I went with "neutral." Having played this thing for like 500 hours since day one, I feel it's a solid shooter. It's a worthy successor to the Bungie-era Halo when looked at as [i]only[/i] a FPS. However… It's marketed as more than just a run-and-gun FPS. It's presented as a "shared world" online-only FPS with co-op and competitive gameplay and character progression and some rpg window dressing. Co-op is solid. Competitive is pretty decent, about as balanced as you can get when you have different class abilities and weapons with actual variation in the performance/stats. I'll call it balanced only because there's complaints against [i]every[/i] class with offensive supers and most of the exotic primaries and specials. It's a frustrating balance, but it's mostly balanced. On the negative side? The "gear determines level" system, basically the opposite of traditional level-gear relationships, can be needlessly frustrating. Mostly because of a stingy RNG. So your first character has to suffer through a "level 25 bottleneck" when you've reached the max potential of rare armor and have to start grinding for Marks. We know the Cryptarch ain't giving you nothing. And it's worse since TDB, because the Legendary gear is now more expensive. And requires two of an arbitrary item, Commendations, introduced for no logical purpose aside from slowing progression (screw you Bungie, that was a dick move). So that's 345 Marks and 4 levels of vendor reputation gains [i]to get the necessary [b]two[/b] Commendations for your chest and helmet which wasn't a requirement in the base game[/i]. [u]Again, Commendations exist only to slow progression.[/u] Since you can only get 100 marks a week, that's three to four weeks of time and effort to get your legendary gear. What's that? Yes, you can get the necessary Marks in two weeks by working both Vanguard [i]and[/i] Crucible. But you'd still need to get one vendor to rank 4 or [i]two[/i] vendors to rank 3. It's a wash. Oh and you'll need another 450 marks and three commendations (really dick move, Bungie) to assure yourself a legendary weapon for each slot. Assuming you got 50 left over after maxing out four weeks running, it's another four weeks until your fully geared up. Now your Raid ready, 29 in the base game - nobody actually beat the Vault at a lower level did they?- or 31 for CE - the world first team reported they needed a level 31 sword bearer to deal sufficient damage. We can safely assume that, without changes to Bungie's methodology, you'll need level 33 to beat the new raid on HoW. Gonna be another two month grind for any people picking up the game in the Spring. And Xur? Well, you could buy exotics from him to reduce the number of legendaries you need to grind for, but by the time you're strong enough to get a minimum 30 coins for one weapon and one armor slot, you're probably pretty close to having your legendaries anyway. Now I know that a given player will probably pick up a legendary or maybe even an exotic at some point. But this is Destiny, the RNG could easily decide to be an asshole and force you to straight grind for months to break the rare-legendary barrier. So basically, character progression mechanics are a little rough around the edges. And we all know the issues/criticisms about the storytelling or lack thereof. (Story[i]telling[/i] not background or lore. Plenty of that, locked away in out-of-game grimoire cards. Just not much whys and hows in-game is all.) When I'm in a good mood, I just chalk up the frustrating progression and RNG systems to Bungie's inexperience with building RPGs. Surely they've played a few, but I could easily see these issues as the result of "hey that'd probably be cool" approaches to choosing game features. And I'm sure no one at Bungie lacks for raid buddies, which probably explains a few other things.