Your actual impressions of The Division 2? Currently 9/10 Gamespot, that's big!

Currently am extremely entertained by Anthem and Metro Exodus, but as a big fan of the open worlds of Assassin's Creed Origins/Odyssey I wonder how the open world of The Division 2 is. I am aware looter shooters revolve around finding loot and upgrading your gear, but I have read impressions saying The Division 2 is Ubisoft's best open world yet. I love exploring open worlds but especially if they have a lot of verticality and a variety of areas. What makes this open world so great, and is this a good pickup and play game I can finish over a long course of time?

I'm playing Division 2 on PC since day one and here's my impression. The Division 2 is getting a lot of praises because it’s a full-complete game on launch with a real endgame, and not like Destiny 1/2, and Anthem. On top of actual launching with a lot of content, there's raid coming too in a couple weeks. And a year later, DLC will be free for everyone. Yes there’s a few bugs like any big open-world game, but myself personally, 22 hours in. It should be noted I'm a Tom Clancy's fan.

The loot system has a much bigger loot pool and allows for a much wider variety of endgame builds than Destiny or Anthem combined. Putting together a build feels a lot more like your creating a build and trying to get the parts to work together rather than just creating a cookie-cutter build or simply equipping the highest gear level stuff you have on you. Anthem was particularly bad in that respect with endgame builds essentially being comprised of over half the available components in the loot pool and the only real variance between them being the differences in the inscriptions. It resulted in virtually all players for their respective javelins all using the exact same component set-up. With all that said, I recommended you play it on PC, but not, Xbox One X is suited (la la the most powerful console) and I give it a 8/10!

Edit: Gamespot review score is legit despite I don't take GS reviews seriously.

I've been really enjoying it. the open world is super detailed, reminds me a bit of The Last of Us with its overgrown urban setting, though I don't think the atmosphere is quite as good as the first Division. its a small open world by Ubi standards but its incredibly dense.

there is a decent amount you can discover when exploring the open world like crafting supplies, weapons/gear crates etc. and some random 'events' like public executions and supply drops. Its kinda hard as a solo game so you are best off playing it with friends but the matchmaking lets you play with randoms pretty easily.

it definitely has a lot of content and its really easy to jump in and play so I think it fits your last criteria. If you like Metro Exodus and Anthem I suspect you'd like Div 2 as well.

I heard playing it on DX12 on the PC causes crashes. At least on the X1X you don't get that.

Nah... I enjoyed the first but after playing the beta that came out a week ago I was left unimpressed, its the least improved sequel I have played for a while now.

@with_teeth26: Thanks for your impressions! But would you say that there are many interiors you can discover and loot, without loading times? And can you actually climb a lot of buildings and enter on higher floors?

It’s a solid game. It’s also launched in the perfect storm with Anthem being hated by practically all media outlets.

-runs great

-tons of loot

-worthwhile progression

-fleshed out end game

-QoL improvements over first add up

-the world is incredibly detailed

The only negative is a lackluster story and I’ll be nit picky about absolutely trash guns that are useless.

@davillain-: thank you for explaining the loot system so thoroughly, that sounds like the game can make progression fun for quite some time.

side and main missions all have large, detailed interiors. there are also a lot of random buildings you can go into and explore/loot, though so far not many that let you get to really high floors. there does seem to be a pretty extensive underground network I haven't really explored much yet.

once you are in, there are no loading screens at all unless you fast travel. its all completely seamless, including going into main story missions. the snowdrop engine is very impressive

I always use DX11 over DX12 because Nvidia runs DX11 well enough and for some reasons, AMD runs DX12 well on it. DX12 doesn't run well if you are using Nvidia GPU.

None because I don't have it...

It's pretty clear though that modern Rainbow 6 is not the true successor n to Rainbow 6 I figured that out at some point as did everyone else I assume...

I'm really enjoying it, haven't been able to put it down since I got it & I was a fan of the first game but I was not too keen on the new location for this sequel at first.... but they got really creative with the environment and overall I have no issues with it after playing it for a while. I'm constantly walking around examining stuff, environmental storytelling I think it's called.

Anyways, I don't necessarily think the game is very different from the Division 1, it's a true sequel & I still consider it a "loot shooter" but I don't like that label too much because people use it to bash the genre....to me it is a game like Diablo, action-RPG but with a modern setting. Call it what you want, but if you "hate" those games, I'm not entirely sure you will enjoy this either.

Things I love about it compared to the first game:

*It's very PVE and PVP friendly, it's more enjoyable solo than the first game(although some areas are more difficult alone and more enjoyable with others). I'm more a PVE player in this type of game so I was happy they were upfront about this from the beginning.

*It's easier to team up with randoms compared to the first game, lots of improvements overall with the game modes and matchmaking I found....love the backup feature and also answering backup calls.

*The game feels like a step up from the previous entry, many little improvements here and there and it seems they listened to a lot of feedback.

*Nice graphical improvement compared to the first game which already looked fine to me.

*A very detailed world with lots of cool little touches and tons of content.

This is what a sequel should be for me, give fans more of the first game, what they loved about it, and double down on it, address the main complaints. Anyways, I could talk more but I gotta go play, posting on forums is time consuming.

Yeah Nvidia has to get working on that.

I am quite surprised that no one here ever brought up the GameSpot review days ago which had a high score.

Played the beta briefly. It was shit.

Haven't had much time to play it, but so far, so good.

Oh, you mean like how the Xbox is crashing with Metro Exodus?

https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/ar1cvs/metro_exodus_on_xbox_one_x_crashing/

I don't know why you're trying to pick on PC for this; the consoles have it just as bad in some cases. And besides that, this isn't a widespread issue for Division 2. Mine runs just fine in DX12.

nice post and useful information.

Haven't really looked at it, but the first game was crap and GameSpot staff have shit taste. That's pretty much all I need to know.

Meh just another mindless cash grab.

Tell us about your gaming tastes since you judged the tastes of GameSpot so we can see if it is better.

I'm pretty sure they removed the option to toggle DX11 or DX12 in the latest patch.

Gun play is tight.... fire fights get intense.

The AI is pretty good in this game... enemies will try to flank you if you let them.

Open world is beautiful... but not a whole lot of verticality in response to the OP.

Seems like a great co-op game so far.

2018 and 2019 is the time of "Take My Money, Ubisoft". I'm not sure how I feel about that...

But between AC Odyssey (great game!), Far Cry New Dawn (mediocre, but fun), The Division 2 (epic), Far Cry 5 (more of the same, and that's OK), and all the upcoming titles (Anno 1800, Skull and Bones) the fun just is not stopping.

I know some are cash grabs, but dammit, they're fun. Note: did not buy any DLC for these games, either.

Pretty much this.

A fully-featured co-op loot shooter. It does everything right.

Fights feel substantial, and while there are high-health enemies, they don't feel like bullet sponges. Every encounter is pretty thrilling, as you get a mix of enemy types with each one. Gotta pick which guys to take out first. The AI also seems pretty wicked, too, as enemies will flank you, throw lots of grenades, and snipers try to stay away while guys with shotguns try to get close. They all use cover as well as you do, too.

You have to play to the strengths and weaknesses of your weapons. Using a DMR is great, but if you start shooting too fast the recoil is hard to manage. Conversely, if you just hold the trigger down on your LMG you actually improve your aim (i.e. you can "walk" the bullets to your enemy) but the stability (i.e. how much it jerks around when firing) can make your aim move around off target. You can mod all weapons all the time, but each mod also has a pro and a con; for example, adding crit chance but reducing accuracy, or decreasing load time but also decreasing clip size.

The online aspect is great, as is the single-player. I don't feel punished for wanting to play alone, and matchmaking is done incredibly well, too. Simply entering the world and joining up with some people on "free roam" mode (i.e. just wandering around doing random stuff) is pretty fun!

Loot is meaningful. I don't feel like I am being deprived as I have gotten a handful of awesome items, but it's also not showering me with all kinds of stuff as to make loot meaningless. Building your character is pretty fun, too.

My only complaint so far is that some skills feel kind of useless, but that might be because my power level is too low.

Sounds unecessary since what's shit and what's not is opinion based, but I usually like most highly praised games (such as Dark Souls, Zelda: BotW, Hollow Knight) as long as they're not games designed to have a slow progression system with repetitive gameplay in order to milk people out of of money while not putting much work into making the game (such as Destiny 1&2, which got great scores from GameSpot). I also dislike games that take away your control very often and lock you into unskippable cutscenes, as I find it cheap and not fun. Since GameSpot staff seems to have no such negativity towards such games, I deem their taste shit. They give Assassin's Creed games great scores everytime, despite the games basically being reskins of their previous AC game, thus I again deem their taste shit and doubt their knoweldge about games when they don't even mention stuff like that in their reviews.

Feel free to disagree. No need to tell me why you disagree though.

Ubisoft game not called "Rayman" or "Splinter Cell".

It's trash. No need to get information or expand upon it.

Im sure everyone will be saying how aweful it is just like the first game