Video Game

The Division 2

Overly Dramatic Review in One Sentence

A game where a widely known 5-year-old bug stopped me from finishing the story and made it too frustrating to continue.

The Actual Review

Gameplay

//NOTE// I did not finish the story line as I got hit by the Keener boss fight bug. I could abandon the mission and try again, but I have spent too long on this game to continue with the possibility of more soft lock bugs in the future. See more about the bug below.

Much like The Division, the third player perspective is just really fun. I like the ability to see what is going on more than I expected this time. It is also more important since they introduced a lot more variability in the weapons, specifically the recoil. My favorite weapon in the first game, the LVOA-C, is completely ruined in this game. It has so much recoil that it is unusable. It is wild how bad it is. So I switched to the light machine guns mainly because of their magazine capacity. There is one that doesn't require a you to reload so it is just 1300 bullets being rain down on the big brutes. It is outstanding.

One of the things that was there in the old game that I never used in this one the weapon mods. In the last game you could find them on the ground and made a big difference. This one was more about building them and I never felt like I needed to or that it made a big difference. They also over complicated the build and improvement process. There is a whole weapon expertise system that levels up the weapon. That does mean at the end game you don't have to keep building or switch weapons to stay competitive, but it is just complicated.

Ok, so the bug. In the Keener boss fight in the Warlords of New York DLC, if you die, he won't leave his EMP shielded box. You have to start the mission over for you to get there. This bug has been known about for 5 years. You can see more about it here, or here. If you want to just know the story, you can watch the video linked below and watch to 7:44. There is another linked video if you are like me and want to skip to know all the story with spoilers because you spent so much time without being able to get the win. I might come back later, but I doubt it.

Graphics and Sound

The sounds are basically the same. I really don't notice any differences so not a lot to say there. The graphics are nice, but not nearly as nice as New York.

I do not like the DC vibe. The trash piles and debris make a lot less sense in this environment as compared to NYC. I gives it a feel of Fallout 3 where there was a ton of room to run around, but not a lot to enter. There is something about it that makes it feel more "almost" than actually DC. I say this having lived and worked in DC for a while and I know the city decently well. It is extremely truncated, which makes sense, but it takes away from the scale that made NYC feel real.

Story and Characters

Here is the story, Aaron Keener sent a new virus bomb onto a building and the President was shot down in Air Force One. You have to go retake DC so you can stand up the Division SHD network. Not a bad story, not nearly as compelling. There are the same number bad guy groups, but there is no main leader for each group that you are really tracking down. I also feel that the weight of what is going on doesn't sit as hard. I think(?) that the main idea is that you are looking for broad spectrum anti-viral to fight against the green poison. However, there is a ton of other things that are just as important and so you are constantly looking around rather than chasing the story.

My favorite part of the last game from a story perspective was the echo's and phones. In this one, you had to zoom in so far into the map that you couldn't make a clear plan to find them all and it became so tedious to zoom in and route to the next one, then go there and have to zoom in again. Visually on the map, they were also white so it took away their uniqueness on the map so it was no different than the other random waypoints.

As for the DLC storyline, the bug mentioned aside, the Warlords of New York was really well told. I liked the hunting and discovery of the people and their tasks. I liked the fights, the were extremely unique. That is what I was expecting in the main storyline. However, the fog of war on the map where you couldn't see parts of the map because you hadn't been there yet, made exploration less worthwhile. Especially when you have a good gun, armor you like, and are just wanting to see a story.

My Rating

I am interested in the story mostly for this. I am excited that supposedly The Division 3 is going back to a snowy area because you got such cool ambiance from that weather pattern. But this game doesn't live up to the same story as the last one. It should have been a full hunt to save the President and get Keener. Maybe get an Assassin's Creed III DLC about Washington kind of story where the President is a tyrant. I am not sure, but it just doesn't make sense. Again they added complication to it when they could have just had the Black Tusks just own DC with Keener's help and you hunt them down rather than the spending your entire game freeing DC only for it to be a waste of time. I still enjoyed playing, but it wasn't as gripping as The Division. This is a "Worth a Playthrough" game knowing that you could get almost done and have to stop.

Parental Rating

Taking on enemies in DC. Searching for people and artifacts is cool. However, they wouldn't be about language, the cynicism, or the violence. So if I were sitting at home as younger kid playing, they'd not be about it.