Year five of Destiny 2 is rapidly coming to a close, and a new era will begin with the upcoming Lightfall DLC. With that in mind, it’s time to reflect on what has transpired in the last year, specifically regarding the Seasons that came with the Witch Queen DLC, Season of the Risen, Season of the Haunted, Season of Plunder, and Season of the Seraph. Each Season has its ups and downs, but today, we want to rank them from best to worst in terms of how good each Season was overall. So today, let’s rank each Destiny 2 Witch Queen Season from best to worst.
4. Season of Plunder
Let’s start this list by stating that none of the Seasons released in the last year have been bad, as there were worse ones for sure, but Season of Plunder is kicking this list off as the worst among all of the Seasons this past year. Plunder was pretty solid overall, but compared to the rest, it felt pretty underwhelming. Let’s start with the storyline for the Season.
The Season revolved around the Witness freeing Eramis, the final boss of the Beyond Light DLC, from her Stasis prison. We needed to stop her from collecting ancient artifacts the Witness was interested in. This time around, we teamed up with the Drifter, the Spider, Mithrax, and a new character, Mithrax’s daughter, Eido. To stop Eramis, we formed a crew of fallen pirates to battle her and her staff of fallen pirates.
Throughout the season, as we collect more artifacts, we learn more of Mithrax’s dark past, including the secret behind the mysterious artifacts, which turned out to be pieces of one of the Witness’s disciples, Nezarec. In the end, we collected all of the artifacts, thwarted Eramis’s schemes, and she retreated. We even used the power of the artifacts to restore Osiris, who had been in a coma since Season of the Lost.
Overall, the story was pretty interesting to learn week after week, and the reveal of Nezarec being contained in the artifacts was pretty cool, as we knew Nezarec was actually the one who caused the first collapse of humanity many years ago. The gameplay, on the other hand, was a much different story.
Season of Plunder introduced two new seasonal activities, Ketchcrash and Expedition. Ketchcrash was a funny six-man activity where we would board enemy pirate ships and take out their captain in the end. Expedition on the other hand was a very slow-paced three-man activity where we would go searching around a designated area for “buried” treasure. The idea was cool, but the execution was poor, as the activity was very slow and not very rewarding, but it was the only activity that rewarded Plundered Umbral energy, which was needed for an abundance of items and such.
Along with the seasonal activities came the return of the beloved Destiny 1 raid, King’s Fall, which was a massive success, and would be considered the “saving grace” of the Season. Overall, the gameplay loop was “solid,” as, unfortunately, Expedition really held back the overall joy of it due to its slow pacing.
In the end, Season of Plunder was a good season in terms of story, loot, and gameplay, but it could have been better with some adjustments to Expedition, and more.
3. Season of the Haunted
Up next is Season of the Haunted. Season of the Haunted is one of those Seasons where the story really shined more so than the gameplay, but the gameplay was also noteworthy as well. Unlike Season of the Plunder, Haunted got right to the point and didn’t drag things out, which was a nice bonus.
Season of the Haunted saw the return of Calus and the Leviathan and is now infested with the power of Nightmares, which affected three of our main characters, Crow, Zavala, and Caital. These characters were brought face to face with the Nightmares of their past. For Crow, his sinful past life as Uldren Sov; for Caital, her hero and rumored lover, Dominus Ghaul; and Zavala, his wife, Safiyah.
Each week we learned more about these characters, like how Crow couldn’t forgive himself for his sins as Uldren Sov or how Zavala blamed himself for the death of his son. It was a very emotional Season, to say the least, which was a nice treat since we don’t get “heavy” moments like that too often. Ultimately, we were eventually able to drive out Calus and banish the Nightmares, at the cost of Calus fully becoming the next disciple of the Witness. We’ll get a chance to face him once again in the upcoming Lightfall DLC.
The seasonal gameplay loop revolved around a new activity, Nightmare Containment, where we would face off against Nightmare enemies in the Castellum of the Leviathan. It was a nice treat to be able to freely explore the Leviathan again, but you could only explore a portion of it, and not any of the areas from the sunset raid, which stunk a bit. That said, Nightmare Containment was a solid activity to participate in, and the loot was extremely worthwhile.
On top of that, a brand new Dungeon had released shortly after the Season started, Duality, where we traveled into Calus’s mind to discover his Nightmare, which ended up being his own daughter, Caital. Duality was met with positive reviews and is considered to be one of the best Dungeons in the game to this day.
Overall, Season of the Haunted was met with very positive feedback but got a bit slow near the end of the Season due to a lack of content. In terms of story and loot, though, the Season did a great job of keeping us entertained.
2. Season of the Risen
Typically, the Seasons that release with an expansion don’t directly correlate with the events of the DLC, but Season of the Risen directly capitalizes on the hype of the Witch Queen, bringing us plenty of Hive Guardians to encounter and more.
Starting out, the storyline wasn’t anything to brag about, as essentially, the whole point of the Season was to prevent the Lucent Hive from spreading their influence across the system. That said, this indirectly benefitted the Season since it capitalized on allowing us to fight more of the Lucent Hive, which was a massive success with the player base.
Lucent Hive, otherwise known as light-bearing Hive, was the first time we, as Guardians, had to face enemies wielding the Light in such a manner outside of PvP activities, and it terrified us in a good way. The seasonal activity, Psi-Ops Battlegrounds, was a great activity to continuously battle these enemies while also being able to fight a projection of the Witch Queen, Savathun, which was a nice bonus. The loot from the Season was also top tier in both weapons and armor, which made the activity more enjoyable to run, knowing there was amazing loot to earn.
On top of that, we also saw the introduction of Light subclass revamps, otherwise known as Light 3.0, which started with the Void subclass. This was a massive change to the game that power crept the game to a whole new level, and Guardians loved it. Even though the other Light subclasses would be updated in Season of the Haunted and Season of Plunder, it didn’t bring the same effect as the Void revamp, and you could argue that it changed the game forever as Guardians became more powerful than ever before.
Overall, Season of the Risen did a great job utilizing the success of the Witch Queen DLC and brought more to the table than any Season that released with a DLC ever did. Yet, only one can sit at the top.
1. Season of the Seraph
This shouldn’t surprise most players, as the last Season of the Witch Queen DLC, Season of the Seraph, was truly one for the books. The list of reasons why this Season was so special could go on and on, but we’ll get to the point.
The story goes as follows, Xivu Arath, the Hive war god, has returned once more to try and take control of Rasputin’s warsats so she can use them for her plans. It’ll take the combined efforts of us, Anna Bray, the Stranger, Osiris, Mara Sov, and Clovis Bray, to help stop this crisis. However, Clovis Bray has plans of his own, as he wishes to take control of Rasputin’s tech so he may use it for himself. Eventually, we were able to drive out Clovis Bray and restore Rasputin in the process.
Unfortunately, Xivu Arath and Eramis successfully hacked into Rasputin’s warsat network and aimed his missiles toward the Traveler. In a last-ditch effort, Rasputin was able to divert the missiles and sacrificed himself in the process. In terms of story-telling, this is one of the best pieces in franchise history.
Moving onto the gameplay, we saw a new seasonal activity, Heist Battlegrounds, which saw terrific reviews and is even being utilized as Nightfalls in future Seasons. We also saw a brand new Dungeon release called Spire of the Watcher, which also saw positive feedback and had great loot to obtain. Even the Deep Stone Crypt raid got revamped, where the weapons became craftable, providing more incentive to play it. In terms of loot, Season of the Seraph easily clears every Season released thus far by a large margin.
Overall, in terms of content, loot, and story, Season of the Seraph is one of the best Seasons the game has ever seen, and hopefully, we can see future Seasons of this quality and beyond, going into the Lightfall DLC.
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