The Division is a game from ubiSoft a third person shooter based in New York after a biological terrorist attack. You play as a Division agent, a sleeper agent if you will, who work for the United States government in times of crisis.

The Division is a AAA game for sure, the hype around the game is we deserved. I have personally put around 209 hours worth of game time into it. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to solo all the mission in the game but I was able to.

The Missions in The Division

As you would expect Some are harder that other. The storyline missions of The Division come in 3 distinct varieties Medical, Security and Tech.  Once these are complete you will have a good amount of Blueprints to help you craft better weapon and armour. As well as your storyline  missions  you also have side mission as well:

• Bounties (Locate and kill specified targets)
• Investigation (Locate and bring back various supplies)
• Missing Persons (Locate specified NPCs)
• Rescue (Locate and save specified NPCs)
• Supply Drop (Locate and secure supply drops)
• Uplink Repair (Find JTF antennas and bring communications back online)

All of the Storyline and side missions give you reputation you can spend in your base of operation to upgrade it to give boosts in game.

I was initially only going to play this game solo and I did complete the game solo but once you have finished the Campaign Mission and got all the blueprints and fully upgraded your base of operations you will have access to the Daily missions. These were supposed to give better item drops and phoenix credits to spend in your base of operation for better gear and more blue prints. But at the time of writing this the loot is a bust, you get the same items mods and the not so good dps weapons. UBISoft have said in patch 1.2 they are changing this but right now it feels there is no real point in doing the daily missions.

Besides the below par items the amount of phoenix credits allows you to kit yourself out good in a reasonable amount of time and then you are just buying the blueprints just to spend your credits.

The Dark Zone

Finally I come to the Dark Zone, an area in the centre of the map for PVP and some PVE. This is the main draw of The Division for many people. The enemies in the dark zone are all tougher than normal with a good amount of named targets for the better loot drops. But again the loot is the same over and over. And to me this is the real problem with the game. I will explain after I talk about the PVP in the game.

The PVP can feel very one sided, I go into the dark zone with two friends and we are not that badly equipped we can hold our own against the mobs but as soon as we see a group of rouge agents (players who have killed fellow players) we have to watch our backs. Now yes this is part of the game but when you don’t have a chance of fighting back it starts for feel a little one sided. I know what you are thinking they are better players and they most likely are but I would like to be able to at least do some damage to them. But without access to the better equipment you are really hampered in what you can do against other players. Yes I know you have to earn your gear but the group of three I play in have now done all but one mission on challenging with just the 3 of us and that is the new incursion mission they added with patch 1.1.  In the Dark Zone against a group of four players we drop very fast and now the fun of the Dark Zone is running away very fast.

Now a topic I really hope they can sort out soon, there are way to many exploits and cheats going on in the division at the moment. Wall, Stats increase, aimbots and godmode exploits to name a few have been going on to much in The Division. Ubisoft are trying to keep up with these and banning any players for a period of time that use exploits and in some cases permabans for those who actually hack the game.

Below is a You tube clip on me doing a  hard mission.

My Verdict

Overall I like this game a lot. well i must do with over 200 hours played. It does have its flaws at the moment and ubisoft are addressing any exploits and cheating in game. And hopefully with patch 1.2 they will address the lack of a good variation of loot dropped.