izigame.me

After 4 years bungie has patched and sown and fixed enough parts that the game is arguably somewhat playable now. There is a semi functional modding system for armour, and they're on their way to patching a semi functional class system with stasis and void 3.0.
So why is this review negative? Because at this point the bad outweighs the good. The "semi playable state" of the game came at the expense of removing about half the game's content. Including weapons/destinations/planets/pvp maps/gambit maps/strikes.
This includes content people had paid and worked for. The entire red war from the base game is removed and unplayable, (Worth 60$ on release), Curse of Osiris has been removed (17$), and so has Warmind (20$), and so has forsaken (40$). All this content people paid for has been removed from the game by bungie with no compensation or anything of the sort.
As if that wasn't enough all weapons from these expansions have also been "sunset" having their light level locked rendering them essentially useless in any sort of meaningful content. A lot of these weapons people grinded for days if not weeks.
One of my personal favourites was the breakneck, the gambit pinnacle weapon that required hundreds of matches to get, has been essentially castrated and rendered unusable anywhere outside the tutorial. Ok. Why? The weapon was already underpowered, it never defined the meta or broke anything, but for some reason bungie saw fit to functionally remove it alongside hundreds of other weapons that people worked their asses off to get.
A lot of people have said good things about witch queen, and I'm sure its a decent expansion, but I'm sorry, Shadowkeep was a scam, Beyond Light was a 20$ DLC that they charged 40$ for, and now they're again charging 40$ for witch queen, 10$ for the season (I.e. 10$ extra for any sort of content after the 5 hour campaign) plus 20$ for the other two seasons of the year, plus extra for dungeons that used to be packaged with the season, ontop of the microtransactions, ontop of the anniversary dlc that locked the most famous weapon from destiny 1's history behind a paywall (Gjallarhorn). What kind of company monetizes their own anniversary so cynically lmao
By the way, the cheapest cosmetic costs 600 silver, and the cheapest silver package you can buy is 500 for 5$, this is definitely a company that cares for its customers.

And this is just getting into the meta issues of the game. Because the game itself still has several more. Mechanics like "champions" that are unkillable unless you use the proper seasonal mods force you into using weapons that match this season's artifact mods even if you don't like using them.
Matchgame that renders huge chunks of weapons unusable unless they have the right element because they can't break the matched shields
Armour affinity that serves no purpose other than to make you grind 4 seperate versions of each piece (ignoring stats) just to be able to use mods, or spend about 500 cores to upgrade one set to level 10 letting you swap for free (which should be default anyway.)
There's a very solid core gameplay loop because the gunplay is good and the abilities are fun (You know, when they're not on 10 minute long cooldowns, I am not joking, the ultimates are literally on 10 minute long cooldowns), but everything surrounding it is just an unmitigated disaster of unbelievable proportions.
Especially the buildcraft system. To make builds you upgrade your armour to give it more capacity and slot mods into it that grant you various abilities and combat benefits, sounds good so far, the problem?
The only way to get those mods is from a vendor called ada that brings a random set of 4 every day. Yep. The entire buildcraft system is gated behind RNG and there are multiple build defining mods that haven't shown up in months. Have fun and remember to pray for her to bring the specific mod you need for your build.
So, tl;dr, Yeah the game is certainly *playable*, but there's no content to actually play. Any content you pay for is being removed 2 expansions from now. (Because apparently removing paid content wasn't a one time thing, its gonna be an annual tradition), while the core gameplay loop is solid, everything surrounding it isn't and the company that makes the game has open contempt for anyone that gives them money. Spend money at your own risk.

also locking exotics behind legendary lost sectors is truly