Destiny: Rise of Iron – Gavin’s Review

The latest expansion, Rise of Iron, for the online-shooter Destiny has been released, but how does it live up to last years The Taken King?

I started playing Destiny about a month and half before The Taken King expansion came out last year, and I wasn't necessarily that impressed. Once The Taken King came out, though, I was completely hooked. While there have been a few free updates to Destiny in the past year, it wasn't until this past Tuesday that a new expansion had come out.

Rise of Iron tells the story of what happened to the rest of the Iron Lords. Lord Saladin is the guy who runs The Iron Banner events during certain weekends. The story is alright but was waaaaaaaay shorter than The Taken King. Rise of Iron didn't really bring much new to the table as far as gameplay mechanics either (last years expansion introduced a new subclass for each of the  games classes).

A couple of new features that the expansion did bring is the ability to host private matches in the PvP arena of the Crucible and a new game type called Supremacy. Instead of just getting kills in Supremacy, you also need to collect crests that drop from your enemies for those kills to count. I've played around 10 games of Supremacy (mostly to complete the quest associated with the game-type) and enjoyed it most of the time. However, the game-type of Control will always be my favorite.

As far as loot drops, Rise of Iron is not shy about helping you get your light-level up. I went from a 302 light level to around 323 in just a little over 3 hours. I've only had one new weapon drop from the expansion (the handcannon "Ill Will") and it's pretty nice, although I am an assault rifle fan.

The Taken King expansion last year is significantly better than Rise of Iron. For one, the story just intrigued me more and seemed to build on previous expansions. Rise of Iron's story is just kinda there. There are no new enemy types, just a reconfiguration of old ones. Even though the campaign is only 3 hours, I kept waiting for it to "get good."

Overall, though, there is enough content to keep me coming back. The new end-game Raid should be released sometime today which many people are looking forward to. I've been playing Destiny for over a year so I think I'm pretty much hooked... at least until Destiny 2 comes out next year.