Destiny: The Taken King Reviews
The Taken King shows Destiny is willing to reach for everything it might be, and it's hard not to look forward to what comes next.
This is the first sign we've had that Destiny just might become the game many think it could be.
The Taken King is the make-good effort Destiny players have been waiting for
With impressive storytelling, tight controls, and a sense of purpose, The Taken King is not just an expansion, but a noteworthy improvement to the Destiny series as a whole.
Slowly but surely, Bungie is morphing this chimera of a game into something more presentable.
Perhaps the best that can be said about this expansion is that it's ultimately a step in the right direction for one of last year's most disappointing games and offers a glimmer of hope that Destiny might, within a few years time and a handful of updates, actually be a consistently great game rather than a pile up of both great and poor design decisions that frustrates just as often as it delights.
After filing our initial review of Destiny last year, I said that the experience lacked soul, put the game aside, and felt I wouldn't be coming back. Around the beginning of the summer I needed a game that I could pick up and play for about 30-45 minutes at a time and jumped back in. Before I knew it I was hooked, playing the DLC content, running Strikes, rolling a second (and now third!) character. "The Taken King" and Destiny 2.0 have taken that experience to a new height that is worth diving back into for old players and warrants the price of investment (into the new Legendary Edition) for new players. Bungie has put in so many small, new tweaks and wrinkles that it will take dozens of hours before you'll see and do everything. Destiny is not perfect and is still a grind that is best experienced with friends, but the addition of new and repackaged content fleshes out the experience to a point where it becomes an easy recommendation for shooter fans.
The Taken King might not make up for that first year and all of its shambling about, but it puts Destiny on a path that, as someone who spent all of last year whining endlessly to anyone who would listen, I can finally shut my mouth and just enjoy the game. If that isn't an incredible feat, I don't know what is.
The Taken King focuses Destiny's story and lets players forge a more memorable experience, lifting the entire game as a result.
This is the perfect time to enter the Destiny universe, and if the changes and additions introduced in The Taken King are any indication of how Bungie's world will evolve, I'll gladly continue to bring my light to the fight against the darkness.
I think what I'm trying to say is: I like Destiny. It only took me a year to admit it.
Year Two of Destiny is de-Dinkled, has upped the difficulty, given you a sword, and finally become a game you can invest in.
Rather than call it an expansion, The Taken King proves to be an overall facelift for what once was an empty, repetitive shooter. Worlds feel more lively with the constant Taken threat interfering with classic Cabal, Fallen, and Vex enemies. Allies in the Tower and Reef have much more to offer and make your guardian feel more relevant in a period of galactic combat. While you still cannot expect a tale of epic proportions, Destiny embraces what it always has been at its core – a shoot and loot festival.
There are still plenty of thorns, but it manages to address and improve nearly every aspect of the original 1.0 release.
Streamlined interfaces and new content make this a must-play for Destiny fans
The Taken King is a solid package offering several more hours of fun, engaging new gameplay.
Destiny: The Taken King is the first expansion in the second year of Destiny and it changes so many of the core concepts, from its interface to its mechanics, that it feels like playing an entirely new game.
Bungie could have thrown in a bit more content given the price tag, but what's offered in The Taken King is definitely solid and certainly adds to the Destiny experience, making this a must-buy for fans of the game.
One year after its release, Destiny is finally becoming the game most of us wished. The Taken King improves the experience in nearly every way. Destiny still has a few issues that could be sorted out, but The Taken King brings hope that future Destiny expansions will fix those too.
Destiny did not need all of its innumerable growing pains, and many of its scars will never fade and should rightly never be forgotten. But The Taken King is proof that it wasn't fruitless. This is the game we were excited for back in 2013, and that we were struggling to find over the past year. The Taken King is what Destiny should be and should have been all along.