This game follows that very familiar Bungie recipe. The lore and backstory of the game is phenomenal, the visual and sound designs are great, and the gunplay is very addicting. But is also has the same problems as their other games. The community is toxic, the game is 10x more fun with friends, there is some amount of FOMO and questionable decisions by Bungie HQ.
There has been so much criticism and vitriol surround this game and its mostly been for the wrong reasons. This game was never the 'Bungie Killer' nor was it the reason that Destiny 2 was 'shut down'. Marathon is an extraction shooter that appealed to the Destiny 2 community. So many people bought the game with their own head cannon of what the game should/would be and then got upset when it was exactly that; a PVP extraction shooter.
Buying this game was never going to 'save Destiny 2', and the negative reviews based on such an arbitrary reason are unfortunate.
This being said I am glad the team is listening and looking more into implementing permanent PVE gameplay. There has been decent communication from the dev team and I hope the game continues to improve and grow. This review is already long enough so [b]boom[/b] here's a condensed list of what I can think of:
[b]Pros[/b]
[list]
[*]Night Marsh is an extremely fun map, and the Complex boss is the exact kind of extra POI mechanics that this game deserves more of.
[*]The changes to grenades and bubble shields have been much needed and very impactful.
[*]The priority contracts have been tweaked and are much less brutal/annoying.
[*]The cradle is much quicker to progress than the previous faction milestones.
[*]The characters are HOT.
[/list]
[b]Cons[/b]
[list]
[*]The solo experience has been somewhat miserable with it being dominated by camping.
[*]Cryo random queue is [i]extremely[/i] hit or miss.
[*]Cryo rng monitors allowing for spawn rushes seem mechanically unintuitive.
[*]Exploits allowing vault breaker keys to be kept has been problematic and needs to be fixed.
[*]Some of the armory trades still need to be tweaked as they are too expensive or are unlocked too late to be of any use.
[/list]
There are plenty more pros and cons and I'm sure other more well written reviews cover them. Overall I'd recommend Marathon to anyone who likes extraction shooters and hopefully in the future there is more PVE for those interested. 9/10
