I'll start off with some basic thoughts on The Taken King before getting into the Raid. I've had my complaints about Destiny, but overall I've really enjoyed it over the past year, and I've had a blast playing it. If it got stale for me, I'd simply cut back my playing time to maybe once a week or less, and it all worked out fine. Hell, the biggest issues I've had with Destiny have come from connection problems (screw you weasel).

And yet, The Taken King absolutely made the game so much better. It breathed new life into nearly everything, and I've had an even greater time playing than I did in the entire previous year. Missions and encounters are wonderful, complexity and difficulty are fantastic, and there are still so many things for me to do individually or with friends.

I don't like how nearly all of the assets for characters and things are re-used. For all of the "new" that we got, the Taken are basically just the same enemies with slightly warped forms of attack. That is disappointing, but it is what it is. I also feel like "levels" are useless beyond capping people from using certain items now that light level is the thing that truly matters. Or maybe that's the point?

The "story" definitely exists now in-game, but it's a minor step up from where we were. I'm not surprised by this, and I think it's a great step in the right direction. The story doesn't provide much resolution to anything, and not much characterization was built upon aside from Cayde, and no consequence was really felt from everything (aside from Eris, give or take whatever comes later). Regardless, I'm largely pleased with what was presented.

Which leads me to King's Fall. I went in blind with CrazedOne, j41m3z, petetheduck, Wilshire, and rowboat, and it was a real blast. Starting out on the Dreadnaught was pretty nifty. I like that we had to do a mini-puzzle to open the portal, sort of like we had to coordinate to open the Vault of Glass. It was a fun little intro that got us ready for everything within.

I absolutely loved the jumping puzzle. It was fun, unique, and got pretty exciting at times. We also got the first "hidden" chest. The next area was pretty neat, also. Split your team, switch off with running back and forth to the center of the room, and then move on. That was a great concept.

The Warpriest was by far one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had in a game. It took us a bit to figure it all out, but the mechanics behind winning this encounter were great. He was a bit of a bullet sponge, but it all worked out. The design behind the entirety of this portion was just fantastic.

When we got into the hazy labyrinth, it was a nice break from all the running and gunning. We spent a ton of time in there, primarily because I refused to believe it was empty. We ended up finding a secret place up top that led inside a room that would make your controller vibrate, and from there we figured out the puzzle to get the second hidden chest. That was awesome. It was pretty disappointing that the chest didn't exactly pay out anything special, but the concept was still neat. I look forward to reproducing it.

And then there was Golgoroth. Artificial difficulty at its finest (and by that I mean worst). The encounter itself was so excellently designed that I almost feel like it's ruined by the fact that he's nothing but an obnoxiously overpowered bullet sponge. Even after we perfected our strategy and had the design mechanics down, we weren't able to get him down before Enrage. The level of health on that thing is absolutely obnoxious, and I can't honestly say we would have beaten it if I didn't have a Black Spindle dealing out close to 100,000 damage per shot on his stomach. I'm torn on this encounter primarily because I think it was really fun figuring out how to beat him, but completely obnoxious even after it was all figured out.

To say the least, I was very pleased with having yet another "relaxation" moment after Golgoroth. The platforming puzzle was fun, especially when someone in my group was standing beside one of the giant spikes and got launched without even knowing what hit him. It was fun exploring that whole place, finding the Calcified Fragments, and getting the third hidden chest. Another excellent designed location, Bungie!

Which then led to the Deathsingers. Yeah, the speedbumps. They're not even a boss. The countdown timer is the boss, they already did this with Crota, and they don't even fight back while you pound them into oblivion. They could be replaced by rocks that need to be chipped away at until they're gone and it wouldn't make a difference. By far the most disappointing encounter of both King's Fall and Crota.

Aside from the Deathsingers, figuring out the platform encounter was nifty. You really, really have to be able to jump perfectly, or your whole team is pretty much guaranteed to wipe. This encounter took a while for us because we kept failing jumps. Pro-tip, if some of your teammates can't jump, once they're chosen to be the fazed-out person, have them kill themselves prior to starting the process. Keep doing this until someone you want to be the jumper is selected. Once we did this, the encounter was beyond easy.

It took us about ten hours total going in blind to get to Oryx, which includes a ton of exploring every nook and cranny. Due to real life time constraints, my group only started Oryx to see what would happen, but we didn't get to actually give it a real attempt. Last night, Disciple, squid, pete, Lawnmower, Reborn Stellar, and I took on Oryx. It took us about two hours to beat him. At one point, we had him to no health, he appeared at the "bottom" of the area for us to deliver the final blow, but apparently there's a glitch that allows him to go into negative health if you got rid of all of his health and took too many turns hurting him when he was on the sides of the map. He wiped us. We had to try again. We didn't lose our composure, and eventually we were successful.

I'd say that Oryx was the most fun I had of all the "boss" encounters. Everyone had a job, dying or making an error didn't necessarily mean we had to wipe, and Oryx wasn't a bullet sponge by any sense of the imagination. The "bombs" we had to deal with, the Ogres, the platforms, the jumping, and shooting Oryx himself was all very well thought out and put together from design to execution by Bungie.

All in all, this Raid was absolutely fantastic. One massive bullet sponge and one waste of time "boss" encounter aside, I was blown away by the complexity and creativity that went into this thing. How do you top this? I hope more artificial difficulty isn't the answer to that. I know Cody keeps saying something about Vault of Glass and King's Fall having a baby. If that's somehow possible, I'm down.

As a little bit of side note, I was hoping King's Fall would provide something story-related after we won. Oryx is dead. How do the Taken react to that? What happens with the Dreadnaught? Is humanity just taking over the whole thing? Or is it just gonna float out there and be a battle location forever and ever? Or maybe Bungie has future plans for it for when the Cabal High Command shows up? Either way, I'm excited for what's to come, and I still have plenty to do now! Thanks to everyone who played through with me.

TL;DR: Bungie did a really super awesome excellent job, give or take a few things here and there.