‘Warlords of NewYork’ refines ‘The Division 2’
“The Division 2” managed to stand out in a sea of loot games when it came out around a year ago. Its combination of tactical gameplay and robust mechanics made for a game that was challenging, addictive and unique. “Warlords of New York” expands the game while also revamping it.
To those who’ve never played any “Divison” game, you play as a sleeper agent who is activated after a global viral pandemic cripples America’s infrastructure. In “Warlords of New York” you go from Washington D.C. to lower Manhattan to hunt down a cell of rogue Division agents led by a man named Aaron Keener. As you do missions you gather intel on his lieutenants which will eventually lead to Keener’s location.
Games with the Tom Clancy tag used to have great stories full of political intrigue and espionage. As good as the gameplay in “The Division 2” is, the story is again the lowpoint of the game, even with its interesting premise. Characters and dialogue are easily forgettable and often just feel like roadblocks to the gameplay.
Thankfully, the gameplay more than makes up for the lackluster story. “Warlords” adds new gadgets and new gear on top of the solid foundation established in the base game. Players can’t brute force their way through encounters. They need to utilize cover and planning to succeed, especially on higher difficulties. Players also need to make sure that they’re looting and updating their gear to better fit their desired play style.
Chasing after the best loot drops is the name of the game. Finding a set of gear to get through missions on normal or hard is easy. Weekly invasions and the new season systemmake the game good for playing over again, but the real hook comes from challenging yourself. It’s up to each player to decide how tough they want the game to be. To get the best gear you have to keep climbing the ranks of difficulty. You reach a plateau on hard and move up to challenging then heroic.
As it stands now, difficulty is where the fan base has the biggest gripes. Missions on the highest two difficulties can feel like an impossible slog full of spongy enemies that can take bullets for minutes. While that pain is eased by optimizing your character build it still feels like the line between a fun challenge and an annoying grind has been crossed in some ways.
“Warlords of NewYork” is an overall update to a game that does a lot of good, but still has flaws to work through. Ubisoft has shown that it’s committed to updating the game to get it closer to what players want. That means that while the story of the expansion is short there is and will be plentymore to do in the game formonths to come. As an expansion, this earns four stars out of five.