I have recently tried to play the Division 1 and I don't give recomendation to it despite having about 55 hours in it. Currently at the time of writing this review, I have 73 hours logged into Division 2 which have not been focusing on story mission, it felt better with the mechanic and QoL compared to Division 1.
Again, in this review, I will mention that I mostly play the game solo because of bad internet connection, just like I did in my Division 1 review.
-Weapons : Compared to Div 1, plenty of the gun have been improved just on the accuracy and stability. You now shooting enemies you aimed at, instead of shooting the sky even with high recoil weapons like SMG and Hunting Rifles. There are some minor deviation from centre to left and right when aiming, but it is bearable and doesnt cause much issue, at least for me. Weapon mods does not counts as singular individual items anymore, and can be attached to any weapon while other weapon already using it. Great QoL, save your inventory slot a lot as well.
Div 2 now introduce a Specialty Weapons, you now basically carry 4 weapons instead of 3 like Div 1. This can help you tremendously fighting elites, albeit you need to farm their ammunition by killing enemies instead of stocking them like your 3 other weapons.
-Armor : It actually works now, instead of being grouped together as a health pool, it is a different status layer which can be increased with the right equipment stats and bonuses. You still lose health as fast as you do in Div 1, but as an extra layer of defense, where you can get yourself from cover to cover before being mowed down by the enemies with 100% accuracy rate from 500 meters away with low accuracy weapons like shotguns and pistols that hit as hard as sniper rifle or LMG.
-Skills and agent tools addition and improvement: The drone is a godsend for me. Compared to turret (still available in Div 2), it has mobility to find and hurt enemies. Paired it with pulse, it a great combination to clear encounter, easy or hard in a short amount of time, without wasting time especially on solo trying to find the enemies, chasing them and mow them down. There are other useful tools like the chemshooter that gives huge debuff to the enemies and firefly that helps you blind or shock the enemies before combat starts.
-Animation locked : It is somewhat bearable now, some still locked you in animation like gear and key boxes, but for materials and resources, you can just walk pass by and still opens them without stopping your movement. Great QoL improvement.
-Plenty of extra activities to do, which says a lot of how stale the first Division was. Loot drop, civilian rescue, territory controls, which most gives great loot and rewards + xp to build your agent's loadout before tackling main missions.
-Enemies and boxes have better drop rate to give you higher quality gear (blue/pink/yellow) compared to the last game, which just mostly dropped grey and blue almost 90% of the time, even on elites and officers.
-Materials and resources are now easier to come by, your crafting ingredients isn't as hard compared to last game where you need to scrap your gear to obtain them or go to a specific area to gather them.
They still exist, but you don't need a dedicated time frame just for material farming unlike Div 1, you still can dedicate a time from just for farming material and resources, but it doesn't feel obligatory. One of the great QoL they implimented.
Now there is still some problems for Division 2, albeit it isnt as bad as Division 1, which made me recommend Division 2 more.
Some of the negatives :
- Still crowded world, its not hard to navigate but you do get stuck every now and then, when you can clearly just lift your foot, but doesn't even allow the ctrl trigger.
- Still need to hold Interact button to interact for most interactable actions.
- The animation is kind of a bit stiff compared to Division 1, which I believe it shouldn't be? Division 1 have a smoother animation in scenes.
- Missions doesn't really rewards you with cash anymore, you either hunt bounty at end level or selling your gear and trinkets to get them, especially if you plan to craft.
-Removal of buff like water and soda to give you defense or dmg to elites. It is now a resources that you provide for the settlement. Elemental ammo also instantly applied the moment you open the boxes instead of you saving them in inventory and applying it when needed.
-Grenade type is tied to your specialty weapons now. It is not selectable like in Division 1 where you can stockpile them from drops or grenade boxes.
-Just like in the first game, the enemy stat scaling is broken. You will see the dificulty spike around lv 23-25+. We are talking about enemies that have so much armor that it empties your ammo surplus of all 3 equiped weapons, especially end level elites (yellow bar/named enemies/bounties).
In Division 2, they have the habit of spawning 3-4 elites at once, add that with maybe 3-4 more enemies type that can either be normal or officers (purple). Doing any kind of timed open world event or just bounty hunting, you will see this happens constantly, and if you play solo like me, you will be overwhelmed very quickly since they tend to rush you especially in small area like the underground parking lot. If you die during bounty hunting, that bounty is just gone.
For me, Division 2 is a bit like Division 1, its a like and hate feeling, like because of the QoL improvement, hate because of the mechanic that is just too obnoxious just like Divison 1 was. Still, Division 2 is a huge improvement compared to Division 1 for me. I hate to skip Division 1 because I do want to know the lore of it, but I have no feelings to get back to it and just play Division 2 instead.
