This is my personal opinion of D2, as of the midway of season of dawn, The actual review is later in the post, the first bit is just how I feel, after that is what I had wished for As the years go by, from waking up my guardian at the start of d1, to the new season of dawn with the revival of saint 14, I have born witness to every change, every strike, every idea that bungie had dropped into our laps and now I can say sadly, that I am getting to the point that its over for me When shadowkeep launched, I felt nostalgia as I travelled the moon, I felt mildly scared of my first sighting of the nightmares, I felt glad to see the little things around the moon that reminded me of the good times, and I hated the new ravines that opened in the world to make me fall to my death. It was a reinvigorating experience since the launch of the last dlc of destiny and I played my heart out….until I began to notice things. At first I collected armor and stowed it away, believing tht they were good and I would upgrade them later. But after a couple weeks, I began to take note of the stat lines and points needed, and videos starting popping up explaining into detail what the new armor system need, then came the weapons, and the anticlimactic end of the story being simply waiting week upon week to a story that I cant seem to finish as eris wont give me the last lore book. I did complete the season pass however and I got everything from it, but now that season of dawn is mid swing, I have finally hit that pivotal point of that, is it all really worth it? None of my friends play d2 anymore, I have no raid crew, no dungeon runners, and nightfalls are just nonexistent to me.Now that the dawning has once again cycled out, and I saw everything I fought for, sold for cash money, I just began to be filled with doubt of what there is to do now Im 960 on all my characters or close enough that it doesn’t matter, I have no end game activity to enjoy, and my crucible experience in normal modes are met wth guns that never change, lagging people that shotgun me across the map, or in iron banner, people who have played this game so mucht hat their light level is 30+ my own and I am decimated. So here I find myself wishing to express my thoughts, though from how my old posts have gone, few people see it, no one cares about it, and few replies allow this post to be a slow death off the wayside, but ill still express my thoughts nonetheless Let us begin at the start of the season of dawn: The story: the idea that suddenly the cabal have accesses a magical time travel device that has been around from before d2 started, and have now begun a master plan to take over the war/time. I felt it to be rather, dull. When the undying season ended, I expected something to occur, something that would make all the deaths of the undying mind mean something. But when the season started, I felt like I was in the raiders of the lost arch and being a inconsequential Indiana jones who didn’t even need to be there from the start and the bad guys would still have ended up where they are. Sure some text boxes from people might have explained how two and two came together to make the red legion get on this track of warfare. But to be honest, I don’t see the connection and felt like the undying season was just there to be a placeholder. So the story continues and as I am halfway through, just after giving saint 14 his shotgun, I find him in the tower as the dawning has begun and my work schedule wouldn’t allow me to play that much. I would have hoped that bungie might have delayed his arrival for people to finish the story, but him being there just ruined the ending I fought to create. So story 4/10, a wasted effort with decent voice lines and a new character I enjoy Armor and weapons: My old stuff is better and the new perks on some of the weapons are a nice addition, but ill stick with the stuff I spent the entire time in season of undying farming for, until they drop with better stats (which the season pass armor provided the best armor I could find with no real cost to me besides time). Thankfully they weren’t reskins so I got to enjoy a new look to my guns, until a blue beat them out of the water and I was back to running a ballyhoo. So in my opinion, weapons and armor are a 7/10, I liked them, the exotics are nice to use, but ill keep my old weapons with god rolls going Vanguard: Nothing, and I mean nothing, changed here, same strikes, same bounties, same armor and weapons(besides a ritual weapon so another quest I get to hold onto until I finally get it down at the end of year 3), another season of me wondering why no one has pushed Zavala off that ledge yet. 1/10, its bounties with experience and a new quest to hold, woot. Crucible: Nothing changed here either, even with the introduction of new guns, last words, recluses, snipers, and all the old guns are still used, and the new exotics are useless in the crucible in comparison to a trusty shotgun. I do wonder if I could have hack the robots behind shax and have them execute him. No new armor, a new ritual weapon which requires a dead gun to come back from the grave to haunt the crucible till they get said gun and never use it again (arbelast). Crucible: 1/10, nothing has changed Gambit: I don’t play it anymore thanks to light level advantage from the artifact, so I will not rate this mode as I don’t play it Mods: cant keep the artifact ones, and the new ones are dawn armor only, so nonexsitant after the season ends. I don’t care for them so no rating for them here, this however is different then gambit as I find them so useless that rating them would be roughly a .01 reapeating or some low low number that I don’t have the time more Eververse: Give me a moment to find a dead horse to beat because everyone is on the same train as everyone else, adjust the prices, more dust per bounties, dust from dismantles from store, etc etc etc, however I do like what she has if I had the money for them so I will rate it at least. 7/10, they look nice but too overpriced The dawning: I heard you like a godly level of grind, so we added more grind to the grind to get stuff that we will sell next season for your money and not tell you we are until we drop it in store, huzzah. The dawning I despised and gave up upgrading the sparrow after realizing they wanted me to run upwards of 300 strikes/crucible matches/ gambit, etc to get enough essence to bake 300 cookies. That is with the knowledge that you have to run 400 strikes (less if you leveled the seaon pass) within the span of a season, but 3/4s of it need to be done within 3 weeks to get enough essence (3000 essnence for 300 cookies, 10-17 per strike randomly) to make the cookies for the sparrow. I gave up when I hit the 150 mark as playing the last dawning gave me a free boost of 50 cookies. After that, the store sold all the old things I fought hard to collect like the sparrow and ship and ghost shells so I just said screw it and played monster hunter or something till I remembered it ended this week. So dawning rating, 1/10, no snowballs in strikes, no new engram to allow players to freely get the stuff from the event, and the cookie grind hell like no other, the only thing I liked was the smg I was given, and the machine gun I already had….wait, 0.5/10, I already had the avalanche and that’s it, feedback is nice, and I understand the concept of “It’s fun when you play with friends” or “lfg games to get raids done” or the usual arguments that I’m given to say that I shouldn’t rate the game so poorly