REVIEW – Three months after the release of Destiny 2, Bungie signs a much-needed content update with the intention of maintaining the interest of its extensive community. Five additional levels, a new campaign, a new incursion activity … will The Curse of Osiris be up to everything that is expected?

For most Destiny 2 players, the first handshake was a bittersweet experience. Although it put a good part of the most necessary adjustments in the formula on the table, many fans were dissatisfied with various aspects of the content and progression of the program. The curse of Osiris, the first download of the game, is released along with a second season with the intention of alleviating the monotony that was beginning to hit the most dedicated sector of the community.

This time, we moved to a new location, the Mercury Crystal Fields, to follow the trail to the legendary sorcerer who gives his name to the DLC and improve our character up to level 25. So far, everything sounds good. However, we must bear in mind that this injection of content valued at twenty euros must keep players engaged for at least a couple of months. Moreover, in this sense, it could have been done better.

From a global perspective, we speak of an enjoyable experience, but brief and untapped in equal parts. The campaign, which is our first contact with the expansion, can be completed in just two or three hours depending on how we play it. From time to time we find splashes of good moments starring the spectacular bosses, scenarios – those that lead us to the past and the future are surprising – and musical pieces that serve as a backdrop to tell a story that, yes, leaves a lot be desired. Once we finish it, we have access to a series of adventures, assaults, maps of the Crucible and a public event that invite us to stay a few more hours and where we get a renewed arsenal with which to prepare for the new activity protagonist of the section “endgame,” the raid den. All these missions are made with one idea in mind: replayability. Moreover, they all present the same problem that affects the rest of the game as a whole, which are absurd and artificial barriers and limitations for everyone who is willing to play to stay.

Let us synthesize this problem we are talking about. The Curse of Osiris is an expansion, and as such, it is destined for those people who continue to play Destiny 2 and those who no longer play, but await new reasons to return. In both cases, we talk about dedicated players. If we visit the communities that make up these players and we contrast their opinions, we see clearly that more than new content, the greatest demand is that there are reasons to continue playing the existing ones. Destiny 2: The Curse of Osiris gives us, in effect, new contents; but it is of little use if we can then only repeat the operations once a day, and the campaign missions continue to appear randomly in packages of three in the inventory of Ikora Rey. The forged weapons are part of a tiny circle of the new expansion, and we still can not manually choose the missions we want to play, when we want to do it.

Naturally, an expansion would be received with open arms if not only because it does not serve the main needs of its players, but also restricts access to Prestige activities to those who do not meet the new level requirements posed by this downloadable and that leave behind those who decide not to go through cash at the moment. Bungie‘s attitude in dealing with the situation reminds us of that scene in Stranger Things 2 where we can only sympathize with Nancy Wheeler when she messes up her beautiful dress with a poncho, and in her drunken state, trying to clean herself up does nothing but extend the stain slowly.

Of adventures in Mercury

Of course, this comment is part of the future of the long-term downloadable. The first time we complete it, we do find a short, but pleasant route, which makes us visit both new worlds and others that we already know and that receive additional segments. We visited practically all of the new contents during this campaign, in an amalgam of varied and interesting missions. We would like to have seen a greater emphasis on history this time: we never got to fully empathize or really understand Osiris or his specter, Saguira; as well as we did not understand very well the background of the new villain vex, Panoptes, although it is appreciated that he has bet on so many new characters and elements. We miss a more mysterious, sinister and ambiguous Osiris as was described in the first game, and we wish they had taken a little more time to tell us about the villain, what it means for Destiny‘s world, and that ultimately I would have given each thing the prominence it deserves.

Yes, we can emphasize a strong interest in giving us varied missions that mix the platforms with combat on foot or in vehicles against enemies of all kinds, not only against the vex. The few bosses that we face also add a plus of interest to the package, as they present fun mechanics and strangely had not been fully explored until now in the saga. It is a pity that the final boss of the campaign is perhaps too simple or guided because the confrontation is one of the most spectacular of the entire saga. Again, we feel that only the surface of something that has much more to give of itself has been scratched.

Once we finish the segment dedicated to history, we will find in The Curse of Osiris an extra repertoire of Crisol maps, operations, assaults and other PvE modes that we will occasionally visit from now on the inventory of Ikora Rey and the rotation of our lists of favorite games. Moreover, that is where the charm of the downloadable lies, in the component of randomness and variety that practically present all its activities. Both the Vex Crossroads, the only new public event, and the three additional operations that we found after completing the campaign have an interesting component of semi-random generation of enemies and fragments of the map itself. We refer to the Infinite Forest, an extension of Mercury that we can only explore as part of other missions and that changes every time we enter offering variants of the mapping and the enemies that are inside it. The idea is good, but only really enjoyed during the course of heroic operations, which have modifiers and force us to put the truth batteries to cleanse the area of ​​key enemies.

Much of the rest of the time we dedicate to the expansion will be to collect their new sets of weapons and armor, as well as ornaments for these, which are collected by collecting certain materials in the rest of activities. Among all this new equipment, we find a particularly annoying piece, the Lens of Prometheus, which with a serious “bug” pending correction has managed to embitter the experience to everyone who came to try the two new maps of the Crucible. Even counting on the correction of this problem in a matter of days, those who look for new reasons to enter the competitive mode will face each other when they see that it has only been extended with two maps. The good news is that Bungie has already confirmed the arrival of a necessary list of qualifying games and also private games, although we will have to wait until January to test them and we can not issue a verdict at this time.

The icing on the cake is, without a doubt, the new raid den, which invites us to explore a virgin portion of the base game Leviathan. The novelty here is that it is not a proper raid, but rather a sort of assault for six players and with mechanics slightly lighter than what we would expect from an incursion to use. Alternatively, at least, in its first half. As always, the requirement to enter with a previously formed squad will make more than one scowl. Assuming that we are satisfied with it, we will find in Devoramundos about two or three hours of more content until we get the hang of their puzzles and platforms. It is worth emphasizing that it is an incursion that puts more emphasis than ever on agility and rhythm: the only boss we face makes us run, jump and communicate with each other constantly. However, considering the size and low level of complexity of the mission, it is difficult to determine if Bungie will bet again for another incursion lane in upcoming downloadable.

This is a fun activity, yes, and it is still more interesting than the Prison of the Elders, the Archon’s Forge and other PvE bets for post-credit content that Bungie had created on previous occasions, but it can give us the impression that treats more of a decaffeinated raid than of something else. Moreover, the same can be said of the rest of contents. In Destiny 2 – The Curse of Osiris has been a great effort to offer a variety of content and quick and replayable missions, and although the journey is bearable, we think that maybe touching superficially all the sticks of Destiny 2 is not always the most successful address.

The curse of Osiris is not what Destiny 2 needed to keep us hooked, but it does strive to experiment with its varied missions and mechanics. His brief contributions to the formula leave us with some remarkably fresh activities, some hours of extra material … and the desire to have seen a deeper incursion and campaign.

-BadSector-

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Bungie

Genre: FPS/MMO

Release date: December 5, 2017