After a long wait of the first trailer introduced in E3 2013, the best cinematic trailer on display at E3 2014, and having to endure the multiple delays, Ubisoft finally released Tom Clancy's The Division on March 8, 2016 simultaneously for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

The Divison is a shooter game with tactical elements and RPG in it. If you are familiar with Destiny, then I am sure you will not be familiar with the concept that carried in The Division.

Then, if The Division can be a game that suits you spend hours in playing it? Before deciding to withdraw your savings and buy this game, consider first the following reviews.

When Skyrim meets with Battlefield

The story in The Division itself was inspired by a real event called Operation Dark Winter, which was implemented by the United States government in 2001 to simulate countermeasures against bioterrorism attacks.

This game tells that what the government feared in Operation Dark Winter really happened after an artificial virus named Green Poison spread through the money sheets at Black Friday, the biggest discount day in the Uni States.

Within a single day, the entire United States was experiencing a pandemic, with Manhattan as the worst-hit city and allegedly the source of this devastating disaster.

In this game, you will play an agent of a special organization called Strategic Homeland Division, or simply called The Division. This organization was formed and activated to cope with various emergencies that could lead to the paralysis of state infrastructure, one of which is the pandemic.

With a sophisticated weapon, you are assigned to explore the city of Manhattan to find out what and who caused this pandemic, alone or together with up to three friends.

The presence of RPG elements in The Division clearly gives fresh air to the way to play shooter games. If you've been familiar with most shooter games with a linear story and character abilities that are already set by default, different things you will see in this game.

The Division is an open world game with various main and side missions that you can do in parallel. That is, you do not have to complete one mission to run another mission. Each completed a mission, this game will give you clues that further clarify the origin of the Green Poison virus and who the mastermind behind it.

Like the RPG in general, you can create your own character. Unfortunately, the character creation feature provides a fairly limited choice. You can not create the desired characters as freely as Bethesda's games like Fallout 4 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. As a result, I find it difficult to create a character similar to myself.

The Division gives the freedom to determine the style of play that matches each player. You can choose and combine the unique abilities of three different classes, namely Medical, Technology, or Security in battle.

The Medical Class has the ability to focus on healing team members. Class Technology has a variety of sophisticated gadgets like turrets, grenades, and mines that are able to locate their targets automatically. While the Security class is the front man in the battle with his defensive ability.

You can learn and try the ability of other classes when it has accumulated a number of skill points by completing some major and side missions.

In addition to ability, you also have three main status to watch out for when fighting out there. The three statuses are Firearms, Stamina, and Electronics.

Firearms will affect the amount of DPS (damage per second) your weapon generates. The higher the Stamina you have, the more your character HP will be. Then Electronics will affect how effective your skills are in the game.

These three statuses will increase as your character level increases. Any equipment you wear can also help improve that status. Of course the higher the quality of the equipment, the higher the addition of the status value.

With a variety of combinations of capabilities and major status, you can certainly experiment with creating your own character roles. While writing this article, I was a high-damage medical soldier to help a team with a supression fire, or I would like to call it covering support.

You could have created a character with an unusual role. For example, you can be a sniper who is in front of enemy lines or an explosive expert as well as a tanker with HP and thick armor. This game really gives you a chance to be anything you want.

Arrange Strategy Well, Do not Miss One Step

I really enjoy the game mechanism inside The Division, but on one condition that I do not play alone. Indeed, The Division is designed as an MMO game (Massive Multiplayer Online). The level of difficulty in The Division is designed not to be played alone, although you can finish it alone with great effort.

When you play with others, the game will feel much more fun and the level of difficulty feels right. Moreover, when playing with a microphone or headset, you can communicate strategies that you want to apply with your teammates, from doing ambush, asking for covering fire, moving positions, to asking for help when you are critical.

The Division demands character positioning and the proper use of cover in the battle arena. You can not play this game with advanced origin and shoot it, but must really think about the position of the characters and a strategic cover place to wipe one by one enemies who come.

The result, The Division is able to become a shooter game that provides exciting and exciting experience. Movement from one cover to another can be the determinant of your life or death. One little step, your full HP will be immediately critical thanks to shooting from elite snipers or even besieged enemies.

Although the battle that occurred can make you seem to be there, but with a heavy heart I must say that the Division gameplay is very repetitive. Each mission has a pattern and more or less the same way you can finish it.

In almost every mission, you just have to kill all the enemies who come to finish it. Either way it's the goal, spending all the enemies is a must. Starting from an easy-to-defeat standard enemy force, it encounters several veteran enemies in the middle of the mission, until finally an elite enemy with such a thick armor appears at the end of the mission.

Fortunately, The Division gives you such a broad and dynamic stage to explore. Your adventures will always be filled with accidental encounters with four rival factions in Manhattan, Rioters, Rikers, Cleaners, and the strongest is Last Man Battalion (LMB) equipped with military-grade weapons.

Sometimes, civilians will also come to you for a consumable item. In return for helping people in need, you will have the equipment to make your character look different and certainly more cool.

Exploring Manhattan's exquisitely portrayed city by Massive Entertainment will give you a unique and unforgettable experience. I have yet to find another game capable of presenting a metropolitan city setting that has lost its civilization as well as The Division.

The Dark Zone is Really Dead

When you access the map menu inside the game, you will see a red area in the middle of Manhattan. The area is the Dark Zone, a place where you can not trust anyone other than yourself and friends you already know well.

When you decide to get into the Dark Zone, the atmosphere instantly turns gripping. Dark Zone is like a total corner of Manhattan. In it there are only four enemy factions in the number of very many and other players who also participate to try his fortune here. I do not recommend you to explore the Dark Zone alone, at least look for one friend to join the adventure together.

Like most MMO games, Dark Zone is a PvP location (mode where players can kill other players) in The Division. Here, all the moves you can shoot and kill, be they enemies controlled by AI, other players, even your own friends. Yes, your friends.

If you think that Dark Zone is a place where things are fun and exciting, I must humbly say that your assumption is wrong.

Dark Zone is indeed a PvP arena that is enough to make the heart beat and always wary because it could be your character into the range of sniper fire or ambush traps other players.

However, there is no exciting activity here other than half-dead collecting DZ Funds to buy blueprints and high end weapons, and increasing DZ Rank for exhibition alone.

Ironically, after your character hit the maximum level (level 30), DZ Funds is no longer significant in the game. You can use the Phoenix Credits easily available outside Dark Zone to replace DZ Funds as a currency when purchasing blueprints for the high end gear and weapons.

Until now, I still do not understand the real purpose of Dark Zone. There's not much you can do here besides grinding your weapons and the best equipment you'll use just to kill other players and show that you're more dominant than them.

There is no meaningful purpose you can do in the Dark Zone other than killing other players and robbing their belongings that are no longer valuable when you have finished this game.

Dark Zone is a stage that is not staged with the maximum. When you decide to go inside, a few minutes later you will feel bored and want to get out of there quickly. No Dark Zone, I feel your experience in playing The Division will not change at all.

Five Star Visual Audio

Beyond the repetitive gameplay and the Dark Zone vacuum, Ubisoft Massive as a developer has worked on graphics and audio in this game very well. I have to admit that the graphics presented by The Division are so slick and real.

Although there is a decrease in the quality of the graphics for the console compared to PCs, I still feel that the chaotic state of Manhattan has been beautifully portrayed on both platforms.

Your adventures to control the unrestrained situation in Manhattan will be even more solemn with the music of Ola Strandh, a senior Ubisoft Massive composer who has previously created tones for World in Conflict and World in Conflict: Soviet Assault.

Placement of music for any atmosphere feels right. While in a fierce battle, The Division will play music that matches what you are dealing with. In fact, not infrequently the existing music chant will further add to the excitement of play and even involve emotions in it.

With stunning graphics and music that enriched the atmosphere in the game, The Division was able to make my hair stand up. This perfect combination of two elements will make you always miss the post-doomsday city of Manhattan.

Conclusion

The Division is not a game that is suitable to be played by all circles. First, you should be able to accept that The Division is an MMO, not just an action game and a mere shooter with a linear storyline. So, you should be ready to do a little grinding in order to continue the progress of the story.

Secondly, before buying this game, make sure you have a playmate to enjoy it to the fullest. In addition to the level of difficulty that is designed to not play alone, you can feel the thrill of the battle mechanism in The Division if you have a team that is solid and solid.

The visual and audio presentations of this game are able to treat a bit of your disappointment over a fairly repetitive gameplay. As you (again) thwart Rikers and LMB's evil plans with weapons and abilities that's all, the music of Ola Strandh can also strengthen the atmosphere you feel in the game.

For those of you who want to find new experiences and atmosphere in playing shooter game, The Division is the right game. However, you should really think about the two things I mentioned before maturely before spending deep enough to make up for this game