Category Archives: Games

Destiny 2: By Gosh, the Price Is Right

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I’ve tried Destiny 2 twice in the past, and both times it failed to impress me much. Nonetheless, not one to turn down a free lunch, I picked it up when they gave it away for free on Battle.Net, but even then I didn’t feel much motivation to actually play.

The warlock Ikora Rey in Destiny 2However, I’ve had a terrible flu the last two weeks, and binging on a simple game seemed like the best way to distract me from my physical misery. At last, Destiny 2’s moment had come.

I started over with a new character to refresh my memory of the game, but I’m still an Awakened warlock, so not much has changed.

I’m not sure exactly how far I am into the game, but the story feels like it’s ramping up toward a conclusion, and I’ve already been at the (pre-DLC) level cap for a while now. Honestly, leveling was so quick I have to wonder why they even bothered including it at all.

When I think of Destiny 2, the first word that comes to mind is “thin.” There’s no depth to anything in this game.

The skill trees are shockingly shallow. There’s not even the illusion of character customization. I’m generally of the opinion these sorts of things should lean towards the stream-lined end of things, but even for me this is too far.

Combat in Destiny 2Plus your active abilities are relatively weak and have very long cooldowns, so there’s not much to the gameplay beyond just shooting things. Ironically I find bosses are usually the easiest thing because you can quickly burst them down with your super weapon or ultimate ability, while hordes of weaker enemies are more dangerous because they’re too spread out to AoE.

Unlike Warframe or Anthem, which are hybrids of RPG and shooter design, Destiny 2 feels more like a pure shooter that had a few minor nods to RPG elements tacked on as an afterthought.

Similarly, the lore and story are equally shallow. None of the characters are at all memorable, save for Failsafe, who is good for the occasional chuckle.

I did have some hope that the villain was developing some nuance, but they just kind of threw that out now that I’m nearer the end.

I also find it weird how the whole story puts such a fine point on you being the only Guardian left with Light, but the game is constantly throwing you into groups with other players who clearly also have their powers. This kind of dissonance is not uncommon in online games, but rarely is it so obvious or extreme.

My character in Destiny 2That said, just because something is mindless doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Considering how underwhelming my first impressions of the game were, I’ve managed to have a pretty good time playing it heavily for the past week.

One thing I will say for Destiny 2: There’s nothing major wrong with it. Everything works, and there’s no significant blunders in its design. Even games I love usually have one or two major flaws, but Destiny 2 manages to maintain an impressively consistent level of quality, even it never really rises above “good enough.”

And there are a handful of things I’d consider worthy of special praise.

For one thing, it’s damn pretty. The graphics are of a very high quality, and there’s a really nice variety to the environments. Some are quite ordinary — forests, space stations — but some of the worlds you visit are quite exotic. Nessus and Io are very alien and absolutely gorgeous.

Also, I will say I really like the crafting system. Destiny 2 is one of those games that just never explains anything, so there’s nothing to let you know it’s even there, but you can craft an at-level version of almost any item you acquire over the life of your character, which is a great way to stick with the guns you like best and fill in any slots where you haven’t gotten an upgrade recently.

This is definitely one of those systems I’d like to see other games steal.

Jupiter's moon of Io in Destiny 2Speaking of items, while the drops are of course painfully rare, the special effects you can get on the top end items can be pretty fun. I found a submachine that starts spraying chain lightning and refunding its ammo whenever I take electricity damage. While somewhat situational, it’s nonetheless very strong and incredibly fun.

Finally, I will admit that the mission with the Almighty was pretty badass, if only for the impressive set pieces.

On the whole my time with Destiny 2 has been a decent ride, though I’m certainly glad I didn’t pay full price, and I’m not sure I’d spring for DLC.

For now, I might as well finish the story at least.

Astellia Impressions

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Astellia isn’t a game that’s really been on my radar, but the Massively OP staff were given a number of keys to the beta, and I’m always up try a new MMO, so I decided to check it out.

At least Astellia is prettyI won’t say it’s as bad, but Astellia reminds me of Trinium Wars in that it feels less like a real game and more like a parody of bad MMO tropes.

To start with, the tutorial is about 90% cutscenes and 10% gameplay, or at least it feels that way. I admire that the developers actually wanted to make story a priority, but they’ve mistaken more story for better story.

There’s not really an effort to explain the setting to you, to develop any characters, or to give you any reason to become invested. There’s very little context for anything. Instead you’re just bombarded by an onslaught of corny dialogue and ridiculous fantasy names — and this is coming from a guy who willingly and happily reads a series where the name “Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor” is a central part of the story.

As far as gameplay goes, the main selling feature of Astellia — and the source of its name — are the Astels, fey spirits you can collect and then summon to aid you in combat. Very much shades of Pokemon here.

Looking over the journal of potential Astels you can get, it seems there are more options later on, but the Astels available to me at the start were all in the form of seven year old girls. It’s exactly as creepy as it sounds.

My archer and her Astels in AstelliaAlso, one of them has a giant cup of tea on her head, and her abilities centered around buffing allies with “soothing tea” mid-combat. I acquired her whilst an army of demons burned my character’s home village, presumably murdering everyone she ever cared about, and the tonal dissonance was so whiplash-inducing my immersion never really recovered.

It’s also probably worth noting that the Astels didn’t really seem to do much. Maybe they feel more impactful when you’re in more challenging content and/or have leveled them up more, but in the time I played it felt like I could have ignored them entirely and nothing really would have changed. Not a good sign considering this feature is the Astellia’s chief claim to fame.

The graphics are pretty, but not so pretty as to make the game really stand out. The bar is pretty high these days, and Astellia isn’t going to compete with the likes of Black Desert, especially since there isn’t a lot of personality to its art style. I will say some of the character and mob design is pretty cool, at least.

Combat in Astellia is your standard tab target affair, complete with mobs that drop dead after a few hits and don’t seem to require any tactics to defeat. There’s an active dodge mechanic, but I didn’t encounter anything that actually needed to be dodged while I was playing.

Female armour is alive and well in Astellia

This is reasonable attire for an adventurer to wear into battle.

What surprises me more than anything, though, is how bad the animations are. None of my abilities had any kind of flair to their visual or audio effects, and it felt like they had no impact at all.

If there’s one thing you can usually count on Eastern games to deliver, it’s great combat animations, but in Astellia — at least as an archer — they were at best on par with those you’d see in a ten year old Western WoW clone.

This, at least, could be attributed to beta jankiness. This was a true beta test, not a soft launch, so there’s still time for combat to improved. A lot of the game’s other problems feel pretty deeply ingrained, though.

The worst thing is that without Astellia’s glaring flaws — its overbearing attempts at story-telling, the vague whiffs of child exploitation, and the like — it wouldn’t be memorable for anything at all. There’s really nothing about it that’s unique or interesting — it plays like it was built using a checklist of generic fantasy MMO tropes.

The classes, for instance, are as generic as they come. Warrior, assassin, archer… There’s not even an attempt at originality.

While it seems a bit arbitrary to me, the trend seems to be to compare Astellia to Bless Online, and for my money, Bless is a much better game. Bless had better graphics, a better story, better classes, and better combat.

My archer in AstelliaI’d still tentatively recommend checking out Astellia if/when it becomes free to play, but only as an exercise in kitschy silliness. This is definitely not a game I see as worth playing seriously. It’s all the ridiculousness and creep factor of TERA minus the good combat, which was about the only thing TERA did right.