Developer: Massive Entertainment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Rating: M for Mature (Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language)

Platforms available: Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC

Platform Reviewed: PC

Release Date: March 15, 2019
Back in 2016, a little Swedish studio called Massive Entertainment created a game that was ambitious, technologically beautiful, and very, very flawed. For a first time project, it was impressive. As a AAA title, it was severely lacking. So much so, that when the time came for the second major content pack to be released, they held it back so that they could fix some of the glaring issues with the game. In the end, Tom Clancy's The Division was a solid title that reached what it was meant to be long after most of its fans abandoned it. It's a shame, really. I loved The Underground content, and friends thought the Survival mode was a welcome addition to the overall game experience. And then they gave out a horde mode to everyone, regardless of whether or not you bought the season pass!

In all of this, I honestly believe that Massive Entertainment understood their fans, because they listened. They ran "State of the Game" streams every week. They took the constructive feedback to heart and made a fantastic title, even if it was a little bit rough around the edges at the outset. So you can see why I would be cautiously optimistic about their announcement at E3:

The video looks good, but I had my share of concerns about the game. I hoped that Massive had learned from the mistakes of the first and would shape this new entry into something epic. Having spent a week in the game and going through all the story content, I can safely say that Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is feature complete, from Day 1. Let me explain.

Yeah, I look pretty awesome...

Where the first Division Agents were activated to help quell the chaos in New York City, this sequel takes place in Washington, DC. Set seven months after the Green Poison took over NYC, our fine nation's capitol has its own share of problems. The government more or less collapsed, and roaming factions moved in to take over whatever they could. This left lots of otherwise normal people caught in the crossfire as three major factions emerged:

The Hyenas

An alliance of loosely affiliated gangs who just want to party hard and hold their turf.

The Outcasts

A group of people who were left behind in a quarantine on Jefferson Island, they're upset that they were sequestered from the rest of society and want to exact revenge against everyone who was complicit.

The True Sons

A paramilitary organization initially involved in securing DC, who ultimately went rogue and did their own thing. They claim to be strong enough to make the tough decisions that the Joint Task Force (JTF) are unwilling to bear.

Each of these factions have their time in the spotlight, and each of them feel relevant to the city and the game. They're more than just some NPC to mow down, they have something resembling a unique feel to them. Speaking of, they have more than just a few unit types, too! The Hyenas will hop themselves up on this drug called "Spice" and then charge at you with extra health. The Outcasts have suicide bombers that will run you down and you HAVE to deal with them or you're dead. The True Sons have heavy tank units with grenade launchers that will wreck you something fierce if you're not careful! To take them out, you have to shoot up their armor, break said armor, and then damage the guy inside. The variety of new units adds challenge and depth to the otherwise monotony inherent to looter shooters like The Division 2.

I'm just going to say this outright: Washington DC is huge. The map sprawls east to west, from the capital to Jefferson Island, from the White House to the National Mall. It's huge, it really is! Look!

There's tons of territory to cover, and there's an unusual diversity of biomes in this map. The northern parts feel more urban, but if you go west, it's much older structures, more Georgetown college building in feel and aesthetic. As you go south, kudzu take over a good swath of structure, leaving everything in this lush greenery, almost like a shrub maze. The National Mall has lots of rubble, as well as signs of war. There's a wrecked train, Air Force One is crashed in front of Capitol Hill, and the Washington Monument is the site of a particularly heavy battle. Ironically, the monument is still standing!

As you progress through each section of the map, you'll unlock story missions. They range from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to the George Washington Hotel to the Lincoln Memorial. About halfway through one of the story missions, I had a really weird realization. This game is very, very repetitive. Story missions follow a very similar arc: enter location, kill enemies, move forward, kill more enemies, move forward, kill boss, mission complete. And yet, despite knowing this, I was still okay with it. The missions were fun. I didn't care that they were the same mechanics every time. I had way too much fun going through the Air and Space Museum, having been there before myself. Seeing the exhibits in the game that I saw during my visit to the capital is really, really cool.

---

Maybe it's a little bit of Stockholm Syndrome, but I genuinely liked the time I spent grinding up to level 30. The grind felt rewarding, like capturing control points and clearing activities MEANT something. It wasn't just completing quests for the sake of earning experience. The areas I spent time in? I could tell that the area changed as I completed activities. Taking down control points meant more opportunities for advancement, more loot, more (good) loot, and new side missions/activities. The world as a whole feels completely different than New York City, and that's the best thing to happen to this game.

As you level up, you eventually get to take on the faction stronghold, fighting off the leadership once and for all. The Hyenas' stronghold was a fun fight. It felt like a culmination of all of my interactions with the Hyenas came to this point. I wish I could say the same about the Outcasts. Jefferson Island is hyped up as this place that's going to be this huge fight, and it's really underwhelming. Thankfully, you get to follow it up with a fight against the True Sons in The Capitol, and it's the best possible ending to the game. It felt like an endgame fight. It had the right music, the right settings, it was a fun mission to clear. Definitely worth the effort to reach it!

Ask any number of Hardcore Division fans, and they'll all tell you that the real meat of the game isn't in the story mode. The best content is in the end game, when the whole area opens up for you. And that's especially the case in The Division 2. A new faction, called the Black Tusk, invade DC. They're a government paramilitary organization with lots and lots of high-tech gadgetry. You'll notice that control points that were once marked friendly are now hostile again. Different story missions will become "invaded" missions, controlled by the Black Tusk and running a few tweaks to the mission structure. This stands in stark contrast to the normal, hard, and challenging missions in The Division. All they did there was put more elite enemies in the mission and raised their health bars. Didn't really do much, and didn't really add anything new. So this change is very, very welcome!

The other big change at level 30 is the addition of Specializations. You get to choose one special weapon, and you gain a talent tree for unlocking more abilities, gear mods, and tweaks to your arsenal. The three specializations are Demolitionist, Survivalist, and Sharpshooter. The Demolitionist gains a grenade launcher with a gigantic blast radius, the survivalist gains a crossbow with explosive bolts, and the sharpshooter gains a ridiculously powerful .50 caliber rifle.

The Demolitionist Skill Tree

You can take a wild guess which specialization I chose. That grenade launcher is ridiculously satisfying to use, especially when you can take out several enemies at once with it. So satisfying...

In looking at the different specializations, they really lend themselves to specific play styles. All of them have talents that help your allies in a group, and all of them gain unique sidearms and grenades. They're fun to experiment with and grow as you go. If you get the chance, definitely flesh out a loadout for one of the specializations. You won't regret it.

---

A lot of people remember the Dark Zone (DZ) as this lawless, chaotic place. In The Division, this was definitely the case, and people would pop out of nowhere and gank you. This time around, the DZ is a much different locale. There's still the same risk/reward, but now going rogue has a very different method of starting up. There's new ways to go rogue, from looting caches to cutting extraction pouches to hacking SHD terminals to find the thieves' hideout. It's challenging, but well worth the effort you put into finding it. You get DZ experience, there's a special vendor, and you reset your rogue timer. Good stuff! Contaminated items drop less often. You're more likely to find non-contaminated items while running around the DZ. The trade off in this is that the contaminated items you do find are usually a much higher gear score than what you can get at the current world tier level. Actually, the items in the DZ are higher level in general.

You can also straight up disavow The Division and go completely rogue. When that happens, you're on everyone's radar. If you survive, you get huge rewards out of it! I will say that the Dark Zone this time around feels like much more fun than in the first game. I'm actually spending more time in it now than the last game. Go figure! In the past few days, I spent a bit of time running around the DZ for contaminated gear to boost my gear score. On a whim, I decided it was worth trying to reach the fabled Thieves' Hideout. I looted a couple caches, found enough SHD terminals to hack, and actually made it to one of the Thieves' Hideouts! Unlucky for me, I didn't get the one with the vendor. Womp womp...

There is a bug with the DZ in The Division 2. The first time you access each of the DZ sections, you're supposed to complete this mission where you scan the DZ and map out the locations. The first time you access each section, that quest doesn't trigger. You have to go in, log out, and then go back in order for the quest to start. I had this happen while playing the closed beta on stream, and again while playing this past week. Happened in both DZ East and DZ South. As best I can tell, it's a minor inconvenience, but something that does need to be resolved. I believe they'll take care of it pretty soon.

The Player Versus Player (PvP) content in The Division was more or less an afterthought. The DZ was supposed to fill that void, but it flopped. With The Division 2, they added a 4v4 skirmish mode! There's a deathmatch mode, as well as a hardpoint domination mode. And both of them are actually pretty fun! They also give you resource caches with gear and goodies, so they're usually worth going after.

---

Overall, I feel like The Division 2 is a much more polished, feature complete game at launch day. You can tell that Massive Entertainment learned from their mistakes, because it shows in this game. This is definitely a contender for Game of the Year, sitting comfortably amongst the best games this year has to offer. If The Division 2 can keep this up, expect it to win a lot of well deserved awards.

All photos in this review are captured in-game by me or are downloaded from Ubisoft PressXtra and used with permission.

---

Do you like my content? Follow my other channels!