Destiny 2 – Beyond Light

30 December, 2022 - 2:38 pm by Joseph Whitfield
About 7 mins to read
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5

The Destiny 2: Beyond Light expansion forms part of the Legacy Collection DLC that also includes the Forsaken and Shadowkeep expansions. While all three packs can be purchased separately, the collected DLC is the pack that we have based our recommendation on as it provides the best value and is regularly on sale.

Note from the Editor: As Destiny 2 is a live service game, we’ll be reviewing all of the expansions and what they mean to the overall game. Current reviewed expansions are found below:

The Armoury Collection

At A Glance

Scores

Positives	+Meaty storyline and side quests that keeps giving +Stasis powers are fun to use +Tonnes of new weapons to try
Negatives	-Repeated missions -Boss fights are a let down -Limited to one area

Overall	Recommended
Price (When Reviewed)	£24.99* Part of the Legacy Collection DLC
Available On	PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X\|S, Xbox One, PC

Destiny 2 – Beyond Light brings with it a whole new story line set on the frozen tundra that is Europa. As the war for the Traveller rumbles on throughout the solar system, Guardians are tasked with infiltrating the Golden Age Braytech facility to track down Eramis, the Kell of Darkness, a powerful enemy that seeks to utilise powerful abilities that have been designed to counteract the Light of the Guardians.

Beyond Light features the six-limbed bugs known as the Fallen as the main enemy here, and throughout the lengthy 10 hours or so you’ll spend on the main campaign, they are certainly a race I wanted to dispatch quickly. The insect chattering annoyances only have a few variations, and as they skit and slide across the battlefield, they are not only hard to pin down, but like Tusken Raiders, they often return in larger numbers. Every firefight lasted a good few minutes and I was always in danger of being overwhelmed just by the sheer number of combatants against me. This did make every step of the campaign meaningful and I felt I was earning my reward at the end.

That reward comes in the form of a new power class – Stasis. This is a new power that sits as a fourth component to the already established Void, Arc and Solar classes within the game, and it set the bar so high when the expansion originally released that the other areas had to be retooled. Stasis was supremely powerful and crucially, customisable when Beyond Light was unleashed in 2020. The ice barriers could be tweaked in such a way that player loadouts would be too overpowered – as an example, you could create a barrier that not only froze bad guys to the spot but were explosive, so all a player had to do was shoot the newly formed wall to cause massive destruction. Thankfully, with the 2022 release of The Witch Queen expansion similar customisations were brought in throughout the rest of the abilities meaning that it is a much more balanced powerup.

There are a couple of disappointments within Beyond Light. Missions are carried out entirely in one section of Europa so there is a lot of retreading the same ground. Bungie does mix this up to prevent it being completely boring but it would have been nice to have a bit more variation on the area. The other issue comes in the form of boss fights, as they also double up as a tutorial for the new Stasis archetype. Starting off like any other skirmish I would blast through mindless drones until Eramis would show her mandibles. At this point my Guardian would become enveloped by the new Stasis power and could fling his special powers at will. I felt limiting the powers solely to boss fights disjointed the experience somewhat. In games like Ocarina of Time, the whole dungeon is built around whatever Link’s new toy is, and he spends the time getting used to it before using the Big Key and fighting the evil champion. With Beyond Light, I was given a taste of something that I didn’t fully understand and wasn’t given the opportunity to use it properly until the story was put to bed.

Granted this is only a minor sticking point and one that quickly rectifies itself once I embarked on the subsequent missions, of which there are many. Once the main story has reached its conclusion, a host of raid missions become available which unlock new and fancy exotic weapons, and further details Destiny’s rapidly expanding universe. Along with numerous bits of kit to find scattered throughout Europa, there is a lot to be getting on with after the lengthy campaign. Even after completing the bulk of Beyond Light, I am still coming across new things to do or elements I have missed, which is testament to just how much there is to do in the game, and for someone who loves value for money, coming across new missions months after I thought everything was done, brings a smile to my face.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light is certainly a worthy expansion in the operatic space war. At this point it is given that there is a wealth of exotic weapons and armour to get to grips with, but the new Stasis powers are worth the investment alone. Throwing freezing walls at enemies adds a layer of defence that was sorely missing. These new powers change the tide of battle in such a way that just has to be experienced to be believed. With Guardians being able to harness darkness powers, this certainly muddies the waters in terms of where the story is likely to go with future expansions and lays a pretty strong groundwork for the battles yet to come.