Posted by Destiny 2‘s Season of the Wish has been out for about a week, and this week I want to give my first impressions on what the season brings and its trajectory.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
The seasonal story follows us finding Riven’s eggs so that her ghost will grant a wish that allows us to enter the Traveler and chase after the Witness. I think the trajectory of the story will be fine, and at least it will tie in nicely with the release of The Final Shape. I don’t have a whole lot to say about the story because we only have the first week of content, but the start is solid enough.
SPOILERS END
As for the seasonal activities, the two new activities are Riven’s Lair and The Coil. Riven’s Lair consists of traversing through locations in the Dreaming City while completing two encounters: an objective based one and a boss encounter. Riven’s Lair is fine. It’s fairly short and the rewards reflect that. The Coil, however, is a lot more interesting. The Coil is essentially four runs of Riven’s Lair strung together, but the difficulty of each level increases, as do the rewards. You can also buy upgrades with a currency unique to the mode. Coil runs take a while, but they’re very rewarding. I really enjoy The Coil because it’s a cool roguelike mode that feels rewarding to actually run, and the difficulty feels fair. It doesn’t feel as obnoxiously hard as Altars of Summoning and Deep Dives could be in the last few seasons. I think some of this relief is due to a shift in what factors limit the encounters. Altars of Summoning and Deep Dives were limited by timers. If the timer ran out, you failed. As a result, it encouraged more reckless playstyles because you can’t sit back in cover and attack enemies or bosses slowly. With the Coil, the limiting difficulty is in the form of revive tokens. Your team has a set amount of lives, and while you can gain more, there is still a hard failure condition. As a result, you can take The Coil as slow or as fast as you want.
The new weapons this season tend to be the standard fare, so I won’t spend too long talking about them. I look forward to collecting the new seasonal weapons, the reprised weapons from Season of the Undying, some of the world drop weapons (like a new arc rocket launcher than can roll slideshot), and playlist weapons (like the reprised Breakneck; looks like I actually have a reason to touch Gambit now). But amongst all these weapons, the standout is the newly added Dragon’s Breath exotic rocket launcher. Dragon’s Breath returns from Destiny with some substantial changes, and it’s a ton of fun. It’s a really solid fire and forget weapon that can dish out some serious supplemental damage. I enjoy using it a lot, and it may even become a mainstay in some of my loadouts.
Season of the Wish also saw the release of the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon, and this is easily one of the best dungeons released in the game. The dungeon is a comfortable length that nicely balances encounters with traversal sections. It doesn’t suffer from dungeons like Ghosts of the Deep where you spend 15-20 minutes just traversing the environment. As for the encounters themselves, they’re a nice challenge. The dungeon consists of three boss fights, and they aren’t terribly complex mechanically. When my friends and I ran it for the first time, it only took us one or two attempts before we figured out what we had to do for each boss. What I appreciate the most about each encounter is that while damage phases are a bit shorter than previous dungeons, the actual method of reaching the damage phase is also a lot shorter. Warlord’s Ruin doesn’t have an encounter like Caital in Duality where it takes forever to set up damage, only for the damage phase to be completely wasted and cut short by failing to execute a mechanic properly. If you miss a damage phase in Warlord’s Ruin, it’s just an inconvenience. As for the loot, there’s some interesting weapons to pick up: a strand rapid-fire frame sniper rife, a strand precision frame bow, a strand caster frame sword, and an arc sidearm with the new rocket frame. The new sidearm is easily the most exciting weapon because it’s a brand new weapon archetype, and it’s fairly fun. The bow is also a nice addition to the game because it’s our first strand bow, and it can roll with some really solid perks. The sword and sniper are a bit less exciting, especially the sniper, but they’re cool I guess. The dungeon exotic also looks incredibly unique, though I unfortunately was not lucky enough to get it in my first three clears this weekend. Buried Bloodline is a void sidearm that uses special ammo, fires two bullets at a time, and can give you Devour on any subclass. Overall, it looks like a really fun gun. Finally, my absolute favorite thing about the dungeon is the aesthetic. During my first clear, my friends and I kept comparing it with Dark Souls and Elden Ring. I love castles and more fantasy designs, so running around a mysterious castle in the mountains is just too much fun.
Overall, Season of the Wish is off to a decent start. I’m excited to see where it goes and what it offers. I’m looking forward to the upcoming exotic mission we get later this month, as well as whatever additional content we get before the release of The Final Shape. While this has definitely been a rocky year for Destiny 2, Season of the Wish has the opportunity to be a strong closer. Only time will tell.
Broad Scope Entertainment 