Tom Clancy’s The Division™

**2025 Review**
PvE: - ✓ – Still enjoyable and relatively active, but the player base is rapidly declining. Matchmaking for legendary missions is usually the only reliable way to find a group, unless you can gather enough players from social areas.
PvP: - ✗ – Rampant cheating and severe gear imbalances make it unwelcoming for new players. The Dark Zone remains playable but expect occasional instant deaths from cheaters. Skirmish matchmaking appears completely inactive.
Avoid purchasing Last Stand DLC! — Matchmaking is entirely dead, with no active player base.

Ubisoft is allergic to greatness.
This game has the absolute best "major city wrecked by some kind of calamity" environment ever. This New York is so detailed and gorgeous, there is something visually interesting every five seconds, I've broken my screenshot key. And it is legitimately morbid and upsetting too, there are mass graves, families burned in their cars, homes ruined in riots and everything. A little TLC and you can do something that could outlastofus The Last of Us in here. And what did Ubisoft do?
Big fat nothing.
This is a dollar store Borderlands with cover system, and not very good one at that. Every boss-type enemy is just a regular guy but with gazillion HP, you just shoot at them very long. The final boss is the helicopter. The fountain of creativity right there.
And even if we suspend the disbelief on all that 50 headshots to kill a thug thing - the game has nothing to offer with its writing. There are tons of sad dead people's audiologs everywhere, but absolutely NOTHING dramatic here and now the whole way through. It's either dull and boring or wHaCkY and lol so random, and I don't know which is worse. Jesus, the sure thing was right there, the environment was capable to do almost all heavy lifting, the usual Ubisoft open-world story would work just fine here, but you managed to fail even that.
It's decent virtual tourism simulator and goes well with listening the podcasts or something, I guess.
What a waste.

The Division is a case study in how much art direction, atmosphere, and graphical detail can enhance a game and make it something special. I think The Division is the most beautiful game ever made. Is it the absolute peak of raw graphical fidelity? Probably not. It did come out almost nine years ago at the time of this review. But the way that your boots leave footprints in the snow covered streets, rays of sunshine cover the city in light, your character realistically closes car doors when moving past them in cover, snowstorms cover your vision in a dense fog with snow particles flying across the screen horizontally due to the heavy wind - the level of detail in the visuals needs to be seen to be believed (and this is from 2016!). And all of it runs at a remarkably stable framerate on even weaker PCs. I played this game on an Acer Nitro 5 GTX 1650 gaming laptop for years and still managed to run it at a relatively consistent 60 fps on a mix of medium/high settings.
But if the gameplay wasn't any good, then the graphics wouldn't matter. However, this game is one of the most addictive looter shooters I've ever played. The gunplay feels GREAT - the guns all have a good amount of kick, the cover system is smooth as butter, and the sound effect that plays when you kill an enemy with a headshot is maybe one of the most satisfying sound effects I've ever heard. In addition, out of every looter shooter I've played, this game takes the most care to ensure that the process of reaching the level cap (from level 1 - 30) is actually an enjoyable time that isn't repetitive or boring. You're exploring the city streets, completing side missions, finding surprisingly fleshed out and interesting collectibles spread throughout the world, and leveling up your Base of Operations to unlock new skills and perks every step of the way - and none of it is boring. This isn't like other looter shooters where "the REAL game only starts in the endgame." The Division is ridiculously fun from the first minute you start playing, AND it has a killer endgame.
Once you reach the endgame, there's no shortage of different gear sets that accommodate completely different playstyles. There is certainly a bit of a grind to acquire these gear sets - however, with the return of "Global Events" that appear every month (they were absent from the game for all of 2024, but Ubisoft has finally fixed the issue and now they are back), you can easily get any gear set you want if you set your mind to it and farm them.
And this game has some VARIED endgame content. Want randomized dungeons with randomized layouts every time you play? Play the Underground DLC (a highly recommended purchase). Want a battle royale/extraction shooter that released in 2016 before either of these genres were even remotely popular that contains incredibly tense combat encounters with both NPCs and other players? Buy the Survival DLC (an absolute MUST purchase). Want a wave-based horde mode with a high chance of rare loot drops? Play Resistance. Want super difficult raid-like missions that require tons of teamwork and a full team of four friends? Play Incursions. The list of activities goes on and on, and all of them are incredibly high quality and super fun to play.
Don't have any friends that own the game? No problem. I play this game as a fully solo player 90% of the time, and I have a great time experiencing everything this game has to offer. No in-game activity is inaccessible to a solo player (except for Incursions, where only one can be solo-ed as far as I know). Yes, some of the activities will definitely be HARDER as a solo player, but with the right build, you can tackle just about anything the game has to offer as long as you have enough patience.
Overall, I cannot recommend this game highly enough, especially since the Global Events were fixed this past week. It goes on sale for quite cheap, quite frequently! Ubisoft absolutely COOKED with this one, and if you missed out on the game when it was new, it is still undoubtedly worth experiencing all of these years later.
If you want a solid source of information on the game, you can visit Livid Fray's YT channel. To my knowledge, she is one of the very few content creators still making content on this game, and her videos are all very informative and detailed!

New York City during the holiday season with snow and Christmas decorations lining the streets. Quite simply one of the prettiest and most ambient game worlds I have ever experienced, which is ironic considering how depressing the story is.

Quite enjoyable in a mindless way. Challenging enough without being too easy or too frustrating. Good if you have a short attention span and suffer from chronic stress like me. Basically the oven pizza of games.

you get to roleplay as a socialist cia agent with an unquenchable bloodlust and morally extreme, binary, axiomatic belief system anchored towards saving good people and just killing anyone who is not a member of our shadow wizard money gang. truely the centrist political compass of video games. the dark zone also reminds me of cincinnati ohio

a modest 7/10

This game was ubisoft at its peak. The Division 1 (not 2) is an incredibly fun open world third person shooter that combines elements of combat, teamwork, and build crafting to ensure you have a nearly never ending amount of content to grind. Unfortunately they stopped supporting this game in favor of the inferior division 2.