ITT: Invis Hunters discussing game challenge/difficulty. Lol (Destiny)

by kidtsunami , Atlanta, GA, Sunday, March 06, 2022, 16:05 (780 days ago) @ Korny

Not that I wish to imply that the opinions of the folks who depend on the game being as easy as possible are invalid, but... I mean. Y'all can play how you want!

I just finished the campaign. Playing through on legendary was the most fun I’ve had in a shooter in a long time. It was perfect.

So it apparently turns out that there are three difficulties in the game: Normal, Solo Legendary, and Co-op Legendary. I agree with your point that Solo Legendary should really be the game's default difficulty. It keeps you on your toes during every engagement, but without making you feel like you need to over-specialize your loadout or spend your time peeking from cover between heals like most of the "difficult" content in the game. I tried doing the first mission Solo, and it was neat, as I was constantly mid-to low health if I wasn't mobile, but my only deaths were self-inflicted:

See how it's a good balance of "going through the motions" while requiring me to use my whole kit to avoid dying? That's what I wish the game offered in all areas. Ultimately though, it did feel a bit underwhelming, because I'd done these missions in Co-Op Legendary, which was a whole different beast.

If you want the most bang for your buck, grab a partner and run through these missions together. The difficulty jump goes from "this should be the default" to "Sweet Jesus, is that an Ogre!?" Sammy and I were hootin' and hollering throughout the entire run, and even hit a couple of walls where we had to rethink our approach (and Sammy actively engaged with the Armor mods for the first time ever!).
I loved the chill when we heard an Ogre's roar before we saw it, because that meant it was time to move. I loved the parts where the game lures you into a section, only to spawn enemies behind you, because it meant that you better have some real tricks up your sleeve.
And when a Hive Guardian spawned? Cover wasn't safe anymore, and was time to split up, lest we die together.

It's funny that I hardly got a single clip of our co-op run, but I think it's because most of the amazing gameplay moments were chained to another without time to breathe, and when the two reward chests popped, it was time to set the controller down for a couple of minutes and discuss the crazy moments, saves, and mistakes that we had clawed our way through.
Designer Alex Pfeiffer put it best in this PSBlog interview:
“We wanted to make the campaign missions feel a little bit more like a dungeon. Dungeons and Exotic missions like Presage are very aspirational and are very sophisticated, but not everybody gets to experience them. They’re very difficult, they require you to put a team together, and so we wanted to extract what makes those things special and bring it to a wider audience.”

The encounters did a great job of mimicking the combat portions of Dungeons like Pit of Heresy and Presage, where your only hope is to be just as aggressive as the enemy, because there is an objective that you have to complete at all costs, and the enemy won't let up until you succumb or succeed. The chests that popped up at the end of every major encounter truly felt earned. This contrasts with strikes, where for the most part there's more of a trek with enemies scattered between until you get to an arena encounter or two where you have to open a door that the last enemy drops the key to.

And as far as challenge? Almost across the board, It was the best that Bungie's done yet. From objectives that keep you pushing forward, making the Peek-and-hide gameplay ineffective, to the lack of Champions that would force you into specific weapons and playstyles, it was liberating without letting us get too comfortable with a singular approach, as we did have to reassess our loadouts for certain encounters depending on what the enemies were throwing at us. Sammy started the campaign with a shotgun, and ended it with a sniper/bow build, while I developed a Void well build over the course of the campaign.

The boss fights are all really fun! And I love that there are some actual puzzle mechanics through the campaign (even as light as they are). What a cool, fun experience.

I love that for most of them, the mechanics of the boss fight are ones you've been employing throughout the level (except for The Ritual, but we'll get back to that), and they don't really repeat (other than the Crystal shattering). When the Boss showed up, there didn't have to be a trial and error period where we wiped until something clicked, it just came down to identifying the encounter space and already knowing what to look out for (The final encounter of Ghosts is a great example of this). While not quite on the same level of Titanfall 2's per-level gimmicks, it was enough that no mechanic overstayed its welcome, while making you feel like you understood the concept well.

The exception was The Ritual, which felt more like a raid encounter in that you start in above the main arena, able to see the boss, the two wizards that you'll have to deal with... and that's it. Everything else, you have to piece it together on your own, and that was great. There was just enough in terms of context clues that Sammy figured out what we were supposed to do almost immediately after we realized that the left and right Mirror took you to different floors with different codes.
Fundamentally it was the crystal mechanic again, but I did enjoy the Savathun's Song callback with the void orb. The boss herself was fairly easy, but the "we're coming for you" setup was great, so she was more of a victory lap than anything, making her quick defeat all the sweeter.

The one downside to the campaign was the lack of dedicated platforming puzzles. Timed platforms just don't quite land the same way as dedicated environmental navigation.

Also, Hive Guardians are what Champions should have been.

Solo Legend, they're just a tanky major with a 1HK mechanic. A solid replacement for champions that keeps you on your toes. Nothing particularly exciting though.

Co-op Legend? Whatever you're doing, it stops when they show up. Bungie did a good job of placing them in places that can set you back a good ways if you wipe, and their ability to throw some particularly painful grenades and supers behind cover is great. Hunkering down (especially close together) was suicide. You gotta keep moving and drawing their Supers into pillars and walls after they launch them, and look for spots to suppress and overwhelm them. Every time one of those Hunter Guardians fell, it was a mad dash to make sure that particular jerk would not revive, even if it meant dying for the execution. Just like our Guardians, Solar Hunters are the ones worthy of respect and fear. Truly great stuff.

On a similar note, I love that running out in the open was the best way to engage Savathun during her final fights. Taking cover was going to get you killed. I absolutely love boss fights where you are dancing with the enemy that you're fighting as opposed to relying on cheap shots because the game punishes you unfairly for exposing yourself. And even though there are invincibility phases during the final fight, the simple teamwork and cycle to make Savathun vulnerable again made the callout of "one more phase, wife!" surprise me with how stoked I felt as opposed to annoyed, because we had the three wizards down to an art.

It's funny that Sammy got impatient with her hints, and she went ahead and bought Dying Light 2, and while it's a great sequel to the first game, we were itching to set aside proper evenings to tackle each level in The Witch Queen, and we only played that one evening of DL2 so far. Considering that we played through the first Dying light three or four times, that's high praise for what Bungie accomplished with this co-op campaign.

I'm sure that Solo Legendary, I'd probably give it a 7/10, but the great fun that had Sammy and I screaming and cackling throughout easily make it a 10/10 experience, even if the story and characters were a bit on the uneven side (that revelation cutscene where we find out that the Hive were always supposed to be worthy of the Light, but were tricked almost made Sammy cry though, It was pretty fantastic).

Yeah gotta say, I've jumped into co-op legendary with a friend a few times and we got our teeth kicked in.