Destiny 2

Destiny 2 is Bungie's first-person looter shooter: a science-fiction universe where you play a Guardian, a hero resurrected by the Light to defend humanity's last city from alien races and the Darkness closing in around it. Everything orbits a single loop: you shoot, you earn better loot, you come back stronger to take on bigger challenges. And that loop rests on some of the best gunplay in the genre — the feel of every weapon in hand is its calling card.

On top of that, Destiny 2 layers elemental subclasses with distinct powers and playstyles, a constant rain of weapons and armor whose stats and perks push you to chase the perfect roll, and a progression system that always dangles a higher power ceiling. The campaign is cinematic and polished, but the real game begins once the story ends and you dive into its enormous roster of activities.

Destiny 2 is at its best in co-op. Three-player strikes, dungeons, and above all the six-player raids —puzzles of coordination, mechanics and endurance that stand as the game's summit— define what it means to play it seriously. For the competitive crowd there's a PvP suite with several modes. You can play all of it solo or with friends, but locking in a regular group is what turns Destiny 2 into a hobby.

Destiny 2 is free-to-play. The free base, called New Light, includes a good chunk of the historical content, co-op activities and every PvP mode — a generous entry point to try the game without spending a cent. Paid content arrived through expansions (around 40 USD), season passes and, since 2025, a model of two large expansions per year plus seasonal updates. Cosmetics are bought separately in the Eververse store with the premium currency Silver. The game is also part of the PS Plus catalog, and around recent launches Bungie has opened free-access windows to the expansions. You can download it free on Steam or from the official site and start with New Light.

As of 2026, Destiny 2 is alive and playable, but it hit a turning point: Bungie ended new-content development. The Monument of Triumph update was the last one, and the expansions that were on the way, Shattered Cycle and The Alchemist, were canceled after the studio's financial losses under Sony. The servers stay online with minor fixes, and there's a huge backlog of content —years of campaigns, raids, dungeons and weapons— to play through for the first time. What's gone is growth: the game is past its expansion era.

It's worth being honest about the community's mood. The player count hit all-time lows on Steam after the controversial endgame redesign that shipped with the 2025 expansion; the following release won back some goodwill but didn't reverse the slide. Even so, the core activities and PvP still find matches, and the signature co-op content is as good as it ever was.

If co-op shooting and the healthy addiction of chasing better loot appeal to you, Destiny 2 is a near-mandatory stop: its gunplay, its raids and its mountain of free content make it easy to recommend, especially if you have people to play it with. The important caveat is that you're arriving at a world that has already reached its ending: don't expect a booming community or new stories to come. As an experience for mining a formidable back catalog, it's still very much worth it; as a growing live service, that chapter is over.