The wretched drought of The Taken King is over, and guardians everywhere have dusted off their copies of Destiny. Destiny: Rise of Iron is finally here, and it does not disappoint.
Destiny: Rise of Iron
Developer: Bungie
Price: 29.99 USD
Platform: Xbox One (reviewed), PS4
MonsterVine was supplied with an Xbox One code for review.
Rise of Iron is priced between the game’s first two expansions, and theThe Taken King sitting at $30. The amount of content present in Rise of Iron is appropriate for its price. Rise of Iron features new weapons, armor, and gear. It also includes a new Strike, new maps and a new game mode for the Crucible competitive multiplayer, and an all new six-player cooperative Raid. There’s also a new social space, enemy faction, patrol zone, PvE battle arena, known as Archon’s Forge, and the much-needed light level increase.
Not much has really changed in Destiny’s newest expansion but much has been refined. The light system is the same and no new subclasses have been added. Much has been updated to feel better, but there are no changes on the scale of The Taken King’s update 2.0. April’s Update trend of cosmetic items and microtransactions continues in the form of ornaments for weapons and armor. These ornaments are on average cooler than any chroma could be, they’re also considerably harder to obtain considering that you can only earn one radiant treasure (the package they can be obtained from) per account per week. Rise of Iron also continues the philosophy that there should be multiple paths to max level, making it easier than ever to get to max light level.
I ventured first into Destiny: Rise of Iron’s story content. The wall surrounding the Cosmodrome has been breached, and the Fallen House of Devils have discovered an ancient evil. The plague-like technology known as SIVA, locked away at the cost of all but one Iron Lord, has been unleashed. The Rise of Iron campaign ramps up from here and quickly becomes one of the better story attempts within Destiny. The Iron Banner’s monthly host, Lord Saladin, is explored more as a character, revealing his face and a surprising amount of emotion. Unfortunately, the story ends just as it unveils some of its most beautiful set-pieces and best moments. Bungie has improved its ability to capture my attention from its lore and story, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed by the length of this less-than-three-hour campaign.
Luckily, there is more story content for players to enjoy. Like The Taken King, Rise of Iron has multiple side-missions and mini-storylines. These auxiliary missions reward players with the updated Gjallarhorn and Khvostov exotic weapons. They’re also my favorite missions within Destiny. Bungie is aware of the attachment that players feel towards Destiny and the long history that they have with the game. Both exotic weapon storylines play heavily into nostalgia and Destiny’s history. There’s one emotional moment in Rise of Iron, where you and your ghost share a moment alone back where everything began, that other games without this kind of history simply couldn’t pull off.
New environments have been opened up for exploration. The Iron Temple, home of the Iron Lords atop Felwinter’s Peak, opens up as Destiny’s new social space that dwarves both the Tower and the Reef. The Plaguelands, a SIVA-infested wasteland just beyond the wall of the Cosmodrome, is a massive new patrol zone that sadly feels a bit empty and less “plagued” than the name would imply. The Plaguelands does have the Archon’s Forge, which can be a fun way to potentially level up, but a three-man fireteam cap and a low chance of drops make this activity more of a fun throwdown with axes than a viable way of leveling up. However, both locations have noticeably better-looking effects and details than ever before, a benefit of dropping last-gen console support.
The SIVA-Infested Devil Splicers are the primary threat in Rise of Iron, and while they change up the look of Fallen units quite a bit the same can’t be said about how they feel. While some things differ between the Devil Splicers and their Fallen counterparts, the contrasts between the two are nowhere near the changes that the Taken faction of enemies brought about. Despite this, they are still worthy adversaries that change up the gameplay in a mostly enjoyable way.
Strikes are a huge part of Destiny and a focus of Rise of Iron. The new Wretched Eye strike is the only all-new strike, but the Devil’s Lair and Summoning Pits strikes have been overhauled in significant ways. All three of these strikes have taken Destiny’s latest goals to heart, promising more action-packed moments and less sitting and chipping away at health. The Devil’s Lair overhaul, called Sepiks Perfected, is my favorite, largely due to the rather metal version of the original musical score. Strikes have always been an integral part of a Guardian’s journey, and this has been stressed even more in Rise of Iron. Strike bosses now drop loot at equal or higher light than your own (up to a certain point) and no longer drop strike-specific loot. Now strike bosses have a chance at dropping Skeleton Keys, which are used to open special chests at the ends of strikes that drop strike-specific loot at a high light level. This system works well in eliminating randomness as a factor in what weapons and armor you earn, as well as providing a consistent avenue for light advancement. It’s worth noting that the drop-rate of artifacts and ghosts are currently lower than anticipated, and the heroic strike playlist doesn’t award completions in Rise of Iron’s new progress book nor does it reward skeleton keys as frequently.
Following the example of the Sparrow Racing League Record Book and the Year 2 Moments of Triumph book, Destiny: Rise of Iron comes with a massive progress book full of rewards to earn and milestones to achieve. Much of the most desired loot, such as the Days of Iron armor set, weapons, and cosmetics comes from completing this book. The activities in this book range in difficulty and some occur more naturally than others, but ultimately the Rise of Iron progress book is a great way to encourage players to try out everything from the raid to the crucible.
The Crucible has gotten a facelift as well. There are three (four if you’re on Playstation) all-new maps, and the new game mode Supremacy. The three maps that I was able to experience are quite nice and stray away from a shotgun-dominant design while not eliminating their viability. Sadly, I can’t say the same about Supremacy. Nothing is particularly wrong with Destiny’s version of Call of Duty’s Kill Confirmed mode, but the nature of collecting items dropped from a slain adversary further encourages close-range gameplay in a game that already heavily encourages close quarters combat. The Crucible has also received a few quality of life changes, lowering the efficiency of Sniper and the Striker Titan’s shoulder charge for the sake of balance as well as changing the way that heavy ammo works in Elimination.
The timed Crucible events, Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner, have also seen some changes, although this is truer for the latter. Trials of Osiris now drops year 2 gear up to the max light from bounties and as random rewards. Bungie has almost completely altered the way that Iron Banner works, eliminating the emblem, class item, shader and day of week bonuses. Instead, the Iron Banner simply rewards more for wins and bounties, which are now all weekly bounties instead of small daily bounties, although the bonuses for having multiple characters ranked up remains largely unchanged. Lord Saladin has also stepped down as host of Iron Banner, passing the torch to Lady Efrideet as she makes her in-game premiere. Both introduce some beautiful all-new armor sets and weapons that are incredibly useful.
Wrath of the Machine is the new raid. If you’re unfamiliar with Destiny raids, they’re six-player activities that are extremely long and challenging when compared to the rest of the game. Bungie has yet to (if they ever will) add a matchmaking feature, to the distaste of some and to the pleasure of others. What they have added is an incredibly engaging and enjoyable raid that cuts out a lot of what made raids inaccessible to a large portion of the community. There’s less focus on jumping, puzzle mechanics and singled out roles and a bigger emphasis on the team as a whole. Many were weary when the world’s first only took about two hours, but that had to do more with the fact that players could level up extremely quick before the raid launched. In a word, Wrath of the Machine is outstanding. It’s a good length, more comparable to Vault of Glass times than King’s Fall, but definitely longer than Crota’s End. It’s also not as mechanically heavy as King’s Fall, but in some sections more so than Vault of Glass. The epic set pieces and sense of grandeur are back, and it’s evident by the frame rate drops during some of the most action-packed sequences that this raid would not have been able to run on old hardware. The sci-fi vibe that SIVA gives off is pulled into full throttle during Wrath of the Machine and even comes in with its own secret quest that involves players reading binary. Seriously. Even players that are new to raids shouldn’t have too much of an issue until the final boss, allowing them to level up quickly with some pretty neat new gear. I won’t spoil any of the specifics, but you’re in for a wild ride.
Destiny is a huge game, and there’s a whole lot I couldn’t possibly get to. Rise of Iron has a few more things that’d like to mention, though. Playing the nostalgia card hard, Bungie has reintroduced a load of year 1 weapons and armor pieces as new legendaries, such as the Hopscotch Pilgrim and the Hunter’s Scarf. Factions have also been overhauled, allowing players to choose between a weapon, armor or chroma pack.
It’s also important to remember that Destiny is a somewhat living game, meaning that things are in flux. A patch just went live that improved artifact and ghost drops introduced the Heroic Mode of Wrath of the Machine and raised the light level up to 400. Sparrow Racing League and Festival of the Lost will be making a return later in the year.
The Final Word
Despite a shorter than desirable story, Destiny: Rise of Iron has a fair amount of solid content. An increased light level, new exotics and legendary items and an all new raid have jump-started Destiny’s community once more. There are a few missteps and issues that Bungie still has to work out, but Destiny players everywhere should definitely pick up this DLC.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
