This is long and looks like a block of text, but it's my impressions. I have not bought the DLC and was waiting to see how the new game changes make game play before making any decisions. I quit playing Destiny March 9th after the rip-off that was the Annual Cash Grab Pass (charging me $69.99 CDN for $10 CDN worth of new content). I had played 9,000 hours between my 3 characters combined for D1 and D2 to that point and yes I was a fan. Logged in on Sept 30th for the first time to take stock of my characters and their state. It was nice to return to the moon (I played 90 hours of D1 beta on Xbox 360) and the artists did a really great job on the environment. I'm running on a 60 hz 4K HDR TV on an Xbox One X, which looks gorgeous. I went back to the old places like Circle of Bones, World Library, Hell Mouth and other underground locations which are very impressive. Had some fun with the random Nightmare encounters and found multiple collectible things (which can't be picked up until you own the DLC which is fine). But as others have said, the ShadowKeep content so far seems really thin with basically the same surface stuff of patrols, random enemy encounters and Public event as D1. The first story mission was interesting, but since my first character was about 850 when I did it, it was an easy romp to get through it. The only time I died was because I accidentally jumped into a hole. Patrols are easy and very little challenge to anyone at 800+ light. Even the nightmare area wasn't challenging solo at 850+ light. Also the musical scores and the ambient sound effects just don't seem to be as good as they were in D1. Maybe I'm jaded and not remembering things as well after 5 years, but the audio just doesn't have the same punch as it did in D1 (like we've woken the Hive or you're in the Cosomdrome and meet thralls in the dark for the first time) I'm also shocked at how quick and easy it is to level up from 750 to 900+ without the DLC. My Titan took about 8 hours of game play to get to 900, which includes progress slow downs from the numerous Network failures by Bungie, slow progress because DIM wasn't working so had to go back to the tower for stuff, and the fact I needed to relearn my character abilities again. My Hunter took maybe 5 hours (having 900+ light weapons at the start helped a lot) and I think my warlock will take tops of 4 hours to get to 900. Just swap on the blue armour to bring your light up, upgrade nothing, pick up any bounties you can and keep playing. The Armour 2.0 is simply not impressive at this point. I have maybe a dozen mods that I can use with it, but they feel much less useful than my old armour was. I had mods on the old armour for Super, Grenade and Melee regeneration which made my abilities come up much much quicker. And on that subject, I really do not like how they nerfed ability regeneration at all (it seems like 50% slower than D2 back in March). Am I playing Destiny with a super human guardian or am I playing some generic COD type shooter in Space where it's all about weapons? One thing that is completely puzzling is the only hard Solo content in the game for me now has been Forge. I used to pretty much breeze through forge with my 3 characters at 650 light, now at 900 light I'm getting my butt kicked especially the Bosses who are now beyond bullet sponges. I'm going to put on old 750 gear for the next encounter to see if Bungie has put a negative damage boost if your over recommended (750) light for it. It could be I'm rusty too. So at this point I'm not spending $44.95 CDN + tax on Shadowkeep. I'm waiting to see what next week brings as far as new content (i.e. Dungeon, Raid, Vex expansion stuff) goes and likely will then make a decision. A new game like Borderlands 3 or The Outer Worlds cost me $79.99 CDN, so this has to have at least 50% the content of a brand new release to be competitive. Edit: I tried doing Izanami Forge today (yesterday was Gofannon Forge - which will crash freeze any Xbox as soon as the Boss phase start) with my Hunter. I used old Armour, older weapons and kept my light to around 800. It seemed way easier than when I tried it with my 900 Titan. Not sure if that's a bug, network issues (i.e. we've all seen cases where suddenly enemies take way more damage to kill than normal) or what. So if Forge seems harder, try dropping your light back towards 750.