izigame.me

"I hate Destiny 2, it's my favorite game."
Steam shows almost 2300 hours, but I migrated to PC from PS4 back in Beyond Light. My Historical Heatmap says 5241 hours across the game's lifespan. This game sits second highest in hours spent playing for me, right behind a decade+ of crippling WoW addiction while growing up. All that being said, I cannot recommend this game.
For starters, please, PLEASE do not hit "Add all DLC to cart" on the Steam page. There's a lot of redundancies in the content there. Do some research, ask a D2 Vet that's been playing for a while, SOMETHING. Have someone help you figure out what to buy if you decide to get into the game. Just know that, unless you get it on sale down the road, this game is going to set you back a couple hundred dollars in content alone. God help you if you get in and see cosmetics you like and have the means to afford them, lol.
The game may be marked as "Free to Play", but it's more of a "Free to Try". You NEED the extra DLCs (all of them, imo.) to fully enjoy this game. Missing even the Forsaken DLC, which has been gutted via sunsetting, prevents you from getting into a raid and a dungeon, which can hold you back from joining friends/clanmates. We struggle with this in my clan all the time when we get new people, and it sucks every time.
The Seasonal model, while supposedly changing in The Final Shape (we'll see about that; "Episodes" just kinda sound like fewer, longer "Seasons" so far), is bland and played out at this point. The slow drip of (lackluster) story content week after week hasn't been enough to really keep my attention for the past 3-4 seasons now. I've gotten to the point now where I play a little bit on Season release week, then let the game sit and rack up content over the next 5-7 weeks, only to burn through the entire Seasonal quest line in a single sitting once it's all available.
Other than a feeling of obligation to my friend group/clan, which has me logging in to get weekly Dungeon runs done or an occasional raid (less of the latter recently, unfortunately, with the majority of our group burning out), I just don't feel that draw or desire to play the game as heavily anymore, and I don't foresee The Final Shape changing that.
When the game is good, it can be REALLY GOOD. When the game is bad? It's the absolute WORST. We're in that downswing period right now, with a massive content drought until June 2024 (Current Season of the Wish started Nov 28, 2023). It's so unbelievably frustrating that Bungie has such an amazing cast of characters, universe, and lore within this series, but constantly squanders all of it with horrible business practices and confusing/lazy game design decisions.
TL;DR: If you've avoided it this long, continue doing so. If you have a group of friends that you can get in with to teach you the ropes and reliably experience all the excellent end-game content, go for it, but be ready to shell out the $$$.