Destiny 2’s new Echo Battlegrounds are a highlight of the season

Destiny 2‘s Echoes seasonal episode has recently moved on with its second act, and while there’s a lot of goodness packed into that release, nobody really expected its three new Battleground missions to excel as much as they did. Loaded with challenging encounters and great loot, there’s much to enjoy.

This is particularly high praise coming from me, mind, as I recently strongly argued against th𓆏e current deline𝔉ation of Strikes and Battlegrounds in the Vanguard Ops playlist. As far as the Echo Battlegrounds are concerned, each of them is just challenging enough to keep things interesting without becoming outright annoying, and the introduction of sample collection as a bonus loot mechanic is practically a stroke of genius from Bungie. Naturally, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Destiny 2: Echo – Act 2 Battlegrounds deliver in a way no one saw coming

The bit that’s really interesting about these new Battlegrounds is that they’re mechanically closer to Strike missions than they are to, say, Psi-Ops Battlegrounds. There’s more movement and less objective-wrangling, and the increased enemy spawn rates help in filling out the flow of the mission when everything slows down a bit. Other players, too, agree with this assessment as evidenced by the Reddit thread featured above, and it would seem that Bungie has managed to deliver a potential slam dunk this time around.

To be perfectly honest, though, all three of the new Battlegrounds missions are rather fresh right now, and it remains to be seen whether they stand the test of time. Even the most annoying and drawn-out of the old Battlegrounds were exciting when they were new, and it’s entirely possible the new Echo Battlegrounds end up falling into this trap as Acts 2 and 3 of the Echo episode progress further.

It’s also worth praising the fact that we’ve received four new (or new-ish) activities as part of Episode – Echo: the three aforementioned Battlegrounds where Guardians descend into the heart of Nessus, and the Arena: Breach Executable mission. There’s more variety present here than we’ve seen in some mainline seasonal offerings, such as the Season of the Hunt, and the loot is certainly worth chasing after as well. So, all in all, it’s a bit hard to complain about what we’ve seen of this season so far, and there’s Act 3 coming in a few weeks’ time as well, so more is on the way.

Now that Aberrant Action and Corrasion have been released upon the unsuspecting enemies of humanity, I highly recommend chasing after them if you have the chance to do so. With Battlegrounds as good as these, it shouldn’t be too much of a pain, I’d say.