The Failure: The Division Review

[SImoHayha]

So Clocking in 86 hours and facing various struggles and meeting some great friends. I present my review of the, The Division. The Review will be split into sections in order to make this easy to view and see.

 

=Overview=

=Gameplay=

=Pros=

=Issues/Cons=

=Suggestions/Personal Thoughts=

 

 

= Overview=

The Division is based off of Operation Dark Winter. Operation Dark Winter was a attack simulation, which involved the smallpox virus, this was to show how chaos would eventually overwhelm America's health care system and cause major issues with isolating the virus and the people of the virus. Now In The Division this has happened, you're a sleeper cell in New York city, becoming finally activated, and will try anything and everything in order to save your hometown and the people you made friends and family with. Its up to you to save New York City either by yourself or with your other fellow Division Soldiers.

 

=Gameplay=

 

The game play is a cover based shooter/RPG/MMO. Your character unlike normal cover based shooters like Ghost Recon, requires numerous amounts of bullets, which usually earns this game as a bullet sponge game. Also unlike other RPGS/MMO's while you use equipment to increase your stats, in The Division however equipment determines everything, from the extra bonus damage your guns do, to your health and skill power, so leveling does nothing but enable you to equip more and more higher tier equipment, they also provide other protections from enemies and other things. And like MMO's and RPG's you can see how much damage each attack does, which we see as numbers, each number color shows something different, sometimes white, gold and blue. These means three different things, white means health damage which is the " True " health bar, blue numbers means damage to armor enemies are wearing and gold numbers mean critical damage which of course means extra damage than usual.

 

In The Division, we can see each stat and the values, however there is an issue that arrives in this game. Unlike normal RPG/MMO's there is a set limit to certain stats, however In The Division there isn't a very clear distinction, because sometimes higher values lets say, %To Critical Hit is 90% however in the recent patch it caps it 60% which is Ok, but the game doesn't stop the value from going higher which can cause massive confusion and issues because while your expect to get 90% of your shots to do a critical hit each bullet in reality only has a 60% of doing critical damage. Which to a RPGer whom does Min-Maxing ( The act of achieving the most effective build or stats that doesn't require changing the build or stats for the remaining of the game ) can cause major outcry and even massive confusion.

 

There is also some stats that clearly don't note what they do. A clear example of this is Threat, in the game all the value says is percentage of threat, which doesn't tell the player anything whatsoever, and simply is a guessing game unless you scourge the internet for information WHICH A RPG shouldn't require unless doing the hardest of hard missions or quest. I still don't currently even know what Threat does.

 

The game is a RPG, however level don't give a clear distinction of the power enemies have against you. Even when you're the same level as the enemies. For example during a intense struggle of me trying to do a mission solo, at level 18 and the enemies are at level 20 and 19 you think you would stand a chance against them, however unlike a normal RPG where since your near their level which means you would have a mild struggle at best, this game cranked the enemies to doomsday levels. Enemies that killed me within 3-4 shots while am struggling to even do a dent to their armor and health. Which lead to me being extremely salty and asking players in the chat for massive help, when they told me 12k health wasn't even enough to do that mission it lead me to a massive conclusion that levels and equipment are not even one in the same when it comes to baddies like normal RPG's or MMO's unless its clearly a boss or a special monster.

 

In the game there is skills and talents which is a very nice touch, meaning your Agent can on top of having three skills they can have 4 talents which help actively in battle and activating at once and forever as long as you met the requirement to activate said skill such as battle medic, which increases healing by 40% and heals nearby allies within 20M when using a medical kit. However unlike MMO's and RPG's there are talents which can destroy or disrupt other players or even your own skills/talents. WHICH IS A BIG F******* NO NO IN THE RPG WORLD. If there is a BLOODY talent that destroys your skill THEN WHAT IS THE POINT OF USING THAT TALENT !? Of course if it said using this talent destroys X skill then that would be fine however IT DOES NOT SAY THAT ANYWHERE IN THE GAME, Combat Medic talent said above destroys Smart Cover a skill which reduces damage and increases damage for players.

 

Mobsters mobs in this game level up as you do, and by level I mean they sure as hell stay stronger than you unless you got the equipment. However the problem is that there is so many mobs that have armor, from wannabe gangsters to trashman who use makshift flamethrowers, that DOESN't MAKE ANY SENSE. Sure you the character has armor HOWEVER this doesn't do teh same thing as enemy armor. Armor for agents reduces damage to you by a certain percentage capping at 75%. However for Enemies its a white bar above their health which gives them extended health AND is a requirement to destroy their " Real HP" not even headshots to unprotected faces still deals damage to the darn armor which can a massive pain to deal with. 

 

NOTE! : will finish after doing some business with family. STAY TUNED.