Edit: The game is still constantly evolving (or degenerating), I'll rewrite this review for the upcoming patch 1.8.2, stay tuned!

As of patch 1.5, the PvE part of the game can be summarized as “4 Alphabridgers farming Barrett's vest”; the PvP part can be summarized as “4 man squad hunting lone wolves in Dark Zone”.
Patch 1.6 introduced a more balanced PvP mode which is surprisingly fun in my opinion, as well as more variety in gear builds which is a great thing. High-level players now have Legendary difficulty missions to farm even better gear. The change is definitely a step in the right direction. But is the game "perfect" now? I'd say far from it.

This game still suffers badly from largely empty environment as an open world game and lack of player interaction as an MMO, which I will elaborate below.


The Division is some sort of paradox to me, it’s a solid shooter and a shallow MMO at the same time, and it’s a great time killer thanks to the RNG god. See, the game is on my recommend list, but make no mistake:
-if you seek meaningful story and plot with twists, or memorable characters with depth, just look somewhere else;
-if you like shooting some bad guys and watch numbers of different colors pop out, look no further and this game does a fine job for you to enjoy.


A Detailed World
Speaking of graphics, The Division is a masterpiece of its own kind: with everything maxed out, the game is truly something to behold: The falling snow, the abandoned buildings and ravaged streets of New York, the dim light at night and the glaring bloom at dawn, everything looks fine with realistic detail and a post-apocalypse touch.

Even at medium settings it looks beautiful. And the game runs fine on my 2-year-old rig, no hiccups or stuttering (I did experience occasional framerate drops, but only in very rare case) which is amazing.

Wasted Potential
Unfortunately, player’s interaction with such game world is shockingly limited: you cannot enter most buildings and even when you can, there’ll be just a few “collectibles” inside or some switches to turn on/off, there are civilians on the street but all you can do is pressing “F” at the right time so they can give you some garbage that you’ll never use.

It seems that tons of assets in this game are not utilized to full potential and only serve as visually pleasing elements, the devs have created lots of interesting set pieces (such as the scene where a woman is playing piano in snow) but all you can do is to collect audio logs, phone recordings and such. Some may argue that the game’s story lies behind those audio logs, but I’d expect 21st century game devs do better than that for an AAA title.

Welcome to The Grind
The actual gameplay is solid: guns feel alright, animations are smooth and most of the agent outfits look cool enough, there are also tons of equipment with different properties/talents for you to grind. The problem is some weapon/gear combinations are vastly superior in performance to others, so you’ll end up seeing Alphabridge users everywhere and 9 players out of 10 are farming Barrett’s vest, which is an irony considering the game’s vast array of weapons and gears. Generally I like the build variety introduced with patch 1.6, but I feel some of them are still much under-powered compared to others, such the Hunter's Faith set, or only useful in very specific situations such as the Final Measure set.

The survival DLC, on the other hand, is brilliant, not only it negates the grinding, but also makes everything relevant: the cold weather, the food and drink you collect, the weapon/gear you scavenge from dead bodies, all serve to your ultimate survival goal and are lore-friendly to The Division world. IMO this DLC is a must have for you survival lovers.

Be warned though, the game utilizes Ubi’s notoriously faulty servers, so expect disconnections/lag even if you have good Internet connection.

The Missing MMO
What you think about The Division will also depends on how you view the MMO genre in general. I’d say, as an MMO, The Division’s player interaction options are severely lacking, besides standard co-op PvE, Dark Zone encounters and occasional items sharing, all you have is a public chat channel and for half of the time it just shows players from different countries insulting each other. There’s no guilds, no clans, no platoons and organizations you’d expect from an MMORPG, all you have is your Uplay friend list, which is simply disappointing.

Bottom Line
Overall I like the game, and would recommend it to any shooter fans who have lots of spare time and don’t mind a little grinding. But I do hope future game devs can learn from The Division’s mistakes so we’ll be able to enjoy some truly great shooter/RPG MMO hybrid gameplay in a few years.