It has been a whole month of walking through post-apocalyptic Washington D.C in attempts to acquire the best gear through the mass murder of supposed “bad guys.” four factions have taken over: The Hyenas, True Sons, The Outcasts and Black Tusk and it is up to you, the Division agent to, once again, eliminate and push back the factions and claim D.C for the people. The task is most certainly long and hard but it is certainly rewarding and fun to play The Division 2 even with its actual glaring problems.
Division 2 is your typical third-person looter shooter. You are told to shoot bad guys and you do just that for an infinite amount of time until bored of the rinsing and repeating. There are enough walls and shit to take cover on, enough enemies to point your gun at and they fall down (maybe) and enough guns to want to keep grinding for faster ways to make enemies fall.
One of the actual aspects of the Division 2 that I did like was the environments. Washington D.C has never actually looked so good. Streets are filled with garbage, lush green bushes, weeds, and water that reflects the beauty of the destroyed buildings that inhabit the city. Running throughout the city and experiencing the little details make the Division 2 more immersive and fun.
The Hyenas are the factions that uses fear against the masses to obtain what they want. The True Sons are reminiscent of the LMB from the first game, where they are organzied and their intent is soley based in selfishness. The Outcasts are bent on revenge against those who excommunicated and quarantined them. Black Tusk are the super-advanced military group that comes at the end of the game. These enemies all have the same six calsses: Rusher, assualt, medic, engineer, sniper and heavy. Most enemies from each factions acts differently making gameplay a tad different when encountering different factions from time to time, which is refreshing for the most part.
There is A LOT to loot in The Division 2. Settlements need food, water and components, the player can hold steel, titanium, electronics, etc so that you can craft the various types of gear, weapons and weapon mods. Early on it is incredibly easy to have max crafting materials and there is really no use for it unless you ascend world tiers to upgrade the work bench and it does not even use that much crafting materials to upgrade, so you will in no time reach max materials again and while playing, leave the remnants of extra crafting materials on the ground. This time around maxing the level of the workbench still only allows for the crafting of items from 450-490 so there is no way to craft gear and weapons to the max score of 500 (if you are lucky), so there is actually no reason to use the crafting bench unless crafting barrels, scopes, magazines, etc. Better scores/levels mean better weaponry/gear so guns do not actually last that long even when you reach the end game. This time around Massive Entertainment made crafting materials specfic to the type of gear that is being deconstructed. For example: Douglas & Harding drop a gold piece of D&H material that can only be used to craft that type of gear. The player can hold only twenty of this specfic crafting material which is incredibly annoying because you are cyclying through so much gear so fast that materials start to build up again and there is nothing to do with them.
I like having a challenge, it makes games fun BUT when the difficulty is giving the enemies MORE health and have them deal MORE damage is utterly ridiculous. The Division 2 has this problem and it makes the game unplayable a majority of the time. Assualt classes look at you and in an instant, you lose all of your armor and are down to next to zero health. You heal up and pop up from cover and now you are dead because the assualt classes shot one bullet dealing next to 250,000 damage. Gold Rushers ALWAYS one shot, no matter what. Sometimes the player can die so fast that the character model pauses and makes the death screen hilarious.
The AI is also a problem within The Division 2. Massive stated something in the form of, the AI push in scenarios that they think they can win, which is literally ALL OF THE TIME. The enemies always make pushes, soak up so much damage and they deal so much damage so fast that certain missions take such a ridiculous amount of time complete (Roosevelt Island to be exact).
My last thoughts are as followed: The Division 2 tries to be a new game by making it in a different locale, with “different” enemies and “different” plot, at its core it is an utter dissapointment of a game. All of the time I am reminded of the first Division when playing the game; how i wished that everything that Division 1 turned out to be at the end of its life cycle, I wanted the second game to be on the same level of the first and it just doesnt have anything of the sort. There are times that fast travel ceases to work, FPS drops and skips during gun fights make the game unplayable at times, the grind for better weapons and gear do not neccisarily feel rewarding. The gear sets that were released with Tidal Basin are boring and they do not impact the game even in the slightest, they are sweet to own but they essentially do not do anything in Player vs Player (PVP) encounters. Tidal Basin and World Tier 5 were hyped and when it was released, I played a twenty minute mission and had gotten almost nothing but more intense grinding as a reward. Rewards for completing missions on the hardest difficulty reward 15 target intel and ONE MORE gear item and thats it, nothing of value if it drops at a lower gear score. Brand sets feel underwhelming with the exception of a few powerful talents. Dark Zones are pointless unless you have three other friends because player will always want to PVP and you can never win 1 v 4’s. I had a resurgence for a brief moment when Massive released a way for players to get the Hardwire Gear Set through a project, so I played the speficic missions to get the components and was excited when all I need was ten hardwire tech. I have killed over 750 Black tusk enemies in occupied DZ’s, invaded missions and open world tasks and I have NOT seen a single Hardwire tech drop.
It sucks that I am so disappointed in this game because it has potential to be great and as of right now it is just a game that remindes you of its better predecessor while making you grind for items that essentially do nothing.
Grinds and Games 