Destiny Rising is a strange one to look at. On its surface, NetEase has made a spin-off prequel of Bungie’s Destiny, with added gacha. Underneath, it’s a bit more of a complex beast to come to terms with. It’s early doors for the game, and I’m anticipating another shoe dropping any time, as the first couple of months of the game begin to wear out.
For now, I’ve seen credits roll, and I’m in its primordial ooze of an endgame situation.
It’s a lot of the issues that crop up in the main Destiny games, where at some point the player will get the carrot on the stick and ask, “Why am I doing this?” At that point, they’ll make a choice, whether to stay on the treadmill for many hours more, or eject themselves out until the next major update – if they ever come back.
Destiny Rising Review
Destiny Rising, much like Destiny 2, comes with its own suite of issues. Before we get on the misery tour, let’s be clear here: Destiny Rising is a feat.
After it was announced last year that Destiny would be turned into a mobile format, players were understandably sceptical. However, the team have done a cracking job at converting it, even if they’ve had to hack some pieces off or carve it up so it’d fit the bill.
I played using a controller, and after switching from the default third-person view to first person (I assume it’s this way for the target audience in the East), Rising is thoroughly Destiny. Fitting it into this new shape has meant some changes, but the feel of the shooting and controlling the floaty characters around the battlefield was putting jeans on for the first time in autumn after an all-shorts summer.
It has one hand up over the main versions, however. The endless menus are easily navigated, instead of having to use the awful fake mouse, as you can simply thumb through them with the touchscreen.
Destiny Rising Runs Well on the iPhone 14 Pro
On hardware, this is a battery eater through and through. However, it ran just fine on my iPhone 14 Pro, but it should look nicer in the future when the iPhone 17 hits.
On my Snapdragon 8Gen2 2-powered Odin Pro 2 with 12GB of RAM, the game ran exceptionally well and benefited from the embedded controller. I will warn you, however, to bind your account to a Google email if you plan on switching between iOS and Android. The game automatically attached itself to my Gmail on the Odin, and it was a nightmare trying to log in, as I don’t have any of the other options like X or Discord.
The Casino Knows How to Treat its New Customers
As I mentioned, Destiny Rising is a carved-up version of the main series. Rather than have a dedicated character, it splits it up into different unlockable characters through the gacha system. It’s not overtly pervasive, but it’s incredibly masked by the early days and early player glut of rewards these games tend to employ.
I think this is the most obvious example of how games have begun to employ gambling tactics in the core roots of design. Gambling has always been part of gaming, way back in the arcade, but it’s never been like it is in the modern day. Destiny Rising not only features an actual slot machine with the gacha, but it is brimming with a continuous loop of freebies to keep you logging in.
Daily logins, a steady stream of bounties, different challenges, completing different parts of the game, and so on. The game uses the typical gacha structure of having to complete a certain number of tasks and a story mission before allowing you to progress to the next chapter.
Sometimes, outside of doing the story mission in question, these will go exceptionally quickly as it’s likely they were already completed.
It’s Amazing What You Can Achieve When You Ditch Multiplayer
While the story itself is a fairly humdrum affair of fighting back the evil, they feel a lot like Destiny missions, until they very much don’t. There are side quests and world quests that you’ll encounter, which can be played as any character you have, but the story quests center on the main character, Wolf.
Destiny has always had this “lofty” feel to it, that it doesn’t stoop too low, that it has turret sections, or long periods where the very likely multiplayer session takes control away from the player. Rising doesn’t have that issue, turning the story into an instanced session away from everyone else.
This allows Rising to have a little bit more fun with how it tells its story, rather than through cutscenes and lengthy monologues. There are chase sequences that incorporate a turret section, moments where the game allows you to go all out in a punchy way, and some of the real late levels you’ll find yourself in are things I didn’t think Destiny was capable of employing.
But as the credits rolled, I found myself with strange emptiness. I enjoy the game, and some of the loops it offers allow the game to really shine. But, what for? The game is so much more granular than its big siblings, with multiple currencies and upgrade materials that require an endless grind. I don’t have the two characters I want because they’re trapped behind the gacha, and the one character I’m missing from the cheaper option just won’t drop.
Missed Connections
I think it comes from that core part of Destiny being missing from Rising. For every fault the main series has, at least there was that connection to the player character. I put in the work and elbow grease (sitting for hours through the same content) to get to wherever I left it in 2022. That’s my character.
In Rising, I have several characters, some I don’t want to touch because I don’t enjoy how they play, and I’m only “attached” to one of them because, through sheer luck, I’ve managed to get the upgrade materials needed. Some of these require multiples of the same character to be pulled from the gacha, which can start to rack up the cash if you’re prone to impatience.
A big issue is that I have no fondness for how any of them play, with Wolf, who you get stuck with for a majority of the game, perhaps being the most milquetoast option the game has on offer. It doesn’t help that weapons are limited to a particular character, so if you had a penchant for a particular combo, not only is it now a two-weapon game from three, but you might not even have the character that can use the weapons you like.
I will say I did enjoy playing as Jolder, a rare character from the gacha, and the one I’ve invested the most into, because again, it’s all luck-based. Even the resource-gathering missions are built on percentages and hope. Jodler has a Captain America-like shield, and as an ultimate, can spawn a big shield that gives her infinite ammo.
It turned most of the bosses into snooze fests, as I stood and watched the meter go down until I had to move. However, it was certainly fun seeing myself get MVP in some sessions due to how much damage I blocked.
Get on the Destiny Rising-Themed Hamster Wheel
Those hamster wheels that Destiny is so well known for are very much here, and are decidedly underbaked and infuriating. An example of infuriation comes from the competitive multiplayer, which has always been Destiny’s weakest aspect. On the small screen, with no method of determining who is playing with what, it is mostly instant death or pure, unmitigated chaos, and useless to try to play.
There’s fishing and a card game as well, both of which feel thin and oddly limiting. The card game is what it is, with a basic ruleset that boils down to higher number wins, and the fishing requires bait, but only a certain amount can be purchased, or you’ll have to grind it out.
Destiny Rising also features guilds, which you and a bunch of players you’ll never interact with, all prod at a hexagonal map to collect resources over time. This kind of mechanic is also available in the Iron Commander mode, where you’ll send a squad for a length of real-world time to do a mission you’ve already completed.
This is another underbaked, weirdly limited mode, where the resource to start one of these is limited to one purchase a day. Once you’ve set one, just close the menu and move on. It’s not like you can do anything else until the timer ticks down, anyway.
One mode, Realm of the IX, is a rogue-like mode that nets big rewards the further you go. It’s where Destiny Rising really shines, as it’s just the player, a spin on a familiar game, and nothing else unless they decide it so. It really showed just how well Destiny actually plays, with the only real concern being the ticking clock that will trigger a hard mode if you spend too long.
Each level lets you choose a new passive ability to take with you, increasing your power or buffing a power you’ve had before. In some instances, I was hurling psychic powers every time I activated an ability, which were recharging much faster thanks to the “Gifts of the Nine” chosen at each level.
Final Thoughts
It’s then, unfortunate that I have to wind this down on that dour note, though. The thing is, I’ve played enough gacha games to know what happens when a big event or a launch comes to an end. Everything is still there; it just pulls back a little. From the pouring now, I fear that there will be a drought.
The latest and first “event” that has hit is about cosmetics for a character locked behind the gacha. You need to acquire a new currency to lower the price of a set of cosmetics that the game will then generously let you buy. Meanwhile, the new character is in the expensive gacha, and I’m just not willing to drop cash on Destiny Rising, not with how I ultimately feel about it.
An event for a character is not available for free. That’s the second step forward the game has made.
3/5
| Destiny Rising | |
| Pros | Cons |
| Plays just like Destiny, with only a few compromises | On the razor’s edge of being predatory, especially with the most recent event |
| Plenty of things to do and check off | Most side activities feel underbaked |
| Gacha doesn’t feel too intrusive, yet | The campaign’s story is a dull affair |
Platforms: iOS, Android, PC (Emulator)
Developer: NetEase
Publisher: NetEase
Release date: August 28, 2025
