Welcome to our review of the newest DLC for The Division 2, Warlords of New York is out now and we played it!
While The Division was working to secure Washington, D.C., a familiar shadow fell over the streets of New York. Aaron Keener – one of The Division’s original antagonists, as well as the first Division Agent to go rogue – has brought the factions of New York City under his control, and used them to conquer Lower Manhattan.
With other rogue Agents and a lethal new viral strain at his command, Keener is poised to eradicate what little has been rebuilt since the catastrophic Black Friday pandemic. The battle to restore order continues, but now The Division has a new mission: Stop Keener at any cost.
Having not played the original game, I decided to go all out with this review and first play Division 2 and then move on to the expansion. I did this to really get a feeling for the game and despite the amazing option to literally level up to level 30 and leave the original location of Washington for New York, the game warned me that I would not be able to return before finishing the expansion.
So instead of just diving right in, I wanted to get a real feel for the game and before I knew it, I was hours into Division 2 and loving the timing of the action that this game brings. It was quite clear that the game had 2 spikes in difficulty and I just knew that game was a challenging game unless you had a fun arsenal of weapons at your disposal. Once I had such weapons, I was able to go into missions and finish them rather quickly.
Things I disliked in the base game, include the amount of seemingly needless new weapon drops and the strange way to get money to buy useful weaponry. I also disliked the entire resetting of an area if you stopped missions in the middle. I learned the hard way to finish missions completely and had to run through several places once more in the game in order to continue. It may be an issue with shutting down the Xbox, but in all honesty, I did not look into it any further, I was having fun playing and that did trump my dismay with this game mechanic. So yeah, the base game is really fun once you get the hang of the kill rhythm to take out enemies.
Now, at one point, I did decide to take the chopper (read it out loud with Arnold’s voice) before finishing the base game and move my gameplay to the city of New York. I was in for a real surprise, the expansion is tough when you never finished the original story. Not that I was instantly getting killed, just that my weapons did not do the trick anymore and luckily the game exchanged my arsenal for a brand new one.
My first and only issue was getting used to those, that entire new arsenal was suddenly very powerful but also very different from my comfort zone rifle. I had to get used to an automated machine gun that fired off 40 rounds in a handful of seconds, forcing me to reload way more often, changing my flow completely.
As I was being led into action by a fellow agent, we were quickly able to survive the mission and before we knew it, we were headed towards Haven. The first safe zone in the expansion. There, you are debriefed and it becomes clear the expansion pack has 5 bosses prior to the big man himself. Each with his or her own specialty and they provide a serious bang for the buck and the challenge is quite real.
Don’t do like me, finish the game and then start enjoying the expansion. Not that it is impossible, no, far from, just the spike in difficulty is more than most would want to handle and despite being really fun, I still wish I had played the game more before starting the expansion. As the game mentioned, I can not go back and in a way, I am stuck before being able to go back.
This expansion is great though. I already loved the base game, the expansion takes it a notch further and makes it even better in my humble opinion. Not only do you get some serious bang for your buck from the base game, but the expansion also augments your campaign experience and makes it even better.
In conclusion, this is a perfect example of how an expansion can still improve a mighty fine game and make it even better. I wish I had listened to the advice and finished the base game prior to diving in, but I love the extra challenge that comes with it!