izigame.me

God I wish there was a neutral options when it comes to reviewing a game because on one hand, The Final Shape is one of the better piece of content that Bungie has released in a while but on the other, there are still so many problem with the game that I feel quite frankly, impossible to recommend the dlc.
The story is, In my opinion , mediocre. There's almost ZERO stake even though 'the fate of the universe is at risk' and the NPCs feel disconnected despite they follow us the entire campaign. It feels like Bungie's writing team of doing just enough to make a passable storyboard for what essentially is the most important moment is Destiny's history. That and the fact that any context one would need to appreciate the story is no longer in the game and require looking up online really make the story confusing and incomprehensible for a lot of player. A bit of a rant here, Zavala's character arc is a mess (not to discredit Keith David, he did a great job despite having massive shoes to fill after Lance passed away(R.I.P.)). It's a classic story of "The serious character gets furious and reckless making the normally reckless ones to get him to be himself again" but with the short length of the campaign plus the minimal context that was provided (as it was always the case when it comes to Bungie) made it more of a filler episode that an actual development and nothing of value was gained from that.For the others, Bungie probably realized that they can't write a new character after Lightfall and decided to just keep the current cast plus the resurrected Cayde which was the safe choice but they decided to go even safer and expand nothing from them (aside from the aforementioned mess of Zavala's storyline And the unnecessary death of his Ghost). The only saving grace to me - as it's always is - is the world building. The inside of the Traveler being based on our memories and experiences make total sense and they did a great job building it, from the green overgrown D1 tower to the slowly corrupted environments as you progress to the absolutely broken constructs near the end. This makes for a very great experience throughout the campaign, though at the sacrifice of broken immersion once we're back to the map to farm and at the cost of not having a free open roam map for the players that didn't by the expansion. This could also be partly because of the sour taste Lightfall put inside my mouth but TFS story overall really shows the laziness of the writing team and instead just drive the game's story into that of a cheap drama instead, there's no stake, there's no meaningful conflict, and there's no more mystery to discover, it's just go through is straight line of a map and kill the big bad guy at the end. The raid is cool though :D.
The new subclass though show some sort of customization actually doesn't really give much freedom in buildcrafting, it's the same level as any new or 3.0 subclasses but not the level of customization I had hoped for. For the gameplay, it is still the same old loop players are used plus the awful changes from bounties to pathfinder now requiring you to grind even more and you can't even change the quest unless you finish them. They also changed Xur to make you now have to grind even more on top of that. The buff UI "fixes" actually somehow made it even more confusing now that you need to look at 3 locations to look for buffs (And the left side buffs are still sometimes missing), why the fuck is using the UI a skill-gap?. The new Episodes system has not shown any improvement over the Season (aside from less story for Bungo to write). More content got timegated than before including seasonal weapons, armors and even the exotic catalyst. At least the new fireteam light level balancing makes it easier for players who play the game less able to do most content.
The new/free player experience is now worse than ever. There was a time (between Shadowkeep and before TWQ) that Destiny was an actual F2P game. Now there's more popups that tell you to go buy stuff than actual content you can play. And for new players, they won't even know what to do unless they have a friend to go with or spend a few hours NOT playing the game and instead watch videos on youtube on what the should do. The tutorials are a mess of a system, most players will never know some mechanics because either the prompt telling you how only appears for a little bit and/or you're too busy catching up to whatever the fuck you're looking at. My old friends are refusing to play this game and I can't get new people to join because they just get confused and quit 30 minutes in.
I could go on and on but at the end of the day, the game and its players are now victims to corporate greed. With Sony's acquisition comes less time spent in making actual content and more time in making microtransactions. Bungie in a sense also changed their direction to less risky and innovative in their gamemaking. The launch date was very rocky and while most people were defending Bungie, I feel like they should've been better at it. According to steamdb.info, TFS launch date saw around the same (if not less) amount of players, the least Bungie could have done is prepare for a launch date as big as Lightfall but it went even worse than that (I get that steamdb.info only covers the pc players but it's reflective on the entire player count as a whole). After 10 years of providing live service to a game, this level of unpreparedness is almost unacceptable, really show either they have no hope for this DLC which most definitely isn't the case or they have their priorities elsewhere.
Bottom line is, this DLC is good only in the sense that it's a barely satisfactory conclusion to a decade of Destiny. With it is still many existing and even new problems that Bungie brought to the game. It really does not justify the price tag, especially when you take into what it offers (1 new raid, 1 new strike, 1 so-so campaign and some guns). So, here's my take on whether you should buy this.
If you're either a casual or new player that is looking for some content to play: Don't buy this, either buy older DLCs or just other games altogether.
If you really want to see the story, the subclass or just driven mad by FOMO: get the base version when it's on sale (I got it 25% off and I still feel ripped off).
If you're a hardcore Destiny player, or just a Bungie glazer: Chances are you already have the DLC or are already set on buying it and there's no telling you out of it.
Destiny is one of those games that I have a lot memories of. And it's sad seeing it being driven into the state that it is. All of my friends that I started this journey with have lost all hope for the game and I can't help but agree with them. I'm curious of how Bungie will take this game forward and I wish them and their players all the best. Really looking to the day I can enjoy this game again