Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10
Every so often, I explore a new series of games which, although provide a bearable experience, don't really do enough to entice me into further exploration.It's not that The Division is bad. It's actually fairly palatable, but does it make me want to invest in The Division 2? Not at all. I had the exact same feelings towards Destiny 1. They're decent enough games, just not good enough to the point where I feel like they're worth continuing on with.
The central plot is based around uncovering the mystery behind a virus sweeping across New York City, labelled the "Dollar Flu", due to the fact contamination occurs through the transfer of money.
The premise is fairly cliche - A number of factions that control the city have a vested interest in the virus for various reasons, some of which involve obtaining access to the virus in order to detriment the human race, meaning your primary objective, as a Division agent, is to be drafted in to prevent this from happening.
The trophy list is large in size, containing 51 trophies in total, and these do mostly span across the story mode of the game along with the RPG elements that come with it, including levelling up your base of operations, crafting items/weaponry and venturing into the PvP arena known as the Dark Zone.
This isn't an especially tough list in terms of the actual challenge presented here, but it is long-winded, and it does feature alot of repetition that makes you re-tread old ground very often, which becomes a hard slog as you push towards the end of the list.
The "Know No Fear" trophy, awarded for Finishing all of the missions at Level 30 on the Hard difficulty, will require you to play through each mission within the story twice through before you unlock this trophy.
There are 16 main story missions in total, and the "Hard" difficulty mode is not available from the outset, meaning you'll have to beat every mission once before going back through and tackling them again on the hardest difficulty level.
The irony is, it was actually harder first time round, because difficulty scaling is present as you progress your characters level and use the experience and resources earned through beating the story missions in order to acquire new skills, craft better equipment and become much stronger as a result and these are necessary to provide a balanced challenge. Given the fact the game is designed to be tackled in groups, it can be tough to play through this on your own, and that is the biggest challenge I faced as I attempted to reach level 30 and beat the story for the first time. Even playing with other agents, it was still a battle to get through certain levels, but not quite to the point where it ever felt insurmountable. On top of this, you will earn a separate trophy for reaching level 30 too.
Once I did beat the story in full, I gained access to the Final Stand arena, where I completed the previously featured Final Stand DLC. This lifts the levelling cap and allowed me to level my character up way beyond level 30 and pick up much stronger gear. So much so to the extent that, when I went back over the story on Hard difficulty in order to unlock this trophy, I literally ended up walking past enemies because I was so over-levelled and my equipment was so powerful. The same story missions that were taking me, in some instances, over an hour to beat in my previous run, were now being beaten within 10 minutes, and whilst I understand this may have been different had I not over-levelled my character by going through the Last Stand DLC, this was the route I took and the review should reflect this.
Along the way, there are 13 progression-based trophies, which unlock upon the completion of certain story missions, and by the time you unlock the "Know No Fear" trophy, you should have almost half the list completed as you also start to get into some of the RPG elements mentioned above, which are critical to developing your character, and ultimately progressing through the story.
Away from the main story offering, there are way too many collectibles to note any one of these trophies specifically, but the list offers out an additional 6 trophies that span an overall total of 290 collectible objects, so it is still worth mentioning.
Collectible items will only appear on the map when you get to within a very close fixed proximity of them and there's no other way to reveal them all at once so you'll never know exactly where you need to go for which items, and given the fact they can appear at a variety of different elevations, whether it be underground, within a building or on a rooftop, it becomes imperative to follow a guide for this exercise, and is certainly one of the least enjoyable collectible-based experiences I've had with any game.
Further to this, character movement feels clunky and it's a complete pain in the arse to get attacked by factions every time you turn onto a new street within the open world environment - 2 key factors which ultimately become a real inconvenience when you've got to trawl every corner of the map hunting down almost 300 collectibles. It prolongs what is already a fairly time-consuming exercise, and it would be best to pick up whatever you can as you naturally move through the game, mopping the rest up at the end. It isn't an advisable plan to fulfil this requirement in bulk, purely because of the monotony attached to it, so my best advice would be to pick up anything that comes naturally and use a guide to finish the rest at the end.
The "I am the LAW!" trophy, awarded for Killing 20 Rogue Agents, will require you to visit the briefly aforementioned Dark Zone, which does have it's own focus within this trophy list with a small handful of other fairly simple trophies, aside from this one.
The Dark Zone allows you to enter a previously forbidden area of New York City, which contains stronger groups of enemies, better loot and most significantly, other players.
For the most part, human players will be passive, and are in the Dark Zone to take advantage of the potential for NPC enemies to drop valuable loot, however, human enemies also have the capacity to turn themselves rogue, which will allow them to attack and be attacked by other human players, and these are the circumstances required to fulfil this trophy.
The reason this was tough for me was because, as someone who is modest enough to admit that I only ever strive to do the minimal required amount to beat a game in accordance to whatever the trophy list asks of me, it meant that, when it comes to the big, bad Dark Zone, I end up being one of the weakest characters present, making it incredibly tough to kill enemies who are more than likely way above my level of strength.
Once you reach level 30, and the level cap blows up, it is seriously hard to compete with other players unless you invest your time into further levelling and obtaining the better gear that comes with this reward, and as someone who only has the requirements of the trophy list at the heart of my best interests, I have no motivation to continue to play the game purely for the sake of character progression, which is something a lot of people do still play the Division for.
This, of course, is absolutely fine. I accept we all play games for different motives, but this did seriously disadvantage me in the Dark Zone as I constantly came up against stronger players. I did notice that groups of people love to get together and just fight, which is where my opening came in, hanging around hoping to get the killing blow at the right time and effectively just scavenge kills towards the trophy. It took me the course of a few weeks of dropping in and out whilst going through the rest of this list when I knew other players were around fighting each other, but I did manage to get there eventually. It certainly wasn't as easy as I felt it could have been, but knowing this was because I didn't want to put the time and effort into levelling my character, I accept that I was forced to find a harder way through.
When I reflect on the main menu upon completing this game, and read the total playtime of 6 days and 12 hours, that's a level of time investment that equates to over 150 hours, and there won't be many games out there I've put that much time into. It is important to deduct a reasonable amount off that for the Last Stand DLC, which I assume would be counted within this, but that would still make this a 100+ hour Platinum trophy at the very least, and I've always been of the opinion that time has always meant something when it comes to rating difficulty of a list.
The overall challenge of this game doesn't peak too high, though it can be rough playing through the game first time round when the enemies are much more relative to your characters level prior to reaching level 30. However, the Dark Zone challenges were a legitimate difficulty barrier, and I can never ignore a list that demands well over 100 hours from me to fully complete, so I'm happy to fit this somewhere around just above the mid-range of difficulty.
It's time-consuming, the Dark Zone experience was a frustrating one from a personal point of view and collectibles are horrendous, both in terms of volume and practicality. There are still 2 DLC packs to get through, so there's still some way to go, but I'm glad to make another significant step towards full completion by finally grabbing this Platinum trophy.
Notable Trophies -
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| Know No Fear - Finish all of the missions at Level 30 on the Hard difficulty. I am the LAW! - Kill 20 Rogue Agents. |
Hardest Trophy -
