Destiny: The Taken King

Destiny: The Taken King and the Year Two Update is a significant step forward towards making this game something more enjoyable rather than a chore, but it still focuses very narrowly on pleasing its existing player base.

Destiny: The Taken King is an awesome upgrade that's addressed most of my biggest problems with Destiny over the past year. The rewarding loot system, fun enemies, new subclasses, and many quests have kept me busy long after the strong story missions ended. The crown jewel is King's Fall, a demanding high-level activity that, despite the strict six-person requirement, will keep me playing into the late hours of the night.

The Taken King and the patch that it brought with it have been a grand revisionist move by Bungie. Very few parts of how the game works haven’t been touched, tweaked and altered in some way to improve upon the flawed aspects of the game’s original release. With a fun new story, plenty of content that runs alongside it and an outstanding new raid, it’s a good time to be playing Destiny.

The Taken King is not only a fun and rewarding experience unto itself, it is a great expansion for the Destiny universe and elevates the game in nearly every way.

Destiny has not been without its critics. From the day the game first launched many people have voiced their opinion as they have either hated it or really loved it. There have been two expansion packs since the game launched in September 2014 and, as with the original core game, there have been critics and lovers of this content. Well, it’s been a year since Destiny was released and Bungie has dropped its’ biggest content update yet, and that content is of course The Taken King. We visited Bungie almost a month ago for an in-depth early look, and we’ve also played the DLC for a couple of week...

The Taken King shows off Destiny's full potential. This is a must have.

Destiny: The Taken King may not have made this Bungie's best series yet but it's certainly changed it for the better while offering tons of new, fun things to shoot.

It's been a rocky old road for Destiny, but it's finally found some smooth terrain with The Taken King – the title's biggest expansion to date. The new content marks the second year of Destiny's life, and with it comes the realisation that Bungie has taken a rather large step forward in crafting something special. It's undoubtedly taken a lot of practice for the prestigious developer to get its ambitious vision more in line with the expectations of players, but all of the hard work has been worth it. The simple truth is that Destiny is now a better game than it has ever been.

Destiny: The Taken King adds needed story and fun, kinetic new missions and subclasses to Bungie’s tale of space magic.

So what are we left with? The Taken King is still my favorite game to hate. God, how I hate it sometimes. In its current state if you have never played Destiny before it is more than worth the £45 investment to pick everything up and jump right in. For those who have been with it since day one and already paid that £45? Well… do you still play? If not, then what’s here probably hasn’t changed enough to make it worth the full price of admission again. It’s still Destiny. The first 10-15 hours of initial discovery are still its best but once it settles in to the loot treadmill and cranks on the ...

This is very close to the same competent but flawed shooter you played last year. Brand new players should probably jump on this opportunity to try the game out with the “Legendary Edition,” which provides the base game, both DLCs, and the Taken King expansion, but anyone who hated Year One will only find the improvements to be incremental at best. Slowly but surely, Bungie is morphing this chimera of a game into something more presentable.

Destiny's myriad problems at launch were exacerbated by its promise: The game was that much more disappointing because Bungie's execution failed to follow through on the potential of the studio's purported dream project. Bungie took some moderate steps forward in The Dark Below and House of Wolves, but The Taken King feels like the first effort to make good on the hope that Destiny players have been holding onto for the past year and change. The Taken King finally makes Destiny not just fun, but great.