The Taken King: First Impressions

The Taken King has finally arrived and here are my impressions for those still waiting to get their hands on the new expansion.

With the Taken King  you receive an eight-mission campaign, a new raid, strikes, multiplayer content, patrols, gear, sub-classes and more 

The Taken King’s story presents a new and more powerful enemy, in the form of large creepy characters known as the Taken. Some of these enemies create greater chaos by possessing the ability to hinder your vision, leaving your screen dark and only partially visible, while others even duplicate if you don’t kill them fast enough.

The Taken do provide a much greater challenge, but the story still feels relativity short and can be completed in just less than four hours.

At first, I thought the expansion didn’t quite hold its value, but new quests pop up after you complete the main story, so you’ll still have activities to keep you busy and level up your gear.

I’ll also say the campaign offers stunning cinematics, and while the original Destiny campaign was filled with lots of bright colourful scenery, The Taken King provides a much more daunting ambience, which fits with the Taken King himself, Oryx.

I believe this was a great way to keep the expansion from falling into the midst of the original game. The original characters are much more fleshed out and the original voice actors are back, with the exception of Peter Dinklage’s ghost. Nathan Fillion voicing Cayde-6 provides for some highlight moments in the cinematics, providing a lot more personality in The Taken King.

The recent update has made leveling super easy, with most players reaching level 40 on release day of the expansion. However, you’ll still need to grind the new content in order to raise your light level, especially if you plan on attempting the new King’s Fall raid.

The new option to infuse gear can be helpful, but save up your Legendary Marks and make sure you don’t accidently hit “ascend” instead of “infuse”, as ascending your weapon to the next level is a costly 25 marks versus infusing another similar item for only 3 marks. To infuse an item, you’re basically dismantling the one similar item you don’t want to keep, so you can add its specific perks to the legendary you plan on using.

The Taken King’s new location, Dreadnaught, is a spacecraft level which offers lots of exploration. The ship gives players more activities and a ton of enemies, and I haven’t even explored the entire map yet.

Runes are found throughout your exploration of the Taken King content, and these are used to summon The Court of Oryx public events. This isn't your average Destiny public event, and players can expect a greater challenge, as you rely on teamwork to defeat much more complex bosses. Don’t expect to dominate these events alone.

The strikes are fun and definitely more challenging, but at the moment I haven’t unlocked them all. The expansion includes three primary strikes and one additional strike exclusive to the PlayStation version of the game.

Each player will also get a trial specific for their character class in order to achieve and test out their new sub-class. For the sub-class trial, I tested out the Hunter’s new bow skill which allows you to shoot void energy to damage and trap your enemies. The new raid was unavailable at the time, but will offer even more challenges. 

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the content and I haven’t even experienced all of what the Taken King has to offer. I entered the Taken King sceptical of the value of the expansion, however, to my pleasant surprise, I discovered that the Taken King didn’t merely serve as a DLC expansion pack, but in my opinion, a whole game, one which surpassed the quality of the original.  

This is a great time to return to Destiny if you’ve set the game aside, as you now have a more appealing, charismatic story with more challenging enemies. If you are completely new to Destiny, this is an even better time to jump on board with Bungie because you can get all the content for less than half of what Destiny players originally paid.

For the price of the original game, players can now get Destiny, the two previous DLCs, and the Taken King expansion. And that is a deal!

What were your first impressions of The Taken King? Let us know in the comments below!

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