Destiny 2 is entering its third season, which promises to be the most exciting yet. Season of Opulence offers a new raid, Trials co-op mode and plenty more. Our Destiny expert reviews what’s coming up in The Witch Queen DLC

The “destiny 2: the witch queen deluxe edition” is a physical copy of the game that includes the Season Pass, which gives players access to all future DLCs.

DLC Review - Destiny 2: The Witch Queen

I’ve been a Destiny player since the game’s first release in 2014. The Taken King and Forsaken have provided fantastic highs in a flawed but extremely entertaining few years. There was a response to every action: we may have had incredible highs, but we’ve also experienced the horrifying lows of the basic games and Shadowkeep. Despite this, I continued returning. Destiny’s basic gameplay, warts and all, is still among the greatest in the genre of first-person shooters. 

Now we have the Queen of the Witches and Savathun’s arrival. This DLC has been a long time coming. I had to give it a go because the DLC and its extra seasonal content were released a few months ago. Will they learn from their previous errors and live up to Destiny’s dreams and full potential? To be honest, they’ve nearly gotten to that stage, since they’ve dragged me away from my Final Fantasy XIV addiction for at least a few weeks, but Destiny still has a long way to go.

Queen of the Witches 

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The presence of Savathun may be felt throughout the expansion.

Destiny 2 Queen of the Witches picks up from where The Lost Seasons left off. Savathun’s ritual performed by the Awoken Queen Mara Sov has been completed, and Savathun has been freed from the worm god, but she got away, not before tricking the entire vanguard and stealing the light. Now, a new faction of the hive have risen, with Savathun using the light to power up her own army. As Guardians, we must stop whatever Savathun is planning whilst figuring out how she did steal the light in the first place. 

It’s often said that Destiny has fantastic in-depth lore and worldbuilding, at the cost of being lacking on the actual story side. This is not the case in Queen of the Witches, as we are finally introduced to Savathun, who has long been teased since the early days of the franchise. Queen of the Witches’s story is genuinely good, with a strong central mystery and an antagonist who manages to be intimidating yet understandable when we delve into her past and true motivations. There are some story revelations here that are just wonderfully well done, most of them which I was not expecting. 

Queen of the Witches’s biggest trick isn’t just the one the Queen of the Witches herself pulls, but rather with a brand new enemy type. As previously mentioned, the hive have been upgraded with the light. Certain enemy types have become light bearers, using the light against you. It’s a brilliant move that adds one of the most interesting enemy types we’ve seen. The first time I encountered a light bearer was one of the best moments I have ever had in any Destiny game or expansion. Take down a knight that is wielding light magic, and then he resurrects. After a second fight we crush his ghost. 

The campaign also has several difficulty levels for the first time. Standard is, well, a very standard affair. It’s not very difficult, which is excellent for those who just want to get through the tale and get on with their lives. This is why I advise you to play the game on Legendary difficulty. It isn’t a very difficult final task, but it will put your abilities and tactics to the test by putting you in unique situations. 

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Although Mars has returned, he has yet to leave the content vault…

It’s a huge step forward in making Destiny’s gameplay loop far more diverse and fascinating. The campaign is well planned, with enormous levels that may take up to an hour to finish. It seems like we were suddenly thrown into a dungeon, which is a huge improvement over previous Destiny 2 missions. There are challenging puzzles, platforming, and boss encounters that showcase this game’s greatest features. This isn’t just amazing Destiny DLC; it’s also one of the greatest shooter campaigns I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s a pity the rest of the game doesn’t live up to this level of excellence. 

New features have been added

Where Queen of the Witches fails is in some of its additional activities. Wellspring is yet another 6-player horde mode that just does not have enough new to make it really stand out and instead just becomes a chore to play. And, for some reason, the higher level activity is locked off from matchmaking… just why? Then we have this really annoying mechanic that has you standing on a cart to push it from one side of the map to another. Whilst this wouldn’t be a terrible mechanic for one activity, it extends out from Wellspring into public events, battlegrounds and the post-raid weekly mission. 

Destiny, on the other hand, has a few extremely ambitious additions. First and foremost, we get a close look into weapon creation. Expect nothing like the depths of Dead Rising, Dead Space, or even Warframe when it comes to creating. This essentially simply enables you to customize perks and create your ideal weapon. This is best shown by the glaive, a new weapon type that is half melee, part ranged, and part shield. I’ve had a lot of fun with this intriguing and highly powerful tool. Its long-term influence on the Destiny sandbox, though, remains to be seen. In reality, its immediate influence has been little.

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Bungie still has it with some stunning visuals.

Beyond Light introduced us to our first darkness subclass in Stasis, an ice based power that can freeze. It was also the most customisable with plenty of grenades and fragments that really made Destiny‘s big step towards becoming an actual RPG. Whilst Queen of the Witches doesn’t introduce a new subclass, we do get the Void upgraded to this level. Void 3.0 includes fragments, multiple grenade types and aspects that really allow you to really build your guardian. 

In the guise of Savathuns Throne World, we now have a new patrol zone. It’s one of the most gorgeous places we’ve seen since Dreaming City, and it’s full of mysteries and intriguing ideas. On higher levels, the missing sectors are a lot of fun to explore, and I had a great time doing so. My only criticism is that the opponent density in this area is quite low, with just tiny pockets of adversaries appearing at a time. 

The Lost Seasons 

As is tradition with the seasonal structure, the launch of a new expansion also means the start of a new season. Whilst this review is mostly focused on the main Queen of the Witches expansion, it’s still worth talking about, since this is the season to go alongside it. The Lost Seasons tells the own story of Zavalla and the Cabal leader Caital working together to stop the Lucid Brood. It was an incredibly solid storyline that developed the Crow and Lord Saladin whilst also solidifying Caital as a mainstay character and one of the most fascinating allies that we’ve had. I am very looking at seeing how the story unfolds over the coming year.

This season’s programming isn’t horrible and may be entertaining, but it’s a touch lackluster. It’s essentially a re-imagining of the Battlegrounds from Season of the Chosen. Except for the map set at the Cosmodrome and another utterly unoriginal payload goal, the activity is good and may be enjoyable to play. Then there’s the same dreadful combat pass, which is a pointless chore to get through since it’s stuffed with meaningless trash while the bulk of the really intriguing content is sitting in the shop. With the price of Destiny 2 increasing year after year, it’s a little absurd that we’re not receiving more in return. 

The seasonal framework isn’t necessarily bad, and we’ve had a few surprises. However, something has to alter in the future since it is becoming outdated. Especially for players that return season after season, who have long grinds performing the same material that is frequently regarded too simple to get to the nice stuff that we truly want to play. Every season’s apex grind is still horrible, and the activities might need some improvement.

The State of Destiny 2 is a sequel to the popular game The State of Destiny

I also want to go into some detail of The State of Destiny 2 is a sequel to the popular game The State of Destiny because, despite this phenomenal expansion the game has issues that need to be addressed. First up is the incredibly controversial content vault. Part of The Queen of the Witches‘s release is the vaulting of one half of Forsaken, that is often regarded of some of the best content Destiny has delivered (until now). What has gone exactly? Well, the entire Forsaken campaign, making the new player experience even worse without a solid jumping in point. It’ll be like watching Endgame without watching the previous MCU movies. Sure, it will be entertaining, but not a lot of it will make much sense. 

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The royal world of Savathun is lovely, yet it’s terribly empty.

The whole Tangled Shores patrol zone has vanished, as have two of the three strikes that were stationed there. While Bungie has provided explanations that may or may not be genuine, we must believe that we have not been scammed out of all of this. The two strikes that do reference Cayde will be much more perplexing now. The content vault, as a whole, ruins the new game experience for new and returning players who have missed out on a lot of the earlier material and will have to rely on other sources to figure out what’s going on. Raids, full patrol zones, strikes, dungeons, and exotic missions have all been removed. Destiny 2 has a number of flaws. 

Moving on from vaulting, the absence of rotation in weekly dungeons has been a source of frustration for me. As a result, the Shattered Throne, Prophecy, and Pit of Heresy provide no real growth, while Grasp of Avarice (by far the worst dungeon) remains the sole option to climb up the light level each week. It’s a tedious and pointless grind that only serves to demonstrate Destiny at its worst. Why is Bungie restricting the value of the still-playable stuff in the game? Especially if it’s stuff that’s been praised? 

Then there are the PvP activities, which have always been a problem for Destiny. Crucible is currently mostly dormant, with the only significant additions being maps that were previously deleted. Matchmaking in Trials of Osiris is still a mess, with no consideration for party numbers, meaning that if you don’t have a full fireteam, you’re nearly certain to lose.

Was Queen of the Witches worth it?

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Battlegrounds 2.0 is just a welcome addition.

So despite my rantings about the state of Destiny for long time fans, was Queen of the Witches worth it? Very much so. The beefy and epic campaign provided some of the best content we have seen from Bungie since Halo: Reach, with multiple huge missions, a compelling story that has some pay-offs and massive implications going forward and that same core gameplay experience that we know and love. 

Despite being a regular Destiny player, I am also a cynic. The last couple of years haven’t been kind to the game (and the franchise as a whole) and I didn’t go into this expansion with the greatest of expectations. However, Queen of the Witches has quickly become my favourite Destiny experience to date and a huge step in the right direction. We ended up getting an amazing and rather beefy campaign that shows Bungie at their very best, but there’s still a long way to go with everything else in the game. 

Destiny 2: Queen of the Witches is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Stadia. 

On a computer, I reviewed it.

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Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is the latest DLC for Destiny 2. It was released on September 4th, 2018 and has been met with mixed reviews. Reference: destiny 2 witch queen release date.

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