Video | 3/28/2019 at 3:30 PM

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 Stream Recap

A solid start so far

It is the season of the loot shooter, or "shlooter" if you won't (please). Destiny 2 is in the midst of its 6th season of content, BioWare's Anthem is still patching and fixing things, and Ubisoft recently released the follow-up to their offering in the genre, Tom Clancy's The Division 2. We've only begun to get into this sequel, but we're enjoying what we've played thus far.

When The Division first launched, one of the bigger issues was the lack of content once you made your way through the campaign. Over time and with several updates, patches, and DLC, Ubisoft greatly expanded upon everything and the game ended up in a pretty good place. Based on what we've played so far of The Division 2, it seems like many of those improvements and enhancements were implemented in to the sequel so it starts well and will, ideally, only get even better. We haven't made it through all the campaign stuff into the "endgame," where apparently the really good stuff is, but the title makes a very good first impression.

A few quick things I wanted to highlight when it comes to the co-op. We mention this briefly in the stream, but it's worth noting.

Players can join with their friends regardless of level or story progression. The game will automatically scale up the stats of lower level players to match with the highest player so they can participate in fights and not get slaughtered.
  When you join a friend's game, your progress carries over back into your own game. In other words, if you complete some main story and side missions with your friend, those missions will also be completed in your game.
  All loot is instanced and it can be traded between players for an hour after it is acquired. This doesn't really seem to matter much early on when you're just using whatever you pick up as you get it, but later on, players can special into certain "builds" where some gear would be more ideal.
  Enemies can still be "bullet sponges," but the fights feel like they're tuned towards co-op/squad tactics. Foes will constantly be trying to flank you and flush you out of cover, so it's only fair to repay them in kind. You don't need a full group of 4 to accomplish this, either, as a good mix of skills (i.e., the turrets, drones, chem launchers, etc that you unlock) will help you keep foes on their toes.

We're going to keep playing and pushing on through the campaign and I'm certain we'll be featuring this in another stream in the future once we get into some of the endgame stuff.

Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is available on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Four player online co-op is supported throughout, with eight player co-op for the raids.

If you're interested in picking up the game and would like to support Co-Optimus, you can head over to Amazon via this link and get it from there.