’s kind of silly, and all bounty prep will get you is a bunch of experience points when you redeem them after you’re able to level up again, giving you just a bit of a head start on unlocking Artifact Mod s or items in the season pass. It’s non-essential, absolutely, but I know plenty of newer players that have probably never even done a weekly bounty before. To me, this is the same as wrapping the Christmas presents and putting them under the tree at night. It gives me both dopamine and the warm fuzzies of having something to unwrap upon the New Expansion.
Weekly bounties, which take maybe 10-20 minutes to complete on each destination, reward thousands and thousands of experience points each, and I say if you’ve never done it before, head over to Europa, The Cosmodrome, and The Dreaming City and grab the weekly bounties to save from those locations. The more seasoned players will likely grab 60 full bounties for each of their three characters, which I don’t even do since I really only play Warlock, but it’s low effort, and if you’re like me and just want to play some Destiny to ward off the lack of sleep the anticipation is giving you, I think it’s a totally fine thing to spend your time doing.
If you’re looking for specifics, here are the exact bounties you want to keep (not including Clan bounties):
- Two weekly bounties from The Cosmodrome
- Four weekly bounties from the Moon, two from Eris Morn, and two from The Lectern.
- There are seven potential weekly bounties you can get from the Dreaming City, but unfortunately you’ll only be able to get two at this point to save. If you’ve been doing Ascendent Challenges each week for the last five weeks, you can have a total of six Ascendent Challenge weekly bounties, and one additional one for The Blind Well.
- There are four potential weekly bounties you can get from Europa, but like the Dreaming City, you’ll only have access to two if you hadn’t gotten some before this week.
- This leaves you with 52 quest slots reasonably available, assuming you have no major quests left to complete. I’d suggest filling these slots with seven daily bounties from Zavala, The Gunsmith, Shax, and The Drifter, making sure to avoid repeatable bounties and only grab daily bounties (these are worth more XP). Don’t get more than seven each because redeeming more can cause problems next season. The remaining 24 bounty slots you can fill with daily bounties from Devrim on the EDZ, Shaw Han in The Cosmodrome, Failsafe on Nessus, or Fynch in Savathun’s Throne World.
- The website destinyrecipes.com has dedicated itself to helping you pick out the best bounties and also give you a check up on readiness if you’re a more hardcore player.
I’ll go over when exactly you’ll want to redeem these bounties in the Lightfall Day 1 Gameplan section, but if you want to see all the bounties I’ve prepared, see my accompanying video for this column below!
The Materials Grind
This is where mileage is going to vary quite a bit. I think if you’re pretty new to Destiny, the toughest thing to keep up with is the amount of materials there are and how/where to get them. Luckily, a ton of materials are just getting deleted come Lightfall, streamlining the systems we have now to hopefully be much clearer. Here is what you’ll want to prepare yourself with:
- Enhancement cores – these sometimes drop from deleting legendary weapons, and you need them to masterwork weapons. The only way to consistently get these is to play, and save them up.
- Enhancement prisms – these are needed to masterwork armor, and I definitely don’t see these lasting many more seasons. You can get them from Nightfalls, and are a grind to get.
- Ascendent Shards – probably the most valuable material in Destiny, lovingly called Golf Balls. Only Master content will reward these, and you’re capped at 10. If you’re grinding Master and Grandmaster Nightfalls still, save as many of these as you can for topping off your armor and exotics.
- Ascendent Alloy – after Lightfall, this will be the only crafting material for weapons outside of just standard Glimmer and Resonant/Harmonic Alloy. I’ve been using LFG (looking for group) via the Destiny 2 Companion App to find teams to run Master Wellspring, which are pretty quick and reward these regularly. Hopefully there will be new ways to get them in Lightfall. The only other material worth mentioning are Upgrade Modules, but luckily you’ll get plenty of those just from playing Lightfall itself, so let’s cover that next!
Lightfall Day 1 GameplanBoth the Lightfall expansion and its accompanying season, Season of Defiance, will go live at 10am PT on Feb. 28th, and you’ll be able to watch both myself and Mike Burgess, along with our Resident D2 Titan Main Ren team up to play the entire campaign in an all-day stream right when it goes live on Irrational Passions’ official Twitch Channel!
But as for what you need to know, there are some things I want to go over since a lot of folks may have missed the Legendary Campaign with Witch Queen.
Play The Legendary Campaign
You have the choice of playing standard campaign and Legendary, and I highly encourage everyone to play on Legendary, yes even the brand new or more casual players. You can jump down to the easier mode anytime, but let me line up the rewards you’ll get for beating the campaign on Legendary:
- A Full set of blue gear that is at the “Raid Ready” power level. This is not gear you keep, but can immediately infuse to get your character ready for endgame as soon as you finish the campaign. This was a new feature of Witch Queen, and it is fantastic. Right from the jump you’ll be able to feel pretty caught up with everything.
- An Exotic of Your Choice. When Witch Queen came out, two exotic armor pieces were added for each character class, one stasis and one not, and with Lightfall, it seems like the same will be true, only one will be Strand, and one will not be. Regardless of what you choose, we’ve been told that the armor will have high stats, and of course immediately unlock for that character.
- More of the new Strand subclass unlocked for your chosen character. I assume this means you’ll have both aspects and several fragments ready to go when you beat the campaign on Legendary, as opposed to potentially half that amount if you beat the campaign on standard difficulty. We still don’t really know what this means exactly, but consider it more icing on the cake.
- Double rewards every mission. With the way campaigns work post-Witch Queen, each mission has two to three “major encounters” that, upon completion, will drop a chest with high power gear to help you level as you play the campaign. On Legendary, there are two chests for every character, and they will have more loot and more upgrade modules, so you’ll be able to infuse and move on to the next challenge. On regular difficulty, you may need to take breaks to grind out some more gear to keep your level up.
Some visual aids for how Legendary rewards are given out.Some visual aids for how Legendary rewards are given out.Obviously with all these rewards, Bungie wants you to play on Legendary, but like I said, you’ll be able to break off and come back if you’re having trouble.
Legendary difficulty scales up with the number of fireteam members, so if you’re running with a group you’re getting the tankiest enemies and the biggest challenge. The campaign will always set you 10 Power Level below every mission, which seems to be how the Neomuna destination patrol difficulty will be set as well. If you’re nervous about it, try patrolling around Neomuna a bit to see how the challenge level treats you.
The only real moments to watch out for are those major encounters, where every member of the fireteam only has one revive token, just like Raids, and if someone is down for longer than 40 seconds, the whole team wipes. It’s certainly a challenge, but it feels fair, and you won’t have to worry about Champions.
Start Season of Defiance
Outside of the Legendary campaign, you want to make sure you start Season of Defiance, or Season 20, as soon as possible. Why? Because once you do, you’ll receive the Artifact for that Season, allowing you to pour your hard-saved experience points into it and unlock as many artifact perks and extra power levels as you can while working your way through the campaign.
If it’s anything like Season of the Risen, which launched alongside Witch Queen, after the first mission of Lightfall you should be able to play the first mission of Defiance. Wherever the vendor is in the H.E.L.M. (it sounds like it will be The War Table) you’ll most likely receive the artifact from them, and at that point it will be safe to cash in your bounties. Remember to leave two or three quest slots open so you’ll be able to start both the campaign and seasonal story. Also remember to redeem your bounties at a destination, not in orbit, so you get the maximum amount of XP.
Keep in mind this really only applies if you’re saving a ton of bounties, but you should try and start the season and get the artifact to receive those passive gains as you play the campaign.
Finish Unlocking the Strand Subclass
The only other thing I know I’ll be focusing on for that first big day is unlocking all the fragments for Strand. We’re still not 100% sure on how this will be given out to players, only that it should be a lot smoother than how Stasis was given out. Whatever new activities and the sort that unlock after Lightfall, we’ll all have to figure out and explore together, but getting Strand, whether it be through bounty-style quests or just purchasing those unlocks, you should make it a priority so you don’t have to worry about it later.
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That’s really all you need to know going into Lightfall. We’re just over a week away, and I am so excited. Stay tuned to this week’s upcoming H.E.L.M. to Tower for our final thoughts going into the expansion, come hangout with us on Twitch when Lightfall goes live, and most of all, have fun out there Guardian.
See you next month for my full Lightfall review after the raid launches on March 10th!
Welcome fellow Guardians and non-Guardians alike, to my brand new monthly Destiny 2 column! I hope that this will serve as a month-to-month discussion on the goings-on of Destiny 2, and I hope to be able to produce a sort of “companion video” to each of these pieces to incorporate some other thoughts and submitted thoughts and feedback. I’m also going to work to make this pretty friendly to my fellow in-the-weeds Destiny 2 players and those that check in annually for the campaigns and expansions. Both are definitely valid player experiences, and both tend to run into different issues with the game that all still frequently come up in the D2 community conversations on a month to month basis. And hey, maybe if you’re one of those folks that is just curious about what’s going on in Destiny, this will draw you into some of the seasonal updates to the game, which are some of my favorite moments actually playing Destiny.
As a primer for my history with the game, I jumped in at Destiny: The Taken King, after playing the original beta and being turned off by what I felt was going to be a lack of content at launch. I’ve played every expansion since, but when D2: Beyond Light hit, which added the first new subclass in the game since Taken King, and also hit right near the front of this here Global Pandemic situation, it also was my gateway to playing through each seasonal story. It was a cocktail of the pandemic, Beyond Light, and also the release of the PS5 version of the game, which had much faster menus, loadtimes, and finally runs at 60hz on consoles, that got me addicted to Destiny but also invested in it for the RPG and MMO mechanics throughout.
Since playing much more frequently from December 2020 onward, I’ve collected seals, masterworked full sets of armor and weapons, grinded out materials, played master and grandmaster content, and I think truly gained respect for Destiny not just for the breadth of its content, but also for the depth of it. A lot of newer and more casual players don’t get to see a lot of that depth, so forgive me if I indulge a little too much talking about and incorporating it here.
I thought a good starting point, here just a month and a half away from the new Lightfall expansion, would be to talk about five great and exciting things happening in the game, and also the five biggest problems myself and the D2 community generally has with Destiny at the moment. We’ll start with the good, and then get to the bad!
The GoodWitch Queen Expansion As a Whole – I’m sure many folks that might be reading this have heard that the most recent D2 expansion was excellent. If you haven’t, well I’m happy to report it’s one of the best Destiny campaigns to date! There is a whole separate conversation to have about Sunsetting and the removal of D2’s first two campaigns, The Red War & Forsaken, but The Witch Queen felt like a return to that form in a lot of ways. Not only did it provide a ton of new weapons, armor, one of the best raids in the game, Vow of the Disciple, and a great campaign, it also began the reworks of D2’s original subclasses, and set the stage for Lightfall.
Tied up in all this was a new approach to difficulty, an aspect of the game that gets brought up a lot in frustration in the D2 community. The “Legendary Campaign” difficulty, reworked in the Witch Queen, left out a divisive part of D2’s endgame content, “Champions”, and instead set the player at 10 levels below all missions no matter what, giving a consistent and scaling challenge with the number of fireteam members. It was a great change, and both myself, Mike Burgess, and fellow D2 Guardian Ren actually streamed our full three-person playthrough of The Witch Queen Legendary when it launched last year!
With the addition of Hive Guardians, a new enemy type of Hive that actually use the same supers and abilities as you, the tension gets pushed to max, all without having to worry about limitations on your loadout because of Champions, which are something I’ll actually be talking about a little bit later.
It’s a great experience, maybe still not a great “entry-point” per sé, but now knowing that Shadowkeep will not be sunset, and will always serve as the starting point for entering players, there is at least a good escalation of quality were you to jump in now.
Weapon Crafting – Having the option to fully customize and max out a weapon is genuinely a great addition to Destiny. It feels sometimes odd in-game, but being able to work through a raid and craft your favorite weapon from it first after some weekly run with friends is a great loop to perfecting some of your favorite weapons in the game. With the huge step up to seasonal weapons just across the board, especially in the last year of D2, and having all of them be craftable, it’s easy to pick out favorites. I don’t know if I’ve loved an auto-rifle in D2 as much as I do Sweet Sorrow from Season of the Risen, but having that level 92 crafted roll of my design is an sign of a favorite for me now in D2.
It’s definitely a grind to get many of these, and casual players I can see just never grinding to craft something, just because it’s such a time investment. The system as it is has seen many refinements since its launch in Witch Queen, and still feels a lot like a “1.2” version of itself. The community wants easier ways to get materials and to level up crafted weapons, but in the same breath, having a “masterworked” crafted weapon with the new “enhanced perks”, typically just extending the effectiveness of some of your tools in combat, feels great. For long-term players it is really nice knowing there is a guaranteed path to your own personal “god-roll” or perfect perk set of a weapon.
Difficulty Changes from Season of the Seraph –So difficulty, as it always seems to be in games, is a controversial topic in the Destiny community. Many players feel a lot of the game’s activities are too easy, and much of the endgame, essentially hard mode activities, aren’t worth the reward. I definitely agree in some cases, and as what feels like a test, Bungie implemented some new difficulty modifiers in the general activity added in this most recent season. These “Heist Battlegrounds” have a modifier that always sets the player five levels below the enemy combatants, and while from the outside in that may seem pretty brutal, it turns into a pretty great balance in execution.
A lot of the general content in the game, whether they be strikes or some of the previous seasonal activities, are pretty easy to absolutely dominate with the ability-heavy gameplay D2 features right now. This five-level disadvantage goes a long way to keep you on your toes and make the moment to moment combat much more fun without going overboard. I’m excited to see more experimentation in this area, and this is a very recent change, to give some perspective.
Typically these modes feature special enemies called Champions, and the ramping difficulties just kind of have more Champions, but the approach was totally different here, and I think it bodes well for future updates to our current playlists. For reference, this is very similar to the modifier the Witch Queen campaign used, and it works here too.
Sheer Quantity of Loot –I think this is absolutely the thing any and all members of the community agree on right now, and that is the loot is good. Obviously in a loot-heavy game that kind of thing is important, and usually when it’s working its best, you don’t even notice it except for here or there, but with the changes made this year in Destiny, some of the rewards here are the huge draw to certain activities.
One of those big changes this year to weapons was crafting, certainly, but also the fact that we are getting either one raid or one dungeon each season of the year, we are getting both seasonal pools of great weapons to collect, but also endgame level gear to chase. Dungeons are a highlight, since you can run them as many times as you want and always get new drops. There have been some great additions to the weapons pool too, like new linear fusion rifles that fire in a burst, the addition of glaives (which I love), and of course the crafting aspect to raid weapons.
There are some wild weapons, from exotics to just common seasonal drops, and they’ve been much more memorable to me as a long time player of the game, tying new perks and traits to the seasons they come from. I just think above all else, this is a place D2 is in just a really great place.
New Subclass Reworks/Buildcrafting – Saving the best for last, the reworked subclasses have been an absolute lifesurge to Destiny 2 over the last year. It may be a lot harder to take in for newer players, but seeing the original three subclasses get the “subclass 3.0” treatment, where powers and abilities become much more customizable, has been a treat. The system launched with Stasis, so making and tooling certain builds around Stasis was already proven, and it’s telling how well all those systems work in general with how well they adapted to the new and improved Light subclasses.
This has led to Buildcrafting becoming a massive part of Destiny, and honestly it may be my favorite part of it. With new weapon types and new pieces of exotic armor, you can really elevate an “Arc Warlock” into the lord of thunder fantasy that you hear described from Destiny players. The right tuning and weapon choices can really lead to total domination of a battlefield, and when the three classes work in conjunction it really feels like magic. I’ve played a lot of Destiny 2, so big shake ups to the abilities, how quickly you can use them, and more over the potential of what they can do has deepened the game in a way that really connects with you.
This all on top of knowing that Lightfall is adding another new Subclass with Strand, I think there is a direct line of excitement for that from everyone playing and watching Destiny 2 right now.
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The BadDestiny is Still Impenetrable – I could write this whole article about this and there would certainly still be more to say, but I think it’s a good place to start with issues, and know that from this point forward, I will try and cover more specific and in-depth issues.
This is the obvious. Destiny has a really terrible onboarding system. Previous expansions, including the campaign that the original 2017 version of Destiny 2 launched with, “The Red War” have been removed from the game. That means you can’t actually jump into the D2 and start from the beginning, you’re kind of skipping the first two acts of a many-part story, and so the opening mission to the game is a re-imagined version of the Destiny 1 opening mission. It then drops you out into the world with really no good foundational explanation on what to do, what order to do things, how any of the global systems really work, or how to get yourself ready for any shape of endgame.
In a game I love, it’s something I can say with confidence is abysmal. Destiny 2 is complicated, just like any other MMO, and the onboarding is I’d say a lot worse than the competition. There is a new system coming in the year of Lightfall called “Guardian Ranks”, that seems to be some kind of quest-log equivalent that can maybe guide you along the path through parts of the game, but it may not be enough.
It’s a hard problem to solve, and right now the best answer anyone has come up with is, “find a friend who is really into Destiny and have them teach you,” and honestly, that is probably what I’d recommend too. Hopefully these posts may serve as my input.
The PvP Elephant in the Room –For a lot of the long-term D2 players PvP is the filler activity that’s supposed to be fun, and while I don’t necessarily count myself amongst the many, many PvP players and content creators in D2, I’d like to at least report on their feelings, because I’d be remiss not to. PvP is an integral pillar of Destiny, I honestly believe it, but it always feels like a commitment that is only half there. Any player wishing to do all the seasonal challenges, or weekly rewards, will have to play some amount of PvP a season. So if we have to engage with it anyway, we should talk about it.
One big aspect of frustration is the meta of winning PvP right now, which is more ability spam and passive play. There are the changes to Airborn gunplay, which used to be a fun almost Halo-like aspect of the gameplay, that has all but been removed because of a system rework to get ahead of the new Strand subclass. There could have been better communication about why the changes were happening, and it feels like a community-tested system, but hopefully positive changes are on the way.
The big thing to me are the lack of any maps. Both Gambit and Crucible need many, many more maps. Gambit only has four maps and you need to reset your Gambit rank twice a season to complete all challenges, and I’ll tell you, you’re gonna see a lot of those maps. The majority of the PvP maps are from Destiny 1 or D2 vanilla, with only one new option added since Witch Queen (along with one reprised map). The new map is called Disjunction, set in the swamps of Savathun’s throne world, and its large size exacerbates some of the mechanical problems of PvP. I really like the map, but it has turned most of the community against it. I think introducing new places for firefights should be absolute priority #1 for both modes.
I’ll also just mention briefly, there are still a lot of matchmaking issues, Skill Based Matching Making, poor connections, and server stability/crashes on top of everything mentioned, but I do feel this will be addressed, one by one.
The Playlist Grinds – On top of the PvP grind having all the player-based problems listed above, there is also just the overall fatigue of the playlist grinds in general. While I feel like I covered the four-map issue with Gambit, there are also no real rewards for me worth chasing in that mode. It sees one new weapon a season, and while the Strike and PvP playlists have gotten some hit weapons, along with “endgame” modes for each, Gambit has seen neither of these things.
Even still, there are maybe two or so rewards across the three playlists worth chasing, and it is not enough. Strikes face the problem of being beyond easy to veteran players and just incomprehensible to new players, since some Strikes are so old they feature the now dead Hunter Vanguard Cayde-6. They need some sort of refresh to feel modern, beyond just adding the battlegrounds from last year’s seasonal content, which further makes Strikes incomprehensible by the way.
All these playlists need more love, and the only “high-difficulty” option between the three are Grandmaster Nightfalls for Strikes, which leads us to the next big issue…
Champions/Champion Mods – PREFACE: So on Wednesday the 18th of last week Bungie put out a huge article outlining how it’s changing a lot of these issues in the game come Lightfall, so take this all as a reflection of the game in its current state.
I’m going to try a quick, comprehensive history on what these enemies are, for reference. Starting with the Shadowkeep expansion, we get these seasonal items called “artifacts” that all feature a five-by-five grid of season-limited mods for your armor slots that are mandatory for all endgame activities. At least, some of them, typically the first row and easiest to unlock. Why? To be effective in combat against special enemies called champions. There are three types, with a random two per-enemy race in the game. Unstoppable champions, which require Unstoppable Mods, Overload champions that require Overload Mods, and Barrier champions that, well, you get the point.
These mods will shift season to season, like Unstoppable mods requiring you to use a hand cannon one season, and then pulse rifles the next season. While activities like Raids and Master Dungeons aren’t going to suddenly rotate the enemy race, different Strikes will serve as the end-game difficulty Nightfalls each season.
It may seem like a good idea at first to shift the meta to different weapon families each season, but instead creates a frustrating limitation for what you can take with you into endgame activities. The freedom and modular nature of the endgame build crafting goes out the window in many cases when your weapons and armor are beholden to champion mods. It often also limits which subclasses you can take with you.
It bleeds into a different problem which is that Grandmaster Nightfalls and Master Raids, the two major activities that feature Champions, just aren’t really that enjoyable. In addition to being arbitrarily harder by pumping up enemy health or, in the case of Grandmaster Nightfalls, setting you 25 levels below the enemies, most of the ‘added challenge’ is just ‘more champions’. Oh this room had two Overload champions before, now it has eight, and they’re harder to stun, have more health, and if you don’t have an SMG you can kiss this completion goodbye.
The adept weapons you can receive from these activities can sometimes feel like great rewards and sometimes it just doesn’t feel worth it at all. The strike weapons in particular do not receive the love that seasonal and raid loot pools do, and it makes the chase just hard to be worth it. That, and a comparatively too-tall difficulty to something like Legendary Campaign make GM Nightfalls lose their appeal after a few seasons.
The Seasonal Model/Mechanics – All of what I talked about with GMs and Master Raids is always exacerbated by this very topic. I don’t think this specific aspect of the game gets to me as much more long-term players, but for anyone playing the game for a few years this will eventually become a sticking point.
Every season you can pretty much always expect a seasonal artifact with the new “meta-defining” mods in the fifth column, things like “Weakened Clear” from the current season, which allow grenade launchers to apply a stackable weaken on just about any boss or enemy. While fun for this season, it isn’t always as much of a hit as Weakened Clear, and it’s accompanied by some seasonal vendor, that you’ll get a three-by-eight grid of upgrades with, and they’ll all be time-gated by the first six to eight weeks of seasonal story updates. On the story front, it’s slow paced, with it turning out to be more of a diceroll each season on what the missions that will equate to story missions will look like. Regardless, you’ll be running at least one three to six man seasonal activity every time, and it’ll usually amount to the equivalent of a strike with champions.
Every season features the same artifact layoutIt might feel very complex from the outside in, or even petty, since it can amount to a lot of overall content season to season, especially compared to other games with a similar model. I think the core of the problem is how similar it all feels from season to season. You can almost predict what some of the mods and activities will look like. The outlier and shining star of the last year of Destiny has been the commitment to one new dungeon or one new raid each season, which have been generally excellent and fun-to-grind activities, just with the caveat of questionable or unexciting rewards in some cases.
The seasons, while generally a vehicle for a story that I am personally very invested in, need a mixup in some way, just to get away from the two straight years of a formula. The formula works, but has become too much of a slog for anyone playing the game longer than a couple of seasons.
This has definitely been the #1 feeling in the community, and one I ultimately agree with, though I haven’t found myself in such a negative place about it. It’s something that has been commented on and we’ll see some changes to at some point in the coming year, and I am excited to see a mixup to the formula as we close in on the the end of this “Saga” of Destiny.
___________So that’s it, those are the big burning topics, from my perspective and from what I have been able to gather from the D2 Community! I tried to range them from easiest to understand to maybe the hardest to understand, and keep it general pretty critical, as opposed to overly negative. There is another whole conversation to have about the negativity in the community and how that tends to bring great parts of the game down, but I want to stay away from that until we see how the reaction to Lightfall goes, and there are plenty of far more interesting things to talk about that lean into the parts of Destiny that I absolutely love.
I promise future pieces won’t be near as long as this one, but thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next month Guardians!
Review Discussions are interview-style discussions hoping to discuss specific aspects of the game in question that may or may not be included in the written review. In some cases, the discussion will be the only critical conversation we put out for a game, in others it may complement a review.
Jarrett & Alex sit down to get into the successes and performance issues of Shovel Knight Dig, the rouge-like spin off the the beloved 2014 release with the heart of the Genesis in it.
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Video Version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukCjLkESoB4&ab_channel=IrrationalPassionsAlex’s Thoughts:
So I will say, I’ve gotten to play more Shovel Knight Dig, a lot more since chatting with Jarrett, and the performance issues do tend to creep up in more unfortunate places than I’d like. It put just. a slight damper on my feelings toward the end, but ending still very positively.
Shovel Knight Dig is one of those “I didn’t know I wanted it”, combing a lot of what I thought was interesting about a game like Downwell, but adding and mixing its own style, taking way more of those touchstone Shovel Knight ideas and smartly incorporated them into a totally different kind of game.
Once I had dug deeper into the secrets, that’s where I really fell in love. The optional challenges, unlocks, abilities, and many secret rooms are all worth stumbling into, even if there is some brutal moments, frustration, or performance issues. It’s a completely addicting rogue like, but one that doesn’t feel the need to overstay itself, and has just enough to dig through and unlock.
Review Discussions are interview-style discussions hoping to discuss specific aspects of the game in question that may or may not be included in the written review. In some cases, the discussion will be the only critical conversation we put out for a game, in others it may complement a review.
**As stated at the beginning, there are some audio issues with this video, and we do apologize. Also, there will be spoilers later on in the conversation.
Review Discussions are interview-style discussions hoping to discuss specific aspects of the game in question that may or may not be included in the written review. In some cases, the discussion will be the only critical conversation we put out for a game, in others it may complement a review.
God of War Ragnarök is the highly anticipated sequel to critically acclaimed God of War (2018) and the legacy of Sony Santa Monica is on full display. Alex sits down with Kinda Funny’s own Barrett Courtney to discuss the pros, cons, and eventually spoilers of Ragnarök’s biggest and best moments.
Timestamps:
02:19 – Intro
35:15 – Mild or early game spoiler discussions
54:40 – Full Spoilers ahead
Alex’s Thoughts:
It’s a big bummer that our discussion got plagued by audio issues, but I do think most of what I wanted to say I get across. Mostly. One thing we didn’t cover too much was combat, which I really loved in this game. There is a specific ability in both weapons’ skill trees for Kratos, one that lets you burn a combo-like meter to power up the elements of you weapons. It’s kind of a non-obvious, certainly optional skill that I just loved using, and as I got deeper into the game, I found a full armor set that specifically leaned into using that skill.
Much of the customization and depth of the combat felt like that; like I had options and if I really liked a specific skillset, I could completely build myself around it, with different shields, different runic attacks all contributing to a streamlined depth for what was laid out before. I found everything so much easier to understand and build around, just a really rich freedom.
This was the carrot on top for a story that really justified me coming around on God of War as a whole, which is a feat let me tell you. I know since we recorded our conversation there has been a lot of dialogue around Ragnarök being chatty, and too slow, but I think it really doesn’t step too far away from God of War 2018. There is a clear intention for the slow burn and slow approach, playing Ragnarök is like watching two full seasons of an HBO show. It needs to be slow sometimes and it absolutely electrifies the moments that speed things up. It may not work for everyone, but the nuance Ragnarök brought to the structure worked for me completely.
Follow Barrett on Twitter – https://twitter.com/sadboybarrett
Follow Alex on Twitter – http://twitter.com/alfighter27
Played by the reviewer predominantly in performance mode on a PlayStation 5 Digital Console with a copy purchased by the reviewer.
It's time! FromSoftware's hotly anticipated, massively open, and hugely explorative Elden Ring is upon us. After spending some time with it, Alex finishing it twice, Scott about halfway through, we dive into our thoughts on Elden Ring.
Its a new year! And so with it a new season of Patch Notes! Alex and Nabeshin sit down to discuss various topics across the video games space, their favorite games, or just whatever they want to talk about at the time.
Alex and Quin sit down to discuss the newest game from DrinkBox, Nobody Saves the World!
As per tradition, Alex and Nabeshin have sat down to discuss their favorite games from the very weird year of 2021, reflect on the changing of the podcast, end of IPP, and the very very weird year it was, even after 2020.
Alex got to sit and chat with his good buddy Nabeshin through the ups and downs of the series, where Metroid Other M is today in 2021, and also how Metroid Dread stacks up (spoilers: it's the best one).
Hello all, I am happy to announce a series of streams we’ll be doing throughout the month of October to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, a charity to help fight against and research all blood-based cancers. For unfamiliar friends or newcomers, or just folks interested in donating and getting involved, we lost…
Nabeshin is back, and we missed having Tony here, but it’s a fun, relaxed episode 500, talking about games, looking back, and contemplating this Steam Handheld.
It’s here! The next two chapters of Final Fantasy VII Remake are here, and even if they’re just DLC expansion that comes along with the PS5 upgrade of FF7R, it’s absolutely still worth talking about. Join myself, Alex O’Neill, and Professor RPG Himself Scott White to give our review and thoughts on the $19.99 DLC…
Nabeshin returns and the gang has a blast all together again just chatting about some video games!
We are on the precipice of E3 and possibly a new Switch so of course we’re gonna talk about Destiny, some PC-exclusive games, make abstract bets on E3 that probably won’t make any sense, and then move on with our lives. Download: Apple Podcasts — Google Play — RSS Feed — MP3 Direct Download Audio…