Against All Odds, Destiny Rising is Good || 2025 Review and Guide
As a Burnt Out D2 Player and Gacha Hater, it's a Miracle I Love this game, and even Recommend it.
Destiny Rising is a *mobile* spin-off of Destiny, *created by NetEase*. This means that there is a massive moon called the Traveler that entered the solar system, that grants power to humanity, and seemingly brings with it aliens that desire to control it. You’ll play as space magic Traveler infused, gun wielding warriors called light bearers (or guardians), and you’ll fight these aliens to protect humanity.
As you follow an overarching narrative, you’ll get loot in the forms of currency to upgrade your character, as well as GUNS, the majority of which ‘roll’ with a selection of random perks. Over the course of your time with the game, you’ll play and replay a vast majority of activities in an attempt to collect materials, guns with specific perk synergies, and special exotic weapons. Everything you do contributes to your character’s power level, eventually qualifying them to be able to play tougher and tougher activities, which also contain the best chances to obtain the most powerful and rare rewards in the game. Then, to a degree, rinse and repeat sections of that cycle per each in-game season. Do some of it with your friends or other players in a light MMO setting. It’s all good fun.
Pretty bog-standard stuff if you’ve played destiny 2 right? The “MOBILE version” phrase in that initial paragraph does a lot of heavy lifting. As a ‘mobile’ version of a very similar game play loop to Destiny, you can expect a few differences, such as the game’s overarching scale, activity length, graphical fidelity, and of course, the ability to play on your smartphone.
Alongside those differences, this may not be a game made by Bungie... but NetEase is trying to emulate their strongest of suits, which I believe they’re doing with an incredible degree of success. The game FEELS so spot on similar to Destiny 2, it’s SHOCKING when you first experience it. Even if you don’t ever commit to playing this game long term, there’s some real novelty in walking around an open patrol zone, exploring, and taking out groups of enemies to get a sense of that signature ability and FPS action gameplay that the franchise is known for.
In addition to following core gameplay mechanics, it follows a number of essential core lore concepts, helping existing Destiny fans feel right at home in the universe, with tweaks and changes in those regards being very minor. All of Destiny Rising is also set “many years” before the events of Bungie’s Destiny, in a completely alternate (non-canon) timeline, which gives NetEase some wiggle room to get creative, and honestly? To cook up some fantastic ideas (like giant light wielding sentient mechs, for example).
The true NetEase sprinkle of magic is through one-off acts of ‘spectacle’ both in cut-scenes and gameplay. You’ll see the power of the characters as they fight beside you in missions, and you’ll play fun sequences that only happen once, for cool factor or plot reasons. Now, you may not entirely be the main character of Destiny Rising, but the perfectly balanced trade off is being able to participate in the histories of MANY characters, through quests focused on a defining adventure for them, which make for some powerful, unique world building.
The game comes together quite beautifully against the backdrop of music created with the help of Bungie music veterans, some of which have composed Destiny tracks for 10 years. For Rising, they did not hold back in creating tracks with the gravitas you’d expect a new Destiny game to have, and I appreciate them greatly.
So. The gacha system. In your time playing for free, you’ll earn enough to draw at least 100 times before feeling that well dry and slow to a crawl. But, that’ll be enough to get you all the basic characters and some duplicates. They’re nice to have, but to get to the game’s credits at the end of its initial campaign, none of it will be necessary.
So the question you’re wondering, is Destiny Rising pay to win? Well. In a way, it can be. Big spenders will have characters and duplicates. You can also outright purchase some materials. Do these all directly affect how strong you are in the game, absolutely. But PVP in this game isn’t competitive, (they heavily balance character power in there and in ‘Gambit 2’) and I’m not doing a day one Destiny Rising “raid race” anytime soon, so I honestly don’t even care that people can do this. Just... stay away from interacting with all this stuff if you feel this type of shortcut would tempt you.
In relation to all this, there are what will initially feel like one million different items you’ll need for one million corresponding actions. Every activity in this game drops a little something different. Miraculously, you don’t have to remember where a single thing comes from because the game deep links its source right on the item itself. It’s a quality of life game changer. Can’t upgrade something because you’re missing a resource? Easy. Just a few clicks, and you’re immediately queuing into the activity that will drop it. You’re never in the dark wondering how to become more powerful, or where something comes from.
This robust documentation seeps into other systems like game mechanics, character kits, weapon perks, activity descriptions, and every game system in this entire game. I have never had to use a 3rd party resource or search online for the answer to a single question about Destiny Rising, and that is a direct testament to their unspoken commitment to being thorough in their documentation.
In addition to looting and shooting, there are a number of “casual” activities to play. There is fishing (which also gives you mythic guns sometimes, by the way), sparrow racing, which is pretty novel, Shadowshaper, which is practically a carbon copy of Gwent, and PVP, which is also relegated to the casual activities. The mode there is Destiny’s classic ‘control’ with the maps currently in rotation being 1:1 D2 ports. They’re fun time wasters, adding just a few things you can do if you just pop it open for a few minutes at a time. I like them a lot.
Truthfully, none of this would matter if this game wasn’t a Destiny game. But it is. Further, nobody would care if it didn’t feel like it too… and yet, it does. Everything from game-feel, character abilities, gun-feel, cascading down to world design, narrative, and activities, it all feels exactly like a mobile version of Destiny should. NetEase has cooked, and it’s a scrumptious meal, that’s loads of fun to play. I think any previous Destiny player that can manage to drop their staunch inhibitions and give it an earnest try will undoubtedly have a blast, as I’ve had while playing.
Not everything NetEase has done is an innovation for the Destiny franchise, like the gacha elements, and being able to pay to speed up the resource grind. But the new things both minor and major, from narrative spectacles, casual activities, challenging missions, and its many quality of life improvements, make for a fantastic start in what already makes for a really fun and compelling spin-off game that you can take with you anywhere.
Ultimately, Destiny Rising is a great game that has thus far been a very enjoyable experience. The campaign alone has my seal of approval and recommendation, and I highly recommend you get to that point where it rolls credits. That’ll give you the best possible taste of the game’s offerings quite easily, all for free.
Perhaps more important than anything else, Rising has allowed me to come back to this wonderful Sci-Fi universe on a much smaller scale, through a few breaths of fresh air. For now, for me, that’s enough. I’m very much looking forward to continuing to casually play it, and I’m hopeful that it will just get better as it evolves over time.
