If I had never played Destiny 1, I would say that D2 is an environmentally and intellectually beautiful game horribly burdened by bad game design. It's all fixable though. Visually it's stunning: I think the art department is probably the most competent group at Bungie right now. It's just such a pretty thing to look at. It's good Audibly as well. The music is quite good despite the lack of Marty O'Donnell. Mike Salvatori did a good job. Intellectually, the lore is fascinating, though it does seem to have issues with delivery. I think this is mostly because D2 is more of a soft-reboot for the franchise rather than a proper Sequel. They have to give basic exposition on everything because PC players may have never played D1, so they wont have the background information veteran console players do. But, they can't cram 3 years of info into a few sentences, so it's all really broad and stunted, with no meaningful explanation of everything. * Devrim tells you the Fallen are scavengers, but never tells you why they're on Earth and/or why we're fighting them. Ghost says they worship machines, but does not tell you they worship the Traveler specifically and are on Earth to try and take it back. The campaign is clearly about the Cabal, so why are there even other alien races in the game? It's D1's problem of skipping around too much again. *The background on the Hive is similarly broad and vague. Never are you, the player, informed that just a short time prior to the start of the game the Vanguard assaulted Oryx's dreadnought and killed him. That's a big deal that is never explained. So we're back to D1 again, with the Hive present for some unknown reason. Who are the hive, why are they on Titan? We don't know because the game doesn't take time to explain them. *Same with the Vex. Granted the vex have seen probably the least amount of development overall so Failsafe's expose on them is mostly adequate, though it could have been better. *Finally, the Taken. Ikora's quick explanation of them was terribly inadequate given what we actually know about them, but I suppose for a new player it might be enough. As far as bad game design... whew, where to begin? First, the biggest flaw from which almost ever other stems, is the dogmatic insistence on a unified sandbox balanced around PVP. PVP and PVE are fundamentally different and require fundamentally different approaches to tuning. What's adequate in PVE is OP in PVP, and what is adequate in PVP is feather-weak in PVE. We can see this with the slow movement speeds, the excruciatingly slow charge time for abilities, and the way weapons are mostly the same within their types. Most of your auto rifles are the same, most scouts the same.... some are a little better here and there than others, but that's like saying 1.1 and 1.3 are different. Technically they are, but they're not as different as 1 and 5. [u]Weapon loadout. [/u] I'm not going to compare it to D1 because that's not the point here. However, having snipers and shotguns in the same category as rockets and grenade launchers is just wrong. Special-purpose-weapons do not belong in the same category as ordinance. There should be 4 classes of weapons: primary, secondary, special, heavy. [u]Primaries [/u]are Autos, Pulse rifles and Scouts. These are the guns you use most. General purpose, good for most things, not particularly great at anything. [u]Seondaries [/u]are Hand Cannons, Sidearms, Submachine guns and Swords. These are backup guns, the gun you switch to when reloading takes too long. Typically shorter-range than primaries. Swords are as short-range as it gets. [u]Specials [/u]are Shotguns, Fusions, Linear Fusions, and Snipers. These are situationally-useful guns. You wont use them often, but they have their place, like taking out glimmer generators and mini-bosses. [u]Heavies [/u]are Rockets, Grenade launchers and trace rifles. Also LMGs if they ever get brought back. These are high-damage guns meant for clearing whole areas, waves of adds, or really burning a boss's health. With the exception of Fusions, Linear Fusions and Trace rifles, each weapon type should be Kinetic with a dedicated energy mod slot. That's how guns should be arranged. [u]Mods:[/u] Mods need to be swappable at will like in Warframe. This would allow for more customization and would allow us to build what we need for a given mission, rather than having to keep 3 of each weapon, one of each energy type. [u]Reputation packages[/u] These are just a dumb complication to rewards where it should be simple. If I complete a milestone for Zavala that gives me a rep package, I KNOW it's going to give me Zavala tokens. But, I have to go to Z, turn in the package to get tokens, then turn in the tokens, [i]TO Z[/i], to get rid of them. Just give me the damn tokens when I complete the milestone and eliminate the middle step. I'm not saying it should automatically turn them in to the vendor though: I might want to use those tokens on another character. Crucible separates team members after the end of a match if you're not actually partied up in a fireteam. This is dumb, as I may want to continue playing with the same people. Yes, I could hunt them down via the 'recent players' list but they relies on them actively wanting to join my team. Just leave us together until we decide to split up. I shouldn't have to actively work to keep my team together. I've heard Strikes does the same thing but I don't know: I've only ever done strikes with clansmen where we had a full team. Loot chests on cooldown. I've heard this is a problem. I've only experienced it once myself, (and one sample is not sufficient data for a conclusion), but if it's true it needs to go away. the player should never be punished for looting "too quickly." If Bungie's aim was for us to only play a few hours a week, then they might as well just not allow you to log in after you've reached whatever arbitrary time limit they set. Playing but not getting rewards is worse than not being able to play at all. I could probably go on for a while, but that's enough. That's how I'd call things even if I hadn't spent the past 3 years playing D1. D2 is an okay game, but judging it on it's own merits paints the picture of a studio that doesn't really know what it's doing. I'd expect that from a new up-and-coming studio, but not from an old-hat like Bungie. Seeing D2 as it is now, without having ever played D1, I'd be thinking "Man, if this game is this bad D1 must have been awful."