Given the current climate with the Covid 19 Corona virus sweeping the Earth and infecting and endangering a stark amount of the planets population I can’t help but reflect on my time playing both of The Division games and how many similarities there are between the games and our current world situation, panic buying, the media spreading hysteria, people buying food in bulk amounts….please don’t horde all the toilet paper people, people need to clean their butts!! In all seriousness though it is kind of scary how close the story of The Division 2 is running to our own current real life narrative and in some ways I have found that this has made the game more immersive to be me in the past few weeks.

The Division 2 had a rough first year with a lot of criticism coming from players and suffering somewhat lacklustre sales, in my opinion I am not sure the criticism is justified though as when I initially reviewed it I thought the game was great and I have continued to play it to this day and currently have logged over 200 hours dedicated to cleaning up the various gang factions scattered around the streets of Washington D.C. With the original game being just over a year old now the game was due for a spruce up and thankfully that has arrived with first paid DLC for the base game “Warlords Of New York.”

Warlords Of New York sees you returning to the streets of New York, the stage for the original game and scene of the outbreak of the dollar flu that was created by the scientist Gordon Amhurst and unleashed on the unwitting public and spread via infected dollar bills during black Friday. The snow has thawed and some new threats have arrived in the city famous for the Statue Of Liberty, Wall Street and Coney Island. Rogue Division agent Aaron Keener has gone on the run with a crew of 4 other rogue Division agents Conley, Parnell, Kajika and Dragov.

The DLC has you hunting down each of Keeners henchman and gathering clues which end in a mission and boss fight with the rogue agent, once all four agents are defeated you will have compiled enough information to then track down the coordinates of Keener himself. Set in Manhattan the new map is quite large (roughly a quarter of the size of the Washington D.C. map from the original game) and I really enjoyed the way the game felt you like you were on a manhunt and had to gather clues in order to key in the location of your prey, the multiple missions and boss fights were varied and very well constructed, plus the city looks absolutely breathtaking. The DLC also brings with it the introduction of several new skills mods, which you capture off the various rogue agents you hunt down.

The DLC also raises the games max level to 40 and brings with it a whole new inventory and re-calibration system. This original inventory system was quite clunky and inventory management was a massive pain, with the new system you can tell at a glance if that shiny new gun you have picked up is an instant upgrade or whether off you would be better off marking it as trash to deconstruct or sell or even whether it would be more useful to strip one of the skills off it to add to your skill library. The library is part of the all new re-calibration system and it is utterly fantastic, if you see a skill or stat on a piece of armour or gun that you think you may find useful you can simply strip this off the item and add it to your library, this will however destroy the item in the process, once added to your library you can then upgrade your existing gear from the library of stats and talents that you have built up. This may seem like a small quality of life improvement, but it is a massive game changer and makes it so much easier to create the type of build that you enjoy playing in the game.

When hitting the level cap in the original game the progression continued via what is known as “gear score” which all in all was really a meaningless stat and really did not represent the power of your agent at all. In Warlords this system has been massively overhauled, once you reach level 40 you stay there but you continue to gain exp, once you make enough exp you are then given a point to apply to various different stats ranging from critical hit chance, weapon damage, accuracy and many more, this alternate advancement system really opens up a vast array of options to help you tailor your agent the way you want and opens up the door to a nearly infinite amount of different builds. The expansion also comes with the first season pass which sees you gaining various rewards such as apparel cache keys, guns and armour through levelling it up. Once the story (and the surprise twist ending) is over there is still a mind-blowing amount of content to be devoured and I am really looking forward to the new content that is promised to be added over the next few months.

Warlords of New York is a fantastic addition to the base game especially because of the new inventory and looting systems and exploring the new streetscapes of Manhattan made the game feel fresh again. If you haven’t tried The Division 2 now would be a great time to start, if you are into looter shooters and like games where PVP isn’t forced upon you I guarantee you cannot go wrong here, if you are a current player then I assure you that you will not be disappointed with the new story and the overhaul of the games systems, as far as DLC goes this is incredible value for money for the amount of entertainment you will get out of it.

Review code provided by Ubisoft