Posted by With Destiny 2’s first DLC released about two month ago, most of its secrets, and content for that matter, has been discovered. And, much like with the first year of Destiny DLC-wise, it’s pretty disappointing.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE STORY FOLLOW
The story of “Curse of Osiris” involves your Guardian traveling to Mercury to investigate Vex activity after the banished Warlock Osiris’s seemingly dead Ghost, Sagira, is discovered. What follows is a journey through the Infinite Forest, a massive Vex simulation as to how the Vex can conquer the universe, and the other planets to find information about the Infinite Forest and how to kill Panoptes, the Vex mind that runs the Infinite Forest. As expected, you succeed and destroy Panoptes. The campaign is rather short, but enjoyable, and predictable. Once Panoptes is revealed as the antagonistic force that needs to be killed, you need to find his lair. While trying to find the exact location of Panopte’s lair, you need to deal with the standard, predictable, and kinda cliché obstacles you would expect. Panoptes himself looks absolutely amazing and really brings back memories of Oryx and his awesome design, as well as traumatic flashbacks of the hellish nightmare that was King’s Fall since you just remembered Oryx. The battle with Panoptes really feels epic and is a truly cinematic experience, except it’s pitifully easy. All you do is kill enemies, wait for Osiris to stun Panoptes, do some platforming, then shoot the weak point for massive damage. Repeat a second time, then chase Panoptes as he moves into a new area. Do the same basic tasks and he dies. Throughout the whole battle, I died once, purely because I shot a rocket at an enemy and blew myself up. After killing Panoptes, you’re treated to a cutscene where Osiris appears to your Guardian and Ikora Rey, who was also one of his students, and basically says, “Thanks for the help but I’m going back into the Infinite Forest because reasons.” It’s not very gratifying, but it does set up for future plot convenience.
END OF SPOILERS
While the level design is very solid and the missions are enjoyable, it just feels like Bungie was trying to stretch a potentially three mission long plot into a larger DLC with a little less than ten missions. Further adding to this feeling is traversing the Infinite Forest itself. The Infinite Forest forces you to trek through a randomly generated pathway full of enemies. In all honesty, I have no clue if the Infinite Forest is randomly generated. Traversing it is so tedious and boring that it all blurs together and, though it may not visually be the same, it sure feels like it. The worst part: the Infinite Forest is present in every Mercury mission, adventure, and strike. The Infinite Forest just pads the runtime of everything and feels so unnecessary.
The adventures on Mercury are actually pretty fun and you get a good incentive to do them repeatedly. Every day, you can do a level 300 Heroic version of one of the three adventures with randomized modifiers. This Heroic adventure gives you guaranteed legendary loot, but it isn’t easy. Enemies are stronger and there are more of them, so much to the point that it’s extremely frustrating solo, especially when there are five yellow bar knights with arc shields shooting at you in firing squad formation, all with Hive boomers, while the current buff is to melee and you need to move constantly to regen health. It’s fun, but it can be brutally annoying.
The strikes are even worse. Instead of creating brand new, interesting strikes, Bungie recycles two campaign missions. Yes, you have to go through two campaign missions in the exact same areas and mechanics, for the most part since there are a few minor changes, just with more enemies. There are two strikes for sure, though I’m really not sure. I’ve played the Garden World strike many, many times, but I only played the other strike once. I was confused that I somehow thought my game glitched, because I had never seen nor heard about the other strike. This uncertainty with strikes stems from the problem that you can’t select strikes individually from each planet anymore, though it wouldn’t make much sense with the new map layout. Another new addition with strikes is the Heroic Strikes Playlist. This playlist adds in all the strikes in the game, just at a higher-level difficulty. That’s it. There aren’t modifiers, special loot, scoring, bounties, or anything, though there is a weekly milestone for completing a pitiful three Heroic Strikes.
Another major problem with the DLC is Mercury itself. Mercury does have an area outside of the Infinite Forest (you only actually enter the Infinite Forest for story missions, adventures, and strikes), but that area is absolutely tiny. Besides it being a small area with only a handful of enemies, there are actually quite a few dynamic events, such as Interceptors appearing, enemies fighting over a treasure chest, or the transportation of a Cabal prisoner. These little events help to make up for the fact that there is only one real public event. While fun, it can get boring and repetitive rather quickly. All in all, Mercury feels pretty boring and small.
The Raid is better, with a really interesting boss, both appearance-wise and mechanically. The encounters are all interesting and offer their own challenges. Fortunately or unfortunately, the new Raid feels much easier and simpler than the standard Leviathan Raid, but it still requires quite a bit of communication. The Prestige difficulty for the Leviathan Raid has also been raised, effectively locking players that didn’t buy the DLC out of the content because of the increase in necessary power level.
But, there is one area that “Curs of Osiris” really excels in: exotics. Exotic weapons and armor feel much more powerful than most of the weapons in the base game. The weapons and armor are all worth using, except the Jade Rabbit scout rifle.
Another really cool addition are the Vex themed forge weapons. These are eleven different weapons that are acquired by completing a lost prophecy tablet. If you want to complete a lost prophecy, you need to grind out enough of the necessary materials. You need ten green rarity, or one blue rarity, of however many resources are needed. For example, if a prophecy needs two of the blue radiolarian cultures, you need to collect twenty of the green ones. This little grind can be quite annoying, but it is worth it, especially because you can get an interesting exotic ghost shell if you do them all.
“Curse of Osiris” is honestly a disappointment. I had moderate hope for it, but it fails in so many crucial areas. Between repetition and lacking content, there’s little to do and what there is to do is frustrating. I honestly wouldn’t recommend this DLC, but if you don’t have it, you’re content locked from so many things. You basically need this DLC if you want to keep playing D2, even though it really isn’t worth it. But, D1 started out very similar to this. The base game was mediocre and the first two DLCs were lacking, but it consistently improved. D2 has just as much, if not more, potential than its predecessor. But until then, “Curse of Osiris” gets a solid 4/10.
Broad Scope Entertainment 