Destiny 2’s Season Of The Witch Is A Hit – Why?

We are just a week into Destiny 2’s new season, Season of the Witch, but I am willing to declare already that yes, it’s a hit. No, forget the honeymoon period, I’ve been doing this long enough to tell when something is just fun because it’s new or if something fun because it’s actually good, and between sandbox updates, quality of life changes and the actual content of the season, Season of the Witch is…actually good.

I am going to go through a quick line list of everything I think it is working for this season:

Hive Eris – Just a badass storyline where we are killing things to power up Eris into a literal Hive god to kill Xivu Arath. Stellar idea for a seasonal plot. 10/10, no notes.

Immaru – Is hilarious. Not often we get a genuinely funny character in the game and he has way more to do here than he did in The Witch Queen. He might be the best since Drifter.

Savathun’s Spire – This feels like a randomized strike, complete with individual encounters and traversal segments and mild puzzling. Wild enemy density, pretty fun new elemental crystal mechanic.

Altars of Summoning – This feels like the return of Sundial, one of my favorite seasonal activities, with the additional concept of adding difficulty modifiers to each encounter, with the final one being genuinely very hard, especially with randoms.

Tarot Cards – Just a very neat concept to randomize activity buffs, and a way that’s breaks out of the “upgrade the little boxes” vendor system in a unique form. Excellent idea.

Crafting Leveling – Leveling weapons with materials alone instead of grinding and grinding is an enormously helpful quality of life changes.

New Strand Aspects – These are all incredibly well designed, minus Weavewalker breaking PvP in a number of ways. Titan’s Banner of War is one of the most fun builds that has been invented in quite some time.

New Exotics – These are also quite fun. You can get an army of Void Buddies on Warlock, an army of Moth Buddies on Hunter (with a unique interaction with the seasonal exotic) and a golden gun hammer on Titan. Cool stuff. And this is before the return of Necrochasm in the raid and possibly one more in an actual seasonal mission.

Exotic Rotator – A good idea to reinsert some of the best missions in Destiny history into the game, allowing people to catch up with those, get those guns, and also farm defunct seasonal weapons for crafting they may have missed. Well done concept and execution here.

Hand Cannon Buff – No exaggeration, one of the best-feeling sandbox buffs they’ve ever done. Hand Cannons have struggled so long in PvE that a massive buff like this one feels so refreshing.

Monte Carlo Catalyst – You can stab people with Monte Carlo now, it’s all anyone has ever dreamed of.

So, what don’t I like? The main thing I am not wild about so far is the new elemental orb seasonal exotic mechanic. I just don’t think it’s very useful in the chaotic, super mob density fights we now have in the game. They’re too hard to see and you have to stop your actual combat loop to use them. It feels like they should be more visible like Warmind Cells were and have the same utility.

But yeah, overall, excellent start to the season, and I have a feeling this will become a favorite over the past few years.

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