Destiny Rising: A free-to-play Destiny, does the magic translate?

A long-term review of Netease’s gacha-driven, free-to-play (F2P) take

This review of Destiny: Rising, 3 months after its launch at the end of August 2025, looks at the evolution of the game’s live-service content over time and the successful integration of the game’s unique ‘gacha’ mechanics.

At the outset, Rising, a f2p mobile variant of the extremely popular looter-shooter, offers an uncompromised and almost console/PC like experience to its players.

In terms of quality and scale, Rising is very much like Diablo Immortal, i.e., a game that offers players a new story, the experience of the franchise, and an opportunity to enter the franchise for free.

In my time with the game’s campaign, I played as Wolf, a ‘lightbearer’ found by the Ghost ( one of the franchise’s floating, talking orb companions), Dex, who makes their way to Haven while fighting the fallen – a race of intelligent beings out to end humanity.

Once reaching Haven, I was done with the game’s tutorial and was able to navigate the open world for missions and new weapons. The game requires you to fight in teams and to acquire new members for your party for missions and raids – this is where the gacha system comes in, as you draw cards for new members. The implementation of the gacha system works as a nice blend between the classic Destiny experience and players’ desires to play with new characters.

In terms of gameplay, the combat here is good, gunplay is consistent and responsive, and the developers have done a good job of implementing characters’ unique skills in various parts of the screen.

Even with my large fingers, I rarely tapped buttons I wasn’t intending to. The world here is quite beautiful in terms of colours and detail. There is a nice variety in the missions and raids the game offers and even the single player campaign offers an engaging central plot.

For those of you looking to grind heavily and level up quickly, Rising is generous in terms of rewards and you can find key resources and progress deep without spending any real-world money.

The online and co-op game modes are consistent and rarely lag. I found the connection stable and matchmaking quick whenever I was looking for other players to join me on a raid. There was almost no difference in quality and latency between the game’s single-player and multiplayer game modes. This is a strong multiplayer looter-shooter experience and is one of the contenders for best free game of the year.

However, not all is perfect here. I found some of the secondary characters lacking depth and their models and designs not only AI-generated but also lacking polish and consistency in animations.

Secondly, the game is poorly optimised for battery life and overheating. With my OnePlus 13, I saw the game drain significant power and the device heat up after 30 minutes. I found that if I continued to play after 30 minutes, the device became uncomfortable to hold after 60. These issues haven’t been addressed 3 months on, and this is concerning if you play in prolonged windows of time.