Posted by As I expressed in my last post, Destiny 2 has not been the most successful this year, and especially during the previous season. I firmly believe that Season of the Witch could be the improvement that the game has been needing.
The story, while obviously nowhere near finished at the time of my writing this article since this is still the first week of the new season, looks like it will actually advance the plot of the game and not just exist as a boring filler season. The seasonal story involves turning Eris Morn into a Hive god so that she can grow powerful enough to defeat Xivu Arath, and if we succeed in defeating Xivu Arath, Savathûn will tell us how to enter the Traveler so that we can defeat the Witness in the Final Shape DLC. Overall, I like the direction of the story. Things seem to actually be happening, and I hope that they continue to happen as the season’s story unfolds. The last thing I, and the rest of the community for that matter, want is a pointless filler side story that consist of six-eight weeks of nothing happening. Fingers crossed that the narrative keeps picking up and stays strong.
Turning to the seasonal content, we have Savathûn’s Spire and the Altars of Summoning. I really enjoy both activities, for the most part. The Spire activity involves completing activities to ascend a spire on Savathûn’s Throne World. It’s a three player activity and it’s divided into two objective based encounters followed by a boss fight. I enjoy the Spire activity because it has a surprising amount of variety. Even if the encounter rooms stay the same each time, there are a handful of different encounters than can spawn, so runs tend to be different every time. The Spire is also a really cool activity because it has secrets hidden in it, so you can explore the Spire and uncover new loot with friends. The Altars of Summoning is also a three player activity, and it consists of fighting through a gauntlet of different boss encounters. Just as with the Spire, there are quite a few Altars encounters, so this activity has a lot of replayability. In addition, you use offering consumables to select the tier of difficulty that you want: Feeble (easy tier 1 encounters), Robust (medium tier 2 encounters), and Powerful (hard tier 3 encounters). While the ability to select your desired difficulty is nice and adds to the replayability, it can be problematic. After having played a few Altars activities, the random players I’m matched with always choose Powerful encounters. As a result, we don’t always successfully complete the encounters because we don’t work as a team and quickly get overrun and killed by enemies. Tier 3 encounters require teamwork and solid gear, so even one player making mistakes can ruin the encounter for everyone. Unfortunately, this is a frequent problem. Overall, the Altars activity really reminds me of Prison of Elders from Destiny mixed with Court of Oryx. I do enjoy it, but I also recognize that it has some flaws, though that mostly comes down to players making poor choices. It reminds of the problems with trying to complete higher tier Deep Dives last season, but now the barrier to increasing the difficulty is effectively gone; instead of all three players needing to choose to make the encounters harder like in Deep Dives, one player can decide to make the Altars encounter harder for everyone.
Another new addition this season is the exotic mission rotator. Now, players can run through Presage, Vox Obscura, and Operation SERAPH Shield to obtain, craft, and level up the exotic weapons Dead Man’s Tale, Dead Messenger, and Revision Zero respectively. Truth be told, I could take or leave this addition. I suppose it’s ultimately a good addition because it allows new players to acquire weapons that were no longer currently attainable, and updating them for veteran players isn’t much of an issue after all.
Finally, I would like to comment on Ex Diris, the new exotics, and the new Strand aspects. Ex Diris is effectively a Hive Boomer, and it’s a lot of fun. While it’s design doesn’t perfectly resemble a Boomer, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get an ornament in a few seasons that fixes that. Nevertheless, it’s a very fun exotic. As for armor, Warlocks get the exotic gloves Briarbinds. They’re a solid addition to the void Warlock playstyle, and if you manage picking up and sending out your void soul properly, it can have constant uptime. I think that it’s a solid exotic that adds some nice utility without being too strong. Titans get the exotic gloves Pyrogale Gauntlets, which turns Burning Maul into a single use super while also buffing the Consecration aspect. I haven’t had an opportunity to get and try out these new titan gloves, but they sound fairly fun and useful. Hunters get the exotic gloves Mothkeeper’s Wraps, which allow Hunters to use their grenades to create a bunch of Lucent Moths of their own to either give teammates overshields or blow up enemies. I again haven’t had an opportunity to use them yet, but they sound pretty good. Turning to Strand aspects, Warlocks received the new Weavewalk ability that effectively gives them a better version of invisibility. Weavewalk looks very potent and like it will have plenty of uses in endgame content, though it is currently disabled due to its behavior in PvP, which leaves me baffled as to why Bungie shipped it before checking if it broke PvP. Titan’s received the new Banner of War aspect that allows them to support themselves and their team through healing and damage buffs. While the damage buffs are restricted to melees and melee weapons, Banner of War is still incredibly strong, and fun. Hunters received Whirling Maelstrom, which allows them to shoot tangles and turn them into aggressive beyblades. It looks like a fun enough aspect, though nowhere near as powerful as Weavewalk or Banner of War.
In conclusion, I think that Season of the Witch is off to a good start. Only time will tell if it lives up to my, and the community’s, expectations. I look forward to next week’s release of Crota’s End as the reprised raid for this season, so expect a review on it next time.
Broad Scope Entertainment 