Destiny: Rise of Iron

Rise of Iron breathes new life into a game that was starting to get old. This expansion pack is filled with enough new contents and modes to keep players engaged again.

A work of nostalgia. [December 2016, p.114]

Rise of Iron is a solid DLC that is almost flawless, but lacks anything new. Bungie simply prolongs the Destiny lifespan through the old-new content and doesn't hide the fact that it is a service for players who remained loyal to the game. If you want to enjoy Rise of Iron, you must really love Destiny and be willing to spend another dozens of hours doing the same things, you were doing for the past year. There is a new location, social space, weapons, basically everything you'd expect from the DLC. It just lacks inventiveness.

Rise of Iron is a solid expansion that quench the need of new content, but doesn't totally fill the belly of millions of Destiny’s fans.

Lords of Iron is the fourth DLC for Destiny and has some good moments as the Wrath of the Machines raid, but also a main quest that's too short and a serious lack of content.

Rise of Iron does a brilliant job in building up the legend of your Guardian, but offers very little innovation or advancement of the game's core features. Despite this, it stays true to what makes Destiny great – offering truly satisfying shooter encounters as a backdrop to a fantastic social experience.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is a decent enough expansion that fans will likely enjoy, but it feels lacking in wake of The Taken King. Time for Destiny 2, we think.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is a solid expansion to Bungie’s shoot and loot universe. While the campaign itself did feel a bit short, and the plot felt like it was paced too quickly, the new enemies, restructuring of old strikes, and the new raid all make up for the expansion’s short comings.

There's few bigger additions in Rise of Iron and the latest expansion certainly won't make you feel like you're playing a brand new game, but gathering fresh loot and discovering secrets can still be engaging.

Unlike The Taken King, Rise of Iron isn't an essential reincarnation of Destiny, but it is an expansion that delivers on its promise of rejuvenating Bungie's shooter – even if it does refuse to step outside of the game's well established comfort zone. A few fun story missions, a great new Raid, and a suite of fresh reasons to get back to the grind for better loot should be enough to keep the ever-present darkness at bay.

Destiny is the player’s story and Rise of Iron continues to make me feel like a legend in my own right, even if at the moment it holds a little less endgame vitality than other releases have offered.

Rise of Iron is a rather pedestrian expansion to what has become a pretty great first-person shooter. If you're looking for more Destiny, then you can't go wrong by picking it up, but nothing here will convince lapsed players to come back. It's simply more of the same, but that's fine.

A good addition, but certainly not of the same caliber that a fully fledged MMO would usually get.

With this fourth DLC, Destiny keeps on its tracks, and even if the new content is welcomed, there's nothing really exciting. The whole experience seems to go around in circles. Clearly Bungie's attention is now on the sequel.

Rise of Iron is disappointing. Its price is too high for the content it adds, but at the same time, we can't deny that it's still Destiny, and we always enjoy playing it.

Rise of Iron is an average expansion. While the new raid is fresh and fun, this DLC lacks the depth of narrative and lore that was found in The Taken King. Overall, it's enjoyable but there's not much content: Destiny is in desperate need of something new for its second chapter, due next year.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is a weird cookie. Bungie clearly put its live team in charge on this one, as there's nowhere near the amount of completely new-feeling stuff packed in as there was in Taken King -- and with so many people getting winded, a step that big was really needed. Yet, if I assess Destiny right now as a total package, with four expansions under its belt and hundreds of [good] tweaks and patches, it's easier to recommend.

While new armor and weapons are sprinkled throughout Destiny: Rise of Iron, we can’t escape the feeling that we’ve seen this all before.

Rise of Iron has just enough new content to keep me coming back for a while, but it feels like the bare minimum.

How much you care about these stories varies, and ultimately depends on how much you’re willing to invest to get there. Like Destiny as a whole, Rise of Iron has moments of legend, sandwiched between repetitive, forgettable tasks.

The game is great but it’s the same game it was a year ago, and has the same mechanics it had two years ago. The second game proper was due now and it has not arrived. This is filler. Quality filler, but filler nonetheless.

Destiny itself is undoubtedly fun to play, but this expansion is hard to recommend for the price.

Rise of Iron is a strange hiccup in Bungie’s progress towards making Destiny a better overall experience. SIVA is an interesting villain that is ultimately never explained or explored. The majority of the content here is the actual Plaguelands themselves, and all there is to do is a couple of fetch-quests and patrol missions. Everything in this expansion seems to revolve around tedious grinding; grinding to finish the Iron Record book and get more rewards, grinding to get your light level up to do the raid. Whereas Taken King did so much to improve Destiny in every way, Rise of Iron feels like a big step back.

To paraphrase what O. Henry said of New York, "Destiny" is really going to be something when they finally finish it. "Rise of Iron" makes it feel like Bungie is only just starting.

The stuff that is genuinely new is very good, but there’s so little of it that the sense of déjà vu, in a game that is already so repetitious, becomes overwhelming.

It feels timid. It feels safe. It feels like the last remaining breath before the possible sequel, as if Destiny is standing still and waiting for inspiration to arrive, rather than going out to find it.

Destiny: Rise of Iron is a big step back from The Taken King. While The Taken King was willing to push Destiny forward with brand new ideas, features, and a ton of new content, Rise of Iron is perfectly fine with recycling what has been run into the ground.

Destiny: Rise of Iron follows in the footsteps of its expansion predecessor. It maintains the already polished gameplay and desire for better loot, but the continued lack of depth, both in characters, story and general mission structure, stops Rise of Iron from becoming the game-changer The Taken King became one year ago.

In a detail that I can only laugh at, my most enjoyable time spent with Rise of Iron was in fact spent climbing a mountain.

A rather disappointing expansion that doesn’t add or improve anything to the storyline or the redundant hunt for better equipment.

Rise of Iron is nothing but a stop-gap between Destiny as it is and the inevitable sequel that will hopefully overhaul the whole thing.

The expansion lacks for the two things Destiny has never been short on from day one: personality and imagination.