After the exciting reveal for Destiny 2’s next big expansion, “Lightfall,” players were greeted with a brand new season to play. In Season of Plunder you get to be a space pirate, board spaceships, have epic space battles and find buried treasure.

In Season of Plunder a villain has returned. Eramis the Kell of Darkness and has been broken out of the icy prison she was put in in Beyond Light by Destiny’s main antagonist, The Witness.

The Witness has tasked her to collect ancient darkness relics for a reason yet unknown. To do this, she has gathered old crews of fallen pirates from across the system. We join up with Mithrax, the leader of the friendly fallen that now live in the last city, his daughter, the extremely likable Eido, along with former mob boss, The Spider, and the always involved in everything, shady Drifter.

This season has a much lighter tone than the previous few seasons, especially Season of the Haunted, which put everyone who played it through the emotional ringer and ended with a loss. 

This is definitely welcome as while the intense darkness of the previous season led to some amazing narrative moments. A break from the emotional destruction, and the season’s epic pirate adventure theme was needed. 

While the tone is a departure from previous seasons, the story is still being advanced since The Witness is behind the events and it all leads to their greater plan, which will be seen in Lightfall. So despite the fact that this is a fun and lighthearted season, it does not feel like time is being wasted, due to the game’s overarching narrative being advanced.

The season’s story started off really strong, which is usual for Destiny seasons, and fans are excited to see how it’s going to develop in the following weeks.

As for gameplay, this season is absolutely packed with content. There are two new seasonal activities, a new weekly mission and a remastered Destiny One raid. In addition to that there is also of course a variety of brand new seasonal weapons and armor. Yet again, Bungie has continued to add more content to the seasonal package, as last season players got an entirely remastered Destination and a new Dungeon.

The two activities that fill the season’s loop are Ketchcrash and Expedition, with an extra weekly story activity called Hideouts. In Ketchcrash, you experience a fight between two ships in the sea of stars. It starts at the deck of your own ship fighting off fallen pirates as they board your ship and shooting cannons at the enemy ship. After that you board the enemy ship and fight to the top deck where you kill the captain.

While this activity is a lot like other previous seasonal activities in terms of actual mechanics, (throwing a ball at a thing, capturing a plate, killing specific targets, etc) the theming and density of enemies alone is enough to make this activity unique. The monumental amount of enemies that spawn along with the excellent seasonal soundtrack makes this activity significantly more enjoyable to play than others.

The other activity is the much more generic Expedition, in which you visit the game’s various destinations and dig up buried treasure. The mechanics are simple and repetitive, placing a drill and guarding it from enemies, throwing your treasure at a payload and then escorting that payload to your ship. 

The activity is still fun, and the fact that it’s combined with Ketcrash alleviates the repetitiveness of both activities. The activities feed into each other; you acquire map fragments in Ketchcrash which you can turn into treasure maps to use in Expedition.

Season of Plunder also brings back the system of seasonal upgrades, you can upgrade your ketch by hiring crewmates, increasing loot drops and more. However, with only 1-2 upgrades a week and any extra upgrades requiring you to max out your season rank every single time, this is a flaw of the game. 

The seasonal gameplay loop is engaging and definitely more content filled than previous seasons. There are also brand new weapons this season, their appearance is really cool and fits with the seasonal theme. A shotgun that looks like a blunderbuss and a sidearm that looks like a flintlock pistol are just some examples. The weapons seem to be really good even though I have not had time to experiment with them much or craft them.

The next big thing that came this season was the last of the subclass reworks, arc 3.0 follows void and solar 3.0. Overall, it’s very fun and quite strong, standouts being the new hunter super and the speed boost from being amplified. It’s yet to be seen how this class will do in higher level content such as grandmaster nightfalls and the master raid.

The best thing to come this season was the remaster of the beloved King’s Fall Raid. The raid has significantly improved since Destiny 1, every encounter has been tweaked to make it more interesting, teamwork oriented and action packed.

Pretty much everything that was not up to Destiny 2 standards was tweaked making this raid excellent and once again reigning as one of if not the best raid in the game. 

The loot is also amazing, the remade weapons from the original raid all feel and look amazing and have crazy perk combinations that make them some of the strongest in the game. They are also craftable which makes them stronger than ever before.

The raid exotic “Touch of Malice,” has also been  brought back into the game with a rework and it’s probably the best raid exotic in the game. It’s really strong and Destiny 2’s new ability focus with many abilities allowing regeneration of health has made it stronger than it ever was in its original state. 

The raid is free to play, meaning that even if you don’t own the season, you will still be able to play King’s Fall. 

Overall, season of the Plunder is definitely worth your money, you get a lot of fun replayable content and a weekly story that given Bungie’s track record will absolutely be worth coming back every week for.