Destiny 2: The Final Shape Review – Shaping Brilliance Once Again

My review of Destiny 2: The Final Shape mainly focuses on my overall experience with the expansion, from the campaign to the recently released raid. While we still have the upcoming Episode seasonal content to go through, the Final Shape DLC is not only the best comeback that the game desperately needed but also serves as one of the best expansions to ever release and conclude an overly due narrative of Destiny 2 to its end.

Story And Setting

The Final Shape DLC kicks off the final battle coming to a head with the Witness, a battle brewing since the dawn of the game since the original Destiny.

While I won’t delve too much into the lore side of things if you’re someone who’s been out of touch with the franchise and is going into this expansion, I urge you to check out MynameisByf’s amazing lore video where he explains every single thing and trust me it’s worth it because Destiny 2’s lore is extremely rich and dense especially right now where it’s the end of an era.

My expectations of the campaign and storytelling of this DLC far exceeded the moments I experienced in Lightfall.

Regarding the main narrative beats, though, the campaign kicks you off pretty right after the ending events of the Season of the Wish as you, the Guardian, enter the Portal on the Traveler to thwart the Final Shape, only to be transported to the uncharted territory of the Paleheart, a place imagined inside the Traveler itself.

My expectations of the campaign and storytelling of this DLC far exceeded the moments I experienced in Lightfall. Instead of an incredibly dull filler arc of the Guardian learning Strand with an annoying sentient surfboard-riding species, I enjoyed a high-stakes narrative where I saw Commander Zavala at his most desperate and learn about his regrets or Crow (AKA Uldren Sov) and Cayde-6 bond and come to terms with each other.

The Return Of The King

I’ll be honest: if it weren’t for Cayde-6 returning in this expansion, I wouldn’t believe the main story would’ve had half of the heartstrings attached to it as it has right now. Fans fell in love with him, and who can blame them? The character is easily one of the most charismatic characters ever, voiced by the ever-astounding Nathan Fillion.

While I thoroughly enjoyed most of my time with the campaign and then heading off into the Salvation’s Edge raid post-contest mode to clear it, the Witness is easily Bungie’s best-designed and written villain. A villain so powerful and threatening that it took a 12-player activity to finish him once and for all (which I’ll also add is one of the best story-focused missions ever created now).

Gameplay

Coming from a Destiny veteran, you’ll be pleased to know that the content quality and quantity offered in the Final Shape DLC is easily the richest I’ve seen, almost equally of the same degree as the infamous Forsaken expansion from 2018. It’s the most fun I’ve had with the content dropped so far, from discovering secrets in the Pale Heart to attaining total glory from completing the Salvation’s Edge raid.

Prismatic while still relatively new, offers a ton of fun in its gameplay execution as long as you have a proper build for it on all the three classes.

Speaking of the Pale Heart, dare I say, after the Dreadnaught in the OG Destiny and the Dreaming City in Destiny 2, this is perhaps Bungie’s most ambitiously designed location, brimming with stuff to do from the brand-new Overthrow activity, farming aspects, and fragments via the tons of mini-bosses and chests in the areas to secret missions which can reward you with the brand-new exotic class items.

Not to mention, the campaign itself here offered great dynamics during gameplay, with the most engaging puzzles I’ve seen and the hardest final boss, at least for now. The puzzles aren’t tricky by any means, but the only tricky or annoying part for new players would be taking down the Tormentor or Dread enemies during the DLC.

Dread It, Run From It, The Final Shape Still Arrives

The Dread is the new enemy race of this expansion, one of which also includes the flying bat-like Grim that can stun you with their screams at close range and the Weavers, which can freeze or pull you in with their Statis/Strand attacks.

If you’re someone who has all the power-crept arsenal to themselves, defeating these enemies is easy enough but the real pain comes from Subjucator enemies, Major-type enemies which can be lethal if not killed immediately and especially annoying to deal with in the Salvation’s Edge raid. But it’s nothing that you can’t easily kill with the new Prismatic Subclass features and the new Supers.

While still relatively new, Prismatic offers a ton of fun in its gameplay execution as long as you have a proper build for it in all three classes. I encourage grinding for the new aspects and fragments since the creative synergy you can create so far with Prismatic and activating Transcendence in-game is absolutely wild, especially for clearing ads in endgame or seasonal activities.

The Salvation’s Edge raid is intensely mechanics-focused so almost everyone has a role in each encounter.

Now, I’m not one to spoil anything for anyone, but the Salvation’s Edge raid, despite how annoyingly tough it may be to complete (even with LFG), is a must-have experience. Although you can jump into the 12-man Excision mission to defeat the Witness in a chaotically fun format, I suggest giving the raid a shot if you have friends or are willing to find a helping Clan.

The Salvation’s Edge raid is intensely mechanics-focused, so almost everyone has a role in each encounter. This means that you shouldn’t expect to get carried through the encounter, especially the fourth one, which is easily the most critical-thinking raid encounter Bungie has ever produced since the Vault in Last Wish.

Aside from that, loot-wise, The Call sidearm is one of the highlights in the new weapons of the DLC, along with the Still Hunt exotic Sniper Rifle, which, if I could, would place top in my Exotic Weapons Tier List. The quests to get the new Macrochosm Trace Rifle and Khvostov G7-0X can be either tough or a slog to get through, but trust me; both are also great additions to the exotic weapon pool of the game.

Overall, while I’m still making my way through Episode Echoes starting from today, the Final Shape DLC, as a whole, after playing through the raid to ultimately experience a bit of the main content it had to offer, impressed me the utmost. Bungie had a lot of expectations riding on them ever since the lackluster reception of Lightfall, so it’s great to see them deliver the conclusive DLC of this saga to the highest degree.

Visuals And Performance

Regarding visuals, The Final Shape expansion offers a lot, and I’m happy to report that the Art Direction team at Bungie (like always) goes all-out with providing awe-inspiring visuals during the moment-to-moment gunplay of Destiny 2. The Pale Heart is vibrant to every end, but in contrast, the Witness’ hold on it has an eerie vibe, with cosmic and body horror structures as well as abstract absurdity looming at every corner.

Performance has remained the same here, without any kind of major changes to the engine. I didn’t notice any major framerate dips or stuttering after the DLC launched, but if I had to tell you anything, the 12-player mission could slightly tank your performance on PC, at least, so be sure to be prepared for that.

Verdict

Destiny 2: The Final Shape is the greatest DLC Bungie has ever put out, rivaling the stupendous quality of both The Taken King and Forsaken. For a franchise that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with since 2014, it gave me a ton of moments to look back and enjoy. Plus it also gave me the gift of meeting new people, a couple of whom became my best friends even.

The Final Shape has everything to make you not only return back to the game but also make you intrigued for what’s to come in the future after its extremely positive player base reception on the DLC. The only shame is the scuffed launch this expansion had due to the server overload because, excluding that, this is by far the most glorious experience I’ve had to experience with my clanmates and best friends.

This has been my Destiny 2: The Final Shape review. While you’re here, consider checking out some of eXputer’s other articles:

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