Game-Review: Destiny 2 Season of the Deep

 Destiny 2: Season of the Deep

Season of the Deep for Destiny 2 launched on May 23rd of 2023 and ends on the 22nd August of 2023. Season of the Deep is the 21st Season and the 2nd Season of Year 6. 

Yes, that is a lot of 2's. 

What does the Season offer?

Season of the Deep offers 3 seasonal activities called Salvage, Deep Dive, and yes: Fishing.

Additionally a exotic mission is also included that rewards the Exotic Scout Rifle Wicked Implement. 

As per usual, the season is also based around a story that runs for a few weeks. 

This time the story has five very well known characters and one antagonist as the focus:

• Zavala, Sloane, Saladin, Saint-14 and Drifter as the main character
• Xivû Arath, the Hive God of War as the antagonist 

Naturally, Titan also returned with the comeback of Sloane. 

A Destination that got vaulted* back in 2020 with the release of the expansion Beyond Light. 

* = archived, removed

Salvage

So, what is Salvage? In short: A 6-player matchmade activity, something that Destiny 2 does in basically every other season (with some exceptions). Is it fun? Yeah sure, but only for the first few times. It is also important to differentiate between hardcore players, that are used to these kind of activities by now, and casual/new players, that don't feel that burnout. 

I could complain about every nitpick like most Social Media places surrounding Destiny 2 are doing right now, but I have to view it objectively here. I played Destiny (the franchise) for almost 10 years now and I usually do all the stuff that is available, which usually includes all triumphs, so of course I won't be as excited when (for the X-amount of time) a 6-player activity comes around. 

So I'll rate it in two perspectives: Hardcore and Casual.

Is it a good activity for casual players? You bet. 

Is it a good activity for hardcore players, which includes doing everything? Not so much.

The first batch of triumphs is not too bad (we had it way worse in the past), but certain other triumphs (see picture above) took an immense amount of time to complete. 

Thankfully it got fixed in the most recent update, but I hope we won't see excessive triumphs like this ever again. 

Casual and/or new players are enjoying this activity way more, simply because there are easy  objectives to complete and even if the timer runs out (very unlikely on Normal), you'll end up at the boss either way. The only downside: if people are not prepared for this activity, it can drag on quite a bit, especially during the boss fight.

Aster Pro Tip: If you have Divinity, equip it for the boss. Makes it go so much faster. 

Thanks to the simple nature of Salvage, it also doesn't affect the other players that much if people are leaving during the activity (I wonder why people would do that,..).

Hardcore Player Rating: 5/10 - Very easy, can drag on quite a bit

Casual Player Rating: 8/10 - Perfectly balanced, failure unlikely

Deep Dive

The other seasonal activity are the Deep Dives. Now this activity is way better designed for the hardcore players, but way less casual or new player friendly. I'll get to the reasons later on.

The basics: You can choose one of two buffs at the start of the activity, these are random and usually range between improved damage for something (weapon type) or a faster recharge rate for abilities (can also include supers).

After each encounter you get to choose an additional buff that adds up to your current buff(s), but in exchange the enemies are getting stronger as well. You basically get buffs and debuffs the further you go in this activity. 

You are also able to trigger an optional higher difficulty that is called Pressure Trial. 

If you interact with a white ball of light (we call him Toland) at the start of each encounter, you'll enable an extra encounter that offers way tougher opponents. 

Those extra levels are continuing the active encounter, which means that if you are doing Defend the Drills, you'll most likely do a variant or the same for the Pressure Trial. Deep Dives also have timers, and these are shared across the encounter and Pressure Trial. 

After you have completed these encounter (or failed) you'll end up at one of three boss fights. 

Depending on which Tier (Tier 7 is the maximum and only possible with Pressure Trials) you have completed, you'll get better or more rewards after the boss fight. For example, the Catalyst for Wicked Implement is tied to Deep Dives. Tier 7 is a guarantee drop, while lower Tier only have a chance (See picture above).

Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it? Sure, but did I mention that this activity has matchmaking? 

And that every player has to interact with Toland to trigger the Pressure Trial?

You probably noticed a problem here: Hardcore or dedicated players, that are trying to get a Pressure Trial going are at the mercy of the matchmade players. 

Casual players might just want to complete a normal run, but are getting annoyed by players that want to do something different, and we are not even at the tip of the iceberg yet. 

Wicked Implement Exotic Mission

The exotic mission for Wicked Implement is inside Deep Dives, and that is kind of a problem. Don't get me wrong, the mission itself is pretty cool and it has been a long time since we saw a secret mission or something similar. 

The problem is the difficulty of this mission if you consider that most people going into matchmade activities are not necessarily prepared for a mission like this. You can get lucky and get carried by your other random teammates without actually knowing that this mission exists (this actually happened recently), but it can also get very frustrating if people are always trying to get the mission done while you or blueberry X is trying to complete a traditional Deep Dive run. 

You see, Deep Dive basically has 3 different paths or routes now: Normal, Pressure Trial (Tier 7) and the Wicked Implement Exotic Mission. Most people have to use LFG (Looking for Group) to actually get the thing done they want to accomplish. 

Summary: Mission is pretty cool, but next time please don't attach it to a activity. 

For the weapon, Wicked Implement has a cool design but isn't meta breaking and more of a niche weapon. Can be used for endgame PvE (Grandmaster) or PvP, but of course there are better options. I'm not doing a weapon review, so check out someone else for that.

Considering all of the above, I'd give Deep Dives the following rating:

Hardcore Player Rating: 8.5/10 - Unique approach, with a fixed fireteam a nice challenge.

Casual Player Rating: 5/10 - It either can be a nice experience, or a terrible one. 

Summary

The last things to talk about are small things like Fishing and the Story.

You either hate fishing, or you love it. Some people are indifferent towards it, at the beginning I liked it a lot but the amount of fish required for certain triumphs is just way too high in my opinion.

A lot of people were not excited about the fact that you need 3 exotic fish to access the exotic mission in Deep Dives, but that is more or less only the requirement for one fireteam member. 

The story in itself was pretty cool, but the way of delivering it not so much. I'm already getting tired of the same storytelling approach in seasons. Over the span of 7-8 weeks you'll get access to 4-5 minutes of new dialogue (each week). After so many seasons this doesn't excite me as much, but the cutscenes were of course a banger and saved this season for me.

The story is pretty much a prelude to Final Shape like all the other seasons in the previous years were for the other expansions. 

I'd give the story of Season of the Deep a 7.5/10. 

It had important moments, but its delivery wasn't on the same level as other seasons like Season of Arrivals. 

Score for Season of the Deep: 

6.5/10

Trailer: