Why Do I Not Enjoy Destiny 2?

I don’t understand this. Destiny 2 isn’t a bad game. At least, it’s not the awful game it started out as. Destiny 2 had a very rocky start initially, however, it slowly managed to pull itself up. The game improved further when Bungie managed to get full control of the game. Right now though, Destiny 2 is in the middle of a massive story-based conflict. There’s massive evil dark pyramids that are threatening to destroy various places, and everyone’s preparing for war.

Really, between the lore, the gun play, the setting and the fact it’s free to play (now at least), I should absolutely love Destiny 2. It has things in common with other games I enjoy, and has plenty of content for me to slowly work though (for now at least). But for some reason, I really can’t bring myself to enjoy Destiny 2!

Why is this?

It’s definitely not the gun play.

When it comes to mindlessly shooting enemies, Destiny 2 actually ranks pretty high up my list. Sure, it’s nowhere near Warframe levels of genocide, but it’s not bad. Then again, when it comes to shooting down hordes, both Left 4 Dead AND (weirdly) Mann VS Machine in Team Fortress 2 rank higher. Destiny 2’s hordes act more like Borderlands’ hordes. They just magically walk out of black spaces, and there’s far fewer of them.

Overall though? The shooting is fun. Most of the weapon types feel good and hit hard. If you play smart, you’ll be fun and won’t die. The difficulty can spike sometimes but I think it just depends on what spawns and how prepared you are.

It’s not the lore.

Convoluted lore actually doesn’t bother me at all. While I was looking up stuff for my last article about Destiny 2, I actually found myself reading a lot of lore. After all, I needed to know who Eris Morn was. Destiny 2 has a lot of interesting lore, the problem is that it’s a little tricky to find. That doesn’t bother me though. I can look up past events myself.

That being said though, Destiny 2’s lore is pretty dark and grim. There’s no real happy endings, well, anywhere. At all. I just finished the quest that involved getting all of the main characters to evacuate from the evil pyramid-ridden planets, but everyone just… decided to stay there and fight to the death. Well, don’t say I didn’t try to help. Overall though, things are just pretty shitty for pretty much everyone, and death is definitely a thing that can happen quite easily and very suddenly.

Again though, dark or gritty plots don’t bother me.

Maybe it’s the platforming?

I’ll be honest, I don’t enjoy the platforming in Destiny 2. I don’t enjoy platforming in general. Which seems pretty weird, considering how Warframe has quite a lot of platforming and, to a point, so have other games I’ve played. But Destiny is the sort of platformer that kills you when you fuck up a jump. So you have to wait 5 seconds to respawn. Or, if you’re in a raid or something, wait even longer, or wait for someone to revive you.

I mean, there’s no real consequence do dying, unless you’re the last Guardian alive. But it’s incredibly annoying, especially when every class jumps differently, and you have much longer waits between retrying jumps.

Maybe I’m just not ready to climb a new mountain of grind?

At the end of the day, Destiny 2 is another looter shooter, and it has its own grind. After having just finished grinding in other games, I’m not in the mood to grind in Destiny 2. Or, to put it another way, I’m not interested in learning the ins and outs of another somewhat complicated game. There’s not enough desire for me to put more effort into Destiny 2.

However, I won’t say it’s as grindy as Warframe. Destiny 2 has a grind, but it’s a very different grind, much more similar to a traditional MMO. You’re constantly swapping out old gear for better and newer gear. I’ve honestly never really enjoyed this, and I think Destiny 2 makes it worse by the fact that your character is kinda… bland and basic without any armour on. Especially since there’s no real skill trees or anything like that, like normal MMOs.

I just can’t get into whatever the hell my character is. I have more connection with the default Minecraft Steve skin than I do any Destiny 2 Guardian.

Whatever it is, it’s stopping me from enjoying Destiny 2

I want to enjoy Destiny 2. Everyone else seems to enjoy it. But I just can’t. Whenever I finish playing a session of Destiny 2, I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything. I don’t feel good about having played it. In fact, I often feel BAD for having spent time playing Destiny 2. And that feeling doesn’t seem to go away, no matter what I do.

Maybe this game just isn’t for me.