History YMMV / Destiny2

* SidetrackedByTheGoldSaucer: Easily one of the most favored activities of ''Season of the Deepp'' is fishing. Not only does it help you grind for armor, which helps raising your Power Level for your underleveled characters, but continuing to fish with others increases a meter that boosts the quality of the fish you catch and increases the chance of getting an exotic fish, which can be turned in for a free Exotic outside of Raid-exclusive Exotics.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: ''Lightfall.'' The Expansion starts with The Witness and the Black Fleet arriving on Earth and attacking the Traveler, and then proceeds to go to Neptune for what has been described as a [[{{Padding}} Filler Arc]] focused on us unlocking Strand, and stopping Calus from getting to [[MacGuffin The Veil]] without ever explaining what The Veil is or why The Witness wants it, or ever explaining what Strand is. The Witness barely features in the Campaign, and its plans for the Traveler are never elaborated upon.
** This also applies to the way in which the player finds themselves acquiring Strand. Unlike ''Beyond Light,'' where the powers of Stasis were essentially "gifted" to them by the Ziggurat after seeing it in use by Eramis and House Salvation, ''Lightfall'' sees you finding Strand literally sitting in the street, with the power itself being offered very little explanation besides it being something that the Guardian is able to harness.

** As the power scaling of the Young Wolf and their enemies becomes exponentially worse, Bungie has been forced to have most new villains [[WorfHadTheFlu conveniently weakened at the last minute]] or revealed to be holding back [[{{Pride}} out of pure vanity]] so that they can still be killed through methods within the Tiger engine's constraints whihle remaining lore-friendly. Though largely a NecessaryWeasel, reception at this storytelling method has turned sour over time as some feel it cheapens each individual villain as a character and/or an in-game enemy to the detriment of the lore this was intended to avoid hurting.

** The Tarrabah is considered to be a ''downgrade'' to top tier [=SMGs=] due to a large amount of factors, chief amongst them being the fact that it's an Exotic Energy SMG that appeared during the [[TierInducedScrappy Recluse]]'s reign of terror, and as such gets unfavourably compared to the latter. Its Ravenous Beast perk takes longer to activate, and the buildup is immediately disrupted if you do so much as swap to another weapon of even ''pull your Ghost out''; this is mind-boggling, considering the Symmetry from Season 9 is able to conserve its buff charges even when stowed. While it boasts the highest burst damage of any Primary weapon in the game with its perk, it's still a Primary, and it will run out of ammo really fast with Ravenous Beast active. It's little wonder players have taken to calling it "Tarrabahl" as a pun on the word "terrible". With the change to ammo economy making all primary weapons have infinite ammo, however, the Tarrabah has carved a niche for itself and can become a terrifying weapon to face against in the Crucible, though players still have to deal with the buff loss when swapping weapons.

** The shift in weapon categories is also a case of "if it ain't broken, don't fix it", as Kinetic and Energy weapons are essentially letting you equip two Primaries from the first game's weapon system, while most Special Weapons (sans Sidearms) are moved to the Power Weapon slot, traditionally occupied by ''D1''[='=]s Heavy Weapons; this induces redundancy for having two similar weapons out of three, and causes TierInducedScrappy for the Power Weapon slot (e.g., why use a shotgun when you can always wield a rocket launcher). This also translates into making players feel a lot less powerful than in the previous game. Patch 2.0 remedied this by changing back to a Primary-Special-Heavy trinity system, but also went beyond by letting you equip up to two Specials based on whether they're Kinetic or Energy-based, making the best out of the old D1 system and D2's weapon typing.

** The reveal trailer for ''The Final Shape'' managed to one up that of ''Lightfall'' with something no one saw coming: '''''[[BackFromTheDeadthe return of Cayde-6]]'''''!

* ShockingMoments: ''Lightfall'' had been consistently teased as the beginning of an apocalyptic event from various hints in the game's story. So the actual reveal trailer showing its main setting to be a ''pristine, thriving {{Cyberpunk}} civilization'' that had enforced TheMasquerade until the Darkness revealed it to the outside came as a massive curveball, even without the UsedFuture setting of the main story.

* {{Narm}}: In cutscenes, sometimes your character will lift whatever weapon's in their kinetic slot to ready it and point it at a target one-handed. It looks perfectly fine with hand cannons, sidearms, and submachine guns, kind of okay with auto/scout/pulse rifles, and utterly ridiculous with sniper rifles, grenade launchers, trace rifles, and bows. At least power weapons are avoided so it doesn't look even more ridiculous.

** The player Guardian regularly suffers from CutsceneIncompetence, never being allowed to do anything more than point a weapon at somebody and maybe drop one or two lines, rendering them a FlatCharacter outside of cutscenes since they don't say a word. In the early days of the franchise this was more or less glossed over, as the universe was still being set up, and there was a decent amount of dialogue in cutscenes to give the player Guardian just enough personality to make them stand out. Starting with ''Destiny 2'', however, Bungie seemed to suddenly grow afraid of the player doing anything more than that, as they became a straight up HeroicMime up until ''Forsaken'', and even then it's only for a few lines. They get sort of better in ''Shadowkeep'' onward, but that's only in regards to dialogue - actually acting beyond pointing a weapon at someone and running somewhere is off the table, leaving them just standing around staring at people awkwardly. In Bungie's attempt to not invalidate whatever personality or powerset a player may have in mind for their character, they end up accidentally making the player Guardian feel like a mindless attack dog that someone can just order around.
*** The issue came to a head in the final scene of ''Season of Plunder'', where Mithrax and Eramis have their sword duel in front of Eido who pleads with them to stop. The player Guardian, who came to Eido's rescue and should by all rights have all the incentive to intervene and stop both... just stands back and does absolutely nothing. Even when Eramis ends up escaping, they still don't do anything, giving the impression they held onto the IdiotBall rather tightly.

* FanDislikedExplanation: There are numerous attempts by Bungie to integrate the continued use of reskinned or downsized content (usually enemies and weapons) into the lore, ranging from "[[ScatterbrainedSenior Banshee trying to cope with his memory loss]]" (Something New's lore) to "[[BreakOutTheMuseumPiece they're refurbished antiques]]" (Neomuna's weapons) to "the enemies are folding into each other [[GodzillaThreshold because you've made them that desperate]]" (the Vex and Fallen.) Reception is often lukewarm at best, since some have taken it as Bungie using the writing team to cover for inadequacies on the teams responsible for actual content.

** ''Lightfall'' received major criticism for the abrupt increase in difficulty in a way that feels nonsensical. Neomuna, for example, has a perpetual power delta, meaning you will forever be under powered now matter your current power level. This is despite the fact that it's a patrol destination, not a high difficulty instance like a dungeon. Lost Sectors also got slammed for being very difficult to grind up to, with the forced power delta reeking of FakeDifficulty that requires tons of grinding just to get to the point where you can have full combat efficiency... on Legend. It'd take even longer to get to full power for Master. Given that Solo Legend/Master Lost Sectors are one of the few ways to get new exotics (the Legend campaign gives them as a reward on completion), the pain is felt even more.

** the Root of Nightmares Raid from ''Lightfall'' is a more specific example. With the World's First clear coming just two and a half hours after the raid was released (only beaten by Wrath of the Machine from Destiny 1's Rise of Iron expansion), and it was a much, ''much'' higher amount of fireteams managing a Day 1 clear than normal (for context, about 45,000 fireteams cleared Root of Nightmares Day 1, the next-highest amount of Day 1 clears was King's Fall, a reprised Raid from ''Destiny 1'' with about 8000 day 1 clears). Many players complained about the Raid being far too mechanically simple compared to other raids from Destiny, with three of the four encounters revolving almost entirely around a single, very simple, mechanic. Even within the 48-hour Contest Mode period, players were already posting videos of themselves soloing entire encounters with the forced -20 power delta.

** Nezarec is a character that plays almost every single DarkerAndEdgier trope completely straight, being a "God of Pain" who spreads nightmares, has control of both Light and Dark, and even runs around with a massive scythe as his main weapon. He spends half of his time interacting with the player making direct promises of bring pain and death wherever he goes. All of this would normally combine into a character too edgy to take seriously, but not only does Nezarec manages to actually be very entertaining villain who provides a refreshing ObviouslyEvil counterpart to the likes of [[TheStoic Rhulk]] and [[FauxAffablyEvil Calus]], but his lore shows that he's more than '''earned''' his reputation.

** While hilarious, a lot of Cayde-6's lines in the "Rally the Troops" trailer turn into BlackHumor once you play the game and realize just how bad the situation actually is.
*** When he says "You're a bunch of dirty misfits, but you're all that's left so you'll have to do", it's because they literally are some of the only Guardians left, and their best chance of retaking the City and the Traveler.

** The Exo Stranger's vision of the Dark Future, where Ikora is the last member of the Vanguard left alive, became eerily prophetic when Zavala's voice actor, Creator/LanceReddick, passed away in March 2023.

** The Exo Stranger's vision of the Dark Future, where Ikors is the last member of the Vanguard left alive, became eerily prophetic when Zavala's voice actor, Creator/LanceReddick, passed away in March 2023.

* NarmCharm: The Witness has an odd, cartoonish-looking design that looks jarringly out of place compared to the rest of the game's characters, complete with oversized anime-style eyes - which makes them look creepy and adds a [[SurrealHorror terrifying, fever dream-like quality]] to their introductory cutscene at the end of ''The Witch Queen''.

** ''Season of the Seraph'' has shone the light on a new terror in the crucible; The Titan barricade. With the light 3.0 subclasses, it became easier than ever for Titans to have a wall to throw up at any time. Combine that with the Citan's Ramparts exotic and Dead Man's Tale or No Time To Explain and you get a guardian that likes to hang back and pick people off from afar.

** Of the characters introduced in ''Lightfall'', Nimbus isn’t very well-liked in contrast to his master Rohan, [[spoiler: who ends up being TooCoolToLive]]. Being one of the two [[spoiler: later the sole]] Cloudstrider, protectors of [[HiddenElfVillage Neomunda]] doesn’t save them from a fairly poor reputation of being a very out of place comic relief character during an otherwise [[WhamEpisode serious campaign]]. Their NonStandardCharacterDesign and [[HellIsThatNoise grating voice filter]] does them no favors, either.