I remember playing The Division a couple of years ago, it had some great gameplay and looked fantastic. Naturally, when The Division 2 was announced I was pretty excited. It was recently released and I knew I had to play it as soon as possible.
Walkers Crisps recently enough released a new style of Crisp - Max Strong. There are a handful of flavors which are really intense including Jalapeno and Cheese. However, initially, I wasn't too pushed on them. I found the heat level on them overly intense and could taste that and nothing else. While I like a little heat I need flavour too. I gave it time and tried them again and I really loved them and now they are one of my go-to crisps. Playing The Division 2 I found myself asking was it an instant winner or did it need more time to fully appreciate it?
Story
In the first game, you were dealing with the aftermath of Green Poison - a deadly virus that resulted in the break down a lot of the world as we know it. Division Agents were activated to try and uphold law and order, along with helping to rebuild. Several months after the initial outbreak the Strategic Homeland Divison (SHD) network goes dark. This network connects all Division Agents and its loss will cause chaos, which is where The Division 2 starts. Essentially you need to travel to Washington D.C., get the system online and potentially get the cure for Green Poison. There will be many obstacles along the way but you won't be alone.
The story in many ways takes a back seat to the gameplay. Reflecting on it now, there is some good story scattered in the main campaign, but in a lot of ways, the most rewarding stories are the settlements mission which I'll get into later.
Visuals
The visuals in the first game were fantastic, but Ubisoft has stepped up their game even further in The Division 2. This time you have moved away from the snow-covered streets of New York City and into the beautiful and dire-looking Washington D.C. The world looks and feels a lot more open and something that really stood out to me was the weather. Sometimes the sun will be shining, or it could be raining heavily or there could be a light mist. All of this helped to create a more organic feel in the world. One of my favorite moments visually is when you are making an incursion into the Capital Building - it feels really intense, smoke everywhere, mortar rounds going off, your character getting stunned, bullets flying everywhere.
Overall the visuals look great and are a welcome upgrade from the original game, I can't even imagine what The Divison 3 will look like (they are totally doing another one).
Music
The music perfectly fits the game, it can often be subtle sounding but always present, that is until the battle tracks start and things get crazy. The sound moves from light guitar work and low key orchestral sounds to a more intense rock sound. The composer is Swedish composer Ola Strandh, who worked on a number of video game score including; The Division, World In Conflict, Ground Control and Far Cry 3.
The score comes in at just over two hours and features many great tracks. My favorite being; 'Prologue 2', 'Balcony Rotary', 'Dock Wrecks', 'Espinoza', 'Fire', 'Hyena Hunt', 'Junior' and 'Take The Capitol'.
The soundtrack is perfect and really helped heighten my overall enjoyment of the game.
Gameplay
There is so much talk about when it comes to the gameplay but I will try to limit it all to a few paragraphs. I like organisation, so a well-structured menu is a good thing, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Even the menus have menus, it can be overwhelming at times and some menus feel like they could have been removed and/or simplified.
The weapons are great and there is a huge variety of them. There is an option to obtain them through missions, buy them, upgrade them, or break them down and make better ones. The same goes for protective armor. There is the option to buy and sell items with credits but honestly there is no point, you will find and craft better gear then you will ever find in the shop. Credits as a whole seem to be a rather useless currency.
There are options to change the look of your character from facial hair and tattoos to clothing. I didn't feel the need to pimp my agent but it was nice to have the option. Something I couldn't stand apart from the obligatory loot boxes were the dumbass Fortnite dance moves and other unnecessary gestures you can 'purchase'. Not only was it unneeded but felt very out of place and clunky.
The Division 2 offers a perks system, you can purchase them by finding SHD Caches around the world. Quickly I had purchased the all the upgrades I wanted with plenty of SHD caches to spare. There are also skills you can obtain by doing certain missions, my two favorites were the drone and turret. Both great for crowd control and even better if you like to play solo like me.
The settlements are a great element of The Division 2, you get to upgrade them see them improving and earn rewards from doing so. I also feel there was a more human element to the settlements than anywhere else in the game.
The enemies in the game can be tough at times and each faction has a different way to attack you. Winning a battle doesn't feel like dumb luck as the AI is pretty sophisticated when it comes to combat. There are strongholds, control points, and many activities you can complete to help reduce the enemy threat and help make Washington D.C. a safe place.
After the story ends what's next? Well when the story is over, there is not only the Dark Zone which players of the first game will be familiar but also a new enemy. These enemies are so tough the game will let you know that even with Epic gear you need even better gear to stand a chance. Signature weapons are unlocked which are great powerful weapons that really help clear an area, each of these have their own perks and can be upgraded.
Overall there is some great gameplay but also some really annoying elements and that's without discussing some of the bugs and glitches I encountered while playing - such as my character not responding, almost as though the server connection was lost. The result was occasionally having to reset and return right to the beginning of a long mission, rather than restarting from a checkpoint.
Final Thoughts
So, after forty plus hours how did I feel? Not bad. The story felt a little lacking in places, but the settlements helped in picking up some of the slack. The visuals and music were spot-on. The gameplay had a lot of good parts to it but also some bad ones as noted above. Overall this game was tough to score, higher than a 3 out of 5 for sure, but not quite a 4 out of 5. I don't like decimal scores but in fairness, I don't see any other way. The Division 2 gets 3.5 out of 5
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