24.8 hours played
Written 15 days ago
I have completed destiny 6 today, and this is a tough one to review. The game is decent, but I can't recommend it just because of this, and I'll explain why. But, for the sake of being objective, I'll start with the good parts and then go to the bad ones.
Good:
1. Graphics. The art style choice is obviously subjective, but everything apart from it is top-notch. The backgrounds, the animations, the cutscenes, the characters - all of it is beautiful and fluid. Every location looks astonishing, the skills appear impactful, every icon and particle looks absolutely amazing. Some specific locations [spoiler]Sun and Moon[/spoiler] take your breath away. What is shown to your eyes is extremely high quality, especially for a 2D videogame.
2. A lot of unique game mechanics. Echoes, gambits, imprints, auras, summons, the daily telescope and the cursed telescope, spell affinity, weapons and their passives... A lot of things going on, and there is way, WAAAY, more inside. Each element has at least 5 unique mechanics to it, with even more coming from imprints. The Noita-like spell approach isn't loved by everyone, but it has opened up a lot of options for the gameplay to revolve around. There are tons of keywords, some familiar and some not. Truly the best part of the game, no questions. I wish some other games had this much to them.
3. Bosses and enemies. They are unique. You'll remember every single bossfight by "oh no, THAT attack is coming." Then, you'll raise the game difficulty and suddenly every mob has a new attack. Then, you'll reach a certain point of the game and all the bosses will evolve as well. And let me tell you, some of them will make it seem like you're still alive only because they want you to be (for a minute or so).
4. A lot of stuff to track your progress. You can check all your achievements, upgrades, unlocked cutscenes, available skills/auras/etc., all your previous runs, and the DPS of every single thing in them from the main hub. And as for your stats, you can even check your damage in the middle of the run and see all the stats for the current run and for the current room. Good stuff.
5. The game supports local 2-player co-op through Steam! My friend and I had to meddle with all the controls since only one of us has a gamepad, but it was possible nonetheless.
And, with all that said, I can't believe that I really can't recommend this title. Let's unravel all the bad stuff:
1. The worst part - the runs. As a classic roguelite, the game is divided into two parts: chilling in the hub upgrading your things and attempting to complete a run. And the runs in this game are exhausting. Not bad, not plain, not broken. Just exhausting. And there's not a better word for it, because the game does NOT respect your time, with one run taking more than 1 hour. The basic rooms are not a threat to you in any way. You just rush through them and collect your rewards, and there is no risk of dying. The normal enemies and traps are almost skippable. At first, you'll only consider the zodiacs (mid-run bosses) a threat, but then you'll become accustomed to them. After that, the void bosses will become a threat, but only for a short period. Then, after 1 or 2 successful runs, you'll see that only the last boss is a threat to you. Do you know why that's bad?
Because you'll just tolerate an hour of the same repetitive things only to learn again that the last boss is on a completely different scale. You'll create a build that seems powerful to you, destroy every optional and non-optional boss, and then the last one will obliterate you, ESPECIALLY on Destiny 6.
2. Quality of the main mechanics. Yes, I've mentioned the quantity of the game mechanics as a strength of the it, but their quality is a different question to ask. There are just too many things to be balanced properly. 90% of the time I felt like my build was working perfectly, but the stats were showing that my main DPS came from a random Astral Aura side effect that I picked up in the first location.
In the beginning of my playthrough I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff to use in the game. In the middle of it, I was overcomplicating things by using tons of things that seemed like they should've worked together, but they didn't. And in the end... Well, I almost felt like I was just picking up everything with the same icons or colors and had the same chances of winning. And it's because nothing in this game changes what you do in combat: you just spam attacks and skills when there's enough mana. Whatever you select as your source of the DPS, you just do the same spam, since as that one other negative review mentioned - it's all just damage spam with different animations.
As for the "larger" scale of balance, you can make a ton of builds, but even if you have 4 max-affinity skills with the same element and all the auras for them, you can still have a hard time because the build you've chosen is just too weak in general.
3. Writing. I'll be honest - it feels like they left all the placeholders for the lines. It's the most basic, plain, repetitive, boring, and unoriginal writing I've seen in a game. The characters are one-sided and stereotypical; you can literally predict what they'll say before they open their mouths. Honestly, if I hear Octave say the word MOTHER one more time, I'm gonna crash out. The side characters are supposed to remind you of Hades and kind of react to what you accomplish, but it doesn't work. I just witnessed the true ending and this dude is like "Oh, you've defeated Taurus!? I can't believe it!" Yeah, I did that 5 runs ago. I'm pretty sure even AI would be able to write something better.
4. UI/UX. Yes, the co-op is here, but playing it sometimes feels horrible. The UI is overloaded with an insane amount of elements on top of other elements. It's all made with gamepad controls in mind, but sometimes its like getting out of a maze. It's very easy to mix it up when one button is responsible for skipping cutscenes, confirming equipping things, and healing. You'll get used to it, but only after a portion of tilting mistakes. Some effects are also worded poorly and are hard to understand from the way they are phrased.
I also want to mention that there's a significant amount of UI bugs. Countless times I've seen windows remain on the screen after the element they belonged to got out of focus. Some projectiles were flickering on the screen and flying from side to side instead of disappearing (e.g., heal/mana orbs and Yamat ult/attacks for some reason). The "Free" price was displayed under empty pedestals in the bar a couple of times. And some text was also wrong ("Equipar" instead of "Equip" when choosing imprints in Andromeda Bar). BTW, apart from the UI bugs, some potions in the bar gave me incorrect effects, but it only happened once, so I don’t know what caused it.
So, the conclusion. I'd say it's slightly better than an average mid release. It's like a 6/10, but I can't recommend this game because it doesn't respect its players and their time. It doesn't feel polished, and some of the problems are rooted in the game design decisions. I don't know, playing it felt like wasting hundreds of hours in Dota/LoL/Destiny and all that, and then sitting with a bitter aftertaste wondering "Why did I play it? It was not even that fun..."
