Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris

Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris Review

Destiny 2's First DLC Expansion
Developer: Bungie
Publishers: Activision
Genres: First-person shooter (FPS), RPG
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Release date:
- December 5th, 2017
Playtime: Around 8 hours
Reviewed on PS4
Throughout this review keep in mind I'm reviewing the expansion, not the update/patch that released alongside it
This review does not include the Raid Lair

Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris is the first major expansion for Destiny 2. This comes at a crucial time for the game, where the player base clamors for a more refined end-game and predatory microtransactions plague the game. Does it correct these problems?

Curse of Osiris is one of those expansions that simply adds more content to the game, akin to Destiny 1's Rise of Iron, instead of reworking the game's systems, like The Taken King. So, in short, if you buy this expansion you'll have more content to play but it doesn't solve the game's core problems. More than that, this expansion includes content that was available in the original game from the start (Heroic Events) and at the same time it locks some of the content behind a paywall for people who don't buy it. On top of things, this expansion's release marks the beginning of Season 2 for the game. This means all the content from the Eververse Store has been updated, removing everything from the previous season and bringing a ton of new cosmetic content: emotes, shaders and ornaments (skins), ships, sparrows, etc. The problem is, most of this is content that could be attained by completing certain activities or milestones, instead it's locked behind loot boxes. Why don't you receive the ornament for Exotic Weapon X after you kill Y amount of enemies? No, instead you have to hope you'll get it from a loot bo- I mean Illuminated Engram. You still receive one engram every time you fill your experience bar, but that's not a justification for this problem. I'm not going to continue this discussion in this review, but I want you to know this problem didn't stop with the release of this expansion.

Let's move on to its content, starting with the basic: the campaign. It's more or less what we expect by now, under three hours. It's a good campaign that introduces Osiris, the most notable Guardian, along with his Ghost, Sagira. You are tasked with saving Osiris from the Vex and putting a stop to the Vex's plans on Mercury. To do so, you are helped by Sagira, Ikora Rey and Brother Vance, while travelling between some previous destinations, but most of the time you'll be playing on Mercury, the new destination. It's a good enough campaign with a good enough antagonist, however, I wish we could've had more time to play alongside Osiris. Though, it's still nice we had his help during the final battle, the first time a NPC participates in a story battle. To talk about Mercury as a destination, it's one of the worst ones so far. It's incredibly small, with its biggest attractions being the vendor Brother Vance, the Infinite Forest (which in my opinion explains the destination's small size, that is, the development team focused here instead of the main space) and a new Public Event that covers most of the available space when it occurs. This is a good Public Event, but its lack of rewards overshadows its quality.

Moving on to the Infinite Forest, that's a slap in the face to the players. The first time you visit it is during the campaign. This Forest is a modular randomized area that doesn't do much for the game itself or can even be accessed on a whim. The first part, its content, is boring. You can skip through most of its length and whenever you need to stop to unlock the next section you just need to kill one or two enemies slightly stronger than regular ones and then keep moving on. For the access, well, you can only access it to play Heroic Adventures from Mercury (harder versions of those Adventures) or during select moments from the campaign. This means you can't access it on a whim just for the pure gameplay. It's not that you'd want to do it because, let's be honest, you could for example be playing Crucible or Heroic Strikes instead, but the way it was phrased by the developers it was made to look like another activity you could play every time you wanted to.

Brother Vance, the new vendor in Mercury. This NPC will have the aforementioned Adventures and its Heroic counterparts available to initiate but will also have normal Legendary Engrams with Mercury-exclusive loot. Beyond this, he also has three different verses available per week. These, when completed, award the player a specific weapon, a brand-new Legendary weapon for this expansion. The thing is, besides it being a grind to obtain the necessary materials to complete the verses (you can obtain these by completing activities such as Public Events, Crucible matches, Heroic Strikes, etc.) the weapons themselves aren't that great. Yes, they look cool with a Vex-y theme, but once again they are just a reskin of already existing weapon models.

Next are the Crucible and the Heroic Strikes. There's not much to say regarding the Crucible: there's three new maps, with one of them being PlayStation 4-exclusive. Besides this, in the Crucible menu there's now separate Quickplay and Competitive playlists between regular Crucible and Curse of Osiris Crucible, which I presume the latter includes the new maps while the vanilla playlists only have the original maps. For the Heroic Strikes, well, that's another disappointment. What made them great in Destiny 1 was the modifiers, but here there's none of that. These Strikes are simply harder versions of the regular ones.

Before wrapping up the review there's still something important to talk about: the loot. I say this is the last thing because I am not going to include the Raid Lair in this review. I did not have time to play it so I can't express my thoughts about its content, besides the fact that I think it's interesting for the first time in the Destiny franchise to have two (three starting with the next expansion) different raid activities in a single place/destination. It just shows that even after exploring the Leviathan for the first time there's still much more to it than meets the eye.

Back to the loot, well, there's good and there's bad here. In terms of pieces of gear and weapons per se, there's a couple of new armor sets and weapons to collect between Mercury-exclusive loot and the Raid Lair, with new weapons to collect from regular Legendary engrams and even Zavala has new loot to offer (Vanguard-exclusive loot). If you're wondering, yes there's also a handful of new exotics to collect. However, some of these are returning exotics from Destiny 1. I'm not complaining, some of these are dear to my heart, I'm just telling you the facts, but the brand-new exotics are actually quite cool, specially a new Solar Trace Rifle: Prometheus Lens. However, the cool new addition to loot comes in the form of unlockable ornaments for specific sets of gear: Vanguard, Crucible, Iron Banner, Raid Lair and Faction armor sets. Each armor piece ornament from each set requires you to complete certain milestones like "Kill 1000 enemies during Heroic Strikes" or "Win 25 matches in the Competitive Playlist". In my opinion, this is a great way to keep players engaged even if it doesn't last long for some people. Anyway, it's a good step in the right direction!

Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris isn't the expansion the game needs right now. It's one of those cases that simply adds more content to keep the players entertained. However, one should take into account that it wasn't expected at all to see extreme improvements in the very first expansion, mainly due to development timings. Still, even if Curse of Osiris has major flaws, it shows some promise for a better future in Destiny 2. The only truly despicable flaw here is the Eververse Store, fueled by Activision's greed. Hopefully in the future Bungie will be able to move more of the game's cosmetic rewards back to the activities themselves instead of being locked behind randomized loot boxes.