If you include the Battleground missions from Season of the Chosen, there have been a total of 28 Strikes in Destiny 2. These three-player activities are the game’s basic repeatable PVE content, and are typically quite easy to complete. However, for various reasons some of them have become more notorious than others. Whether it’s because of their length, awkward, mechanics, or something else, these are the top 10 worst Strikes in Destiny 2 history.
7. Battleground: Oracle — Worst Destiny 2 Strikes
Battleground: Oracle isn’t a completely awful experience, but it is rather dull. The mission sees Guardians drop down into the bowels of Nessus, one of the less visually interesting environments in Destiny 2. From there, players are essentially stuck in a sequence where they have to wait for Ghost to increase a progress bar while they keep the Cabal away from him.
Then, there’s another arena sequence where the fireteam has to defeat three Vex with impenetrable shields by waiting for certain Cabal enemies to show up that drop orbs which will destroy the barriers. The final boss fight itself isn’t all too inspiring, either — it’s a redux of the Psion fights from Season of the Dawn.
Again, not awful, but is anyone really excited to see it come up in the Vanguard Operations playlist?
6. Savathun’s Song
A vaulted Strike that took place on the moon Titan, Savathun’s Song is a mixed bag.The Titan environment is great, but the Strike itself is marred by some of the worst voice acting in Destiny 2 history. It doesn’t help that the pacing of the dialogue is awkward, frequently leading to players losing any dramatic tension. The Strike tries to tell a story about a doomed fireteam and Savathun’s experiments with the Light, but when you steamroll through a bunch of Hive goons it just makes you wonder how a Fireteam of nine Guardians “got picked off one by one.”
The boss of the Strike, a giant Shrieker, wasn’t too inspiring. It was a real pain on the modified quest versions of the strike, but the base version was trivial, and like most Shriekers, it just hovered there and shot at you.
5. A Garden World
Ah, Mercury. Of all of the vaulted locations, we miss it the least. A Garden World was a follow-up of sorts to the Curse of Osiris expansion, and saw Guardians entering the Infinite Forest to defeat Dendron, the Root Mind. While the aspect of jumping through different time periods on Mercury is kind of neat, A Garden World just never felt very exciting.
The final boss was one of the most awkward in Destiny 2. Rather than stand in the middle of the arena or leap back and forth, Dendron rotated around the edge of the map while spawning in additional foes. This made the fight more irritating than it had any right to be, and added insult to the injury of having to climb all the way up the tower for the battle.
4. The Glassway — Worst Destiny 2 Strikes
We may be getting a little controversial here, but we’re sick of The Glassway. Maybe it’s suffered by virtue of its continuing presence in the Vanguard Operations playlist, but this Strike has worn out its welcome. It’s long, for one thing — it seems to go on forever. It has a section where everything stops and you have to stand on a plate to drain a radiolarian lake. And its boss fight can be drawn out for ages due to the way each enemy teleports away after hitting a certain health threshold.
3. The Corrupted
Listen: we love the Dreaming City. It’s one of the most striking (sorry) areas in Destiny 2. But The Corrupted is without a doubt one of the least-beloved Strikes in the game’s history. Seriously — how many times have you loaded in, realized that it was the mission the game had selected for you, and just dipped out?
What’s so bad about The Corrupted? It’s long, for starters. And don’t get us started on the mechanic. Apparently, passing an orb back and forth is still difficult for some players to wrap their heads around. And honestly, it’s hard to blame them — Destiny 2 never explains it.
By the time you get to the boss, you just want it to be over. But then you have to deal with a two-phase fight with a chase in-between and more orbs! Is it any surprise that people shoot the Techeun at the end of the mission for all the grief she’s put them through?
2. The Hollowed Lair
Vaulting has removed a lot of great content from Destiny 2, but it also took away The Hollowed Lair, so it’s impossible to say if it’s good or bad. Seriously, what a miserable Strike. The Hollowed Lair saw Guardians fighting the revived Scorn Fanatic Fikrul on the Tangled Shore. It was a long and meandering run-up to the boss fight, and while it had some interesting moments (the Scorn tank fight, for instance) it let to one of the most annoying fights the game has ever known.
If you never had to fight the Fanatic, I’m happy for you. The guy would constantly throw up an impenetrable shield and randomly teleport everyone into the air and pull them to him. It was awful. Terrible. A real pain!
The Hollowed Lair is one of the worst Strikes in Destiny 2, but thankfully it’s no longer in the game. The same cannot be said, however, for our number one pick.
1. Exodus Crash — Worst Destiny 2 Strikes
Do you like running around a needlessly-huge environment grabbing beacons while Pikes shoot at you and mines explode? Do you like standing on a plate while Ghost makes a progress bar go up? Do you like fighting a boss that turns invisible and isn’t present for most of the battle? Exodus Crash truly has it all when it comes to the hallmarks of a godawful Destiny 2 Strike. And unlike some of the offenders on this list, it’s still in the game!
Seriously, why is Nessus still around? We know that vaulting it would mean losing like a third of Destiny 2‘s Vanguard Operations playlist, but it would be worth it to finally kill off Exodus Crash.
