Destiny: The Taken King Reviews
The Taken King is a sophisticated return to Destiny that makes it the best its ever been.
Streamlined interfaces and new content make this a must-play for Destiny fans
Bungie decides the best way to fix Destiny is by changing less than you might expect
Destiny: The Taken King made me a believer. It is an enormous step in the right direction for Destiny, and improves upon Destiny in almost every regard.
The Taken King easily eclipses both previous Destiny expansions in quantity and quality of content, and goes a long way towards making Destiny the game what so many of us have wanted.
A lot of fuss was made when the price point of The Taken King was announced and despite a vibrant community, the vanilla Destiny was originally rife with issues and needed many improvements. But now Bungie has fixed most of those issues and as a result, Destiny: The Taken King is one of the most fun, fulfilling and social shooters you'll play this year and next.
Destiny: The Taken King is an awesome upgrade with many quests to keep me busy long after the campaign has ended.
The Taken King and the patch that it brought with it have been a grand revisionist move by Bungie. Very few parts of how the game works haven't been touched, tweaked and altered in some way to improve upon the flawed aspects of the game's original release. With a fun new story, plenty of content that runs alongside it and an outstanding new raid, it's a good time to be playing Destiny.
The Taken King is a huge improvement over last year's release. It features a far better story, much stronger voice acting, more exciting and varied missions, and an endgame that is more rounded out for long-term play. Not only that, but it also refines the overall gameplay and makes the game a far better experience than before - one that is definitely worth playing.
Destiny: The Taken King and the Year Two Update is a significant step forward towards making this game something more enjoyable rather than a chore, but it still focuses very narrowly on pleasing its existing player base.
Destiny finally feels like the big deal that Bungie wanted us to think it was last year.
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.
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 can honestly say that I have never played a shooter as much as I have played Destiny. Not Call of Duty, not Halo, Not Far Cry or Battlefield. I've clocked in hundreds of hours in the game since its release last year (I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who have thousands), and with The Taken King it looks like it'll just continue to increase.
If you're willing to do the social networking and accept the time commitment that Destiny requires to reach its endgame content, you'll be treated to the first massively multiplayer online game built around the core of first-person shooter gameplay, a unique entry in the world of video games, and a growing universe where you and your fellow Guardians are all that stand between the Light, humanity's last hope, and the Darkness that threatens to wipe us out forever.
The Taken King is one helluva good apology for the mediocre mis-start that was 2014's Destiny. All of our grievances have been addressed in some way. The loot system is fairer and more sensical, there's an actual story worth emotionally investing in, plus the combat's had an adrenaline shot thanks to new enemies, gats to gather, and exciting new subclasses.
The Taken King resets Destiny for the better. It brings a lot more fun to the table while taming all the things people complained about up to this point in the game, well almost all.
Destiny: The Taken King successfully adds refreshing content to a game that has been growing stale over the past few months. Not only that, but just about every aspect of the game has been revitalized with the expansion and the 2.0 update. Depending on your view on grinding for gear after completing everything else, you should be able to get upwards of 30+ hours (per character) to complete all of the newly included quests before you reach that moment.
The Taken King is not only a fun and rewarding experience unto itself, it is a great expansion for the Destiny universe and elevates the game in nearly every way.
Providing that the upcoming raid is strong and we see good support and content-rich expansion during Destiny's second year, we could see this MMO-shooter go from a game beloved by a dedicated core of fans to one that excites the mass market for years to come. It got this RPG fanatic invested in a shooter for the first time since Hexen, and it might just hook you, too.