Three months after its release, Destiny 2 has left players with a variety of emotions. It has completely left the core group who continued playing the first game with little or nothing to continue playing for. For the newcomers and those who had abandoned the first game early on, it filled its role as their next game, and many moved on to another title.

Many longtime fans felt somewhat spurned at Destiny 2’s decision to remove many features its predecessor either shipped with or added in over its three years. Vendors, matchmaking options, and strike playlists have been gutted from Destiny in the transition to the sequel.

What’s more, in the recent weeks leading up to the DLC’s launch, a pay-to-win controversy developed stemming from how the game lied to players concerning experience earned. Essentially, the game would restrict and falsely report how much XP players were earning to encourage them to spend real money on in-game Bright Engrams, similar to Overwatch’s lootboxes. A practice EA Games has recently been lambasted over with Star Wars Battlefront II. This issue was especially unethical given the product partnership with Rockstar Energy Drink and Poptarts offering double XP boosts that players never actually effectively received.

In short, Destiny 2 had many things, but staying power was not one of them. With the first Expansion Pass DLC release, Curse of Osiris, Bungie seeks to create enough of an impact to draw back players who wanted more from the base game. While it does provide more, whether it’s varied or new enough to warrant a return is up for debate.

The Curse of Osiris expansion doesn’t come with a whole lot to gawk at. 8 story missions, 2 new Strikes and 2 new Crucible maps, 3 counting the Playstation-exclusive map. There’s also the new addition of what is called a Raid Lair, and Heroic Strikes make their return to the strike playlist in Destiny 2.

The power level of Guardians has been raised to a maximum of 335 with legendary gear mods, requiring players to grind once more to get their Guardians to their most powerful forms. This time, however, that isn’t quite as unforgiving as it was the first time around. Completing each activity once will be enough to get very close to 330, and if you have additional characters you can expect one of them to reach 335 before long if you hold off redeeming Powerful Engrams till the last possible moment.

Tess Everis has new items and gear in Eververse. Doing the campaign with a Fireteam Medallion and Well Rested XP buff will net you numerous Bright Engrams so you can enjoy new emotes like the Selfie move. Despite the controversy in recent weeks, it’s still enjoyable seeing new stuff added to the game that breaks up the tedium. However, as always, expect to get a surplus of shaders and sparrows instead of what you’re actually interested in, as is the case with RNG.

There are some new guns, but one of the issues players have had with Destiny 2 is that instead of random rolls, we’re given numerous reskins of the same exact guns. Nearly every archetype of gun has more than three variations with different perks and a slightly different paint job, and that hasn’t changed in Curse of Osiris.

The new gear and weapons obtained from Brother Vance at the Lighthouse on Mercury aren’t really enticing either. Forge weapons are gained by completing the campaign and a heroic Adventure mission. Afterwards, you’ll select one of three cryptic verses which will grant a gun upon obtaining the materials each verse requires to complete. These weapons are for the most part no better than any you can get far easier from anywhere else. They have unique Vex hybrid aesthetics which make them unique looking but that’s it. Each week these verses rotate giving you something else to chase.

The armor gained from ranking up Brother Vance from tokens isn’t very eye pleasing, although it depends on the tastes of the wearer. Objectively, however, there are no perks to this armor, making it less useful than what you’re currently wearing. In the first Destiny, gear had perks which made activities like the Raid a bit easier or had good synergy with certain activities. This is not the case here, unfortunately.

No matter how you slice it, the offering is small, especially when you take into account that the story missions can be completely ran through aside from brief sections requiring you to kill a mini-boss enemy.

The new Mercury patrol zone is basically a big circle with only one Public Event, and size-wise it is the smallest patrol zone in all of Destiny. The game tries to mask this by removing access to your sparrow similar to the Dreadnought in Destiny: The Taken King, but it’s even more suspect in this case. Memes have been created to ridicule Bungie’s gung-ho attitude with the single new Public Event which they cited as being the “most rewarding Public Event in Destiny” offering two chests instead of one. You will typically get two Vendor tokens (of which you need 20 to redeem for a reward) and a piece of rare armor that you will typically scrap for weapon parts.

The one saving grace for this DLC is the Raid Lair. Previously, Bungie was quick to shoot down the idea that this DLC would include a new “Raid” and instead called it a “Raid activity”. What we’re given in Curse of Osiris is the first of a series of planned Raid Lairs, this one being dubbed Eater of Worlds.

In Eater of Worlds, Guardians are sent back to the Leviathan planet eating vessel of the Cabal Emperor Calus. This time, instead of taking the typical path set up for the Leviathan Raid, you take a detour into a new section of the ship’s underbelly. There, you progress through a short puzzle and waves of enemies until you reach the Raid Lair’s final boss, Argos. Argos is a Vex super-intelligence which requires teamwork and coordination to defeat, similar to the original Vault of Glass’ Atheon.

Osiris has been a lauded and looming mysterious figure since the release of 2015’s House of Wolves. There, players were first introduced to Brother Vance and the Trials of Osiris, a competitive multiplayer mode pitting the best players in the world on a quest to defeat 7 teams without losing. Upon reaching the ominous Lighthouse on Mercury, the signs of Osiris’ presence were clear. Now in the first expansion, Guardians are coming face to face with the man himself.

Following the events of the main game’s campaign, Osiris has been revealed to have been traversing time and space using Vex pathways inside the Infinite Forest. However, he has made a startling discovery, and he needs help preventing an even worse cataclysm from taking place. Panoptes, the Vex construct governing the Infinite Forest has laid plans to bring about the destruction of the newly reawakened Traveler, the source of all Guardian’s powers. As the next chapter in this unending darkness-versus-light storyline, Osiris’ quest and players entwine, leading to a final conclusion.

Ultimately, the story is no better or worse than what was presented in the main game, although it is considerably shorter, as expected. The time travel and multiple realities plotline, while the focus point, is really negligible. It’s disappointing to say that you can gain as much from paying attention to the narration as you can from having it on mute.

Sagira, Osiris’ ghost, replaces your own, making for a somewhat pleasant change of pace. For what it’s worth, I was never quite fond of the removal of Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage as the Ghost in the original Destiny to be replaced by Nolan North. This time, the ghost partner is played by Morena Baccarin, bringing the running count of Firefly cast members in Destiny up to three (joining Cayde-6 and Ikora Rey). She makes for a decent performance, but ultimately nothing too memorable.

It’s hard to say what the campaign needed to be. Destiny hasn’t been known for having a compelling story, and it’s not really what players are looking for. Beating the campaign is more of a rite of passage onto the end game content, and this time it’s not even required to participate. The only thing you would miss out on is access to Mercury and Forge weapons, which are arguably two of the weaker aspects in this DLC.

Graphically, some of the sections of Curse of Osiris are stunning. Mercury was revealed to be a lush, beautiful world after the arrival of the Traveler, but was reduced to the barren wasteland it is now by the onslaught of the Vex. Even though this section is beautiful, Bungie repeats it in the campaign, Adventure missions, and a Strike with barely any differences.

Loot-wise, the game hasn’t improved a whole lot. At launch, the DLC merely provided new weapons. As of this writing, Bungie has launched a Masterworks update to provide new versions of weapons with additional perks. At this time, these provide small 10% buffs to stats and require you to spend Legendary Shards and dismantle other Masterworks to craft/upgrade them. It’s a lot of work for a very miniscule benefit, but it gives players something to chase and work towards so it’s not all bad.

Curse of Osiris takes the core gameplay that Destiny 2 players were used to and doesn’t change it. It gives you new items to chase, new levels to fight on, but the same enemies are either reskinned or just slightly tweaked with more health. It’s going on 4 years, and the only new enemy type we’ve seen came in 2015 with the Taken. Rise of Iron’s redesigned Siva Fallen was interesting, but still ultimately the same. With the sequel, Bungie had the chance to show us a new enemy -or anything new really- but even with the DLC, it’s the same old affair.

That said, even though the weapons aren’t anywhere near as powerful as they were in the original Destiny and they are mainly playing it safe, there are some outliers. The core gameplay is at its heart very fun, which is why many come back to it and can’t distance themselves from it. If you’ve ever thought “this gunplay is fun” then the game already has you. For FPS players, it’s arguably one of the best controlling FPSs on consoles, even with some of the drastic changes to movement in this sequel. It’s still fun, but it could be “more” fun if Bungie would cut loose, or try to be imaginative.

It’s not inaccurate to say that, aside from the Eater of Worlds Raid Lair, the entire DLC is pretty much a wash. The new area introduced in the Campaign and Adventure missions, the Infinite Forest, is a very interesting concept that is underutilized. Inside the Infinite Forest, an unpredictable pathway branches out to keep you from reaching your destination. Here, the Vex throw everything they’ve encountered in their history at you, Hive, Fallen, Cabal, and themselves.

The Infinite Forest sections are really just running segments, as all you need to do is open a gateway, which on rare occasion, requires you to kill a certain enemy before it opens. Also, the Strikes and story missions reuse content which also diminishes the experience. While the campaign did take players to one of the most beautiful landscapes Destiny has seen, the reuse of content feels lazy at best.

The two new strikes are copied and pasted from two sections of the campaign with just some new mechanics added in. This is a complaint that has plagued Destiny for 4 years and counting. Overuse of the same content, reskinning old weapons and selling them as DLC, and locking originally included content away behind a paywall.

For players who have stuck through thick and thin with this game, this isn’t really surprising. However, if you’re a newcomer to Destiny 2 and hoping for more reasons to stick around, be prepared for the content to be more scrap picking than a full course meal. There might be a few tasty morsels, but you’re going to feel hungry again before long.

For Destiny 2 players looking for any reason to return to the game, this could be justification enough. For those who are tired of the game and want something worthwhile, this isn’t it. For any player not returning once a week or more, it’s just not worth bothering with. Much of the new updates coming to the game can be performed without buying the DLC. The Normal Raid can be completed with friends, as PvP can. Bungie has reflected on their locking players out of some content and has promised to adjust it, what that means for non-DLC owners is to be determined.

Still, all the new weapons, emotes, and loot seems to be up for grabs for everyone, which is unprecedented in Destiny DLC. It begs the question as to what Expansion Pass owners are even paying for. The story is forgettable, the Raid Lair, while interesting, is very short, and the loot is available to everyone. With all this in mind, Bungie has a lot of communicating to do and not much time to do it before people begin to grow restless and other games take Destiny 2’s spot.

Ultimately, this is not the DLC fans have been waiting for. Whether or not Bungie has anything that can fill this role in their pipeline is anyone’s guess. They do seem to be waking up due to the outcry of the press and fans, so hopefully we won’t have to wait 2 years before the game becomes as polished as its predecessor when it ended. It’s simply a matter of time.