How does The Division compare to Wildlands? I played both Beta's but it's been a while to remember what The Division played like. Anyone have both?
I've only played the two betas for Wildlands (with a friend) but I played through the Division (with the same friend) a while back and Division felt a lot nicer to play overall.
Wildlands felt pretty loose with everything it did and I found some stuff that felt like it just didn't work properly. The cover system and stealth mechanics were a big one. Taking cover is done automatically which is fine but if you didn't take cover facing the direction you wanted to shoot around a corner, your character doesn't turn around when you move the stick in the opposite direction, they walk backwards a good number of steps before turning around. So you end up having to either come back out of cover and go back facing the correct way or move back far enough while in cover for your character to turn around.
Stealth is a problem too mainly due to how the enemy AI works. They do have patrol patterns, but they're generally all walking around directly near each other, so taking them out one by one we found almost impossible a lot of the time. I really just didn't enjoy the betas at all.
The big problem with The Division is the story and the fact that it's part RPG. It's a 3rd person shooter with RPG elements slapped on, and not the good kind. Enemies soak up an absolute crap ton of damage; magazine upon magazine of bullets and it's really jarring with the pseudo-realistic setting. Character customisation is incredibly basic and the skills you acquire don't really change up the game that much.
The story is almost non-existent beyond the core premise.
The good points of the Division would be the environment and the shooting mechanics.
New York looks bloody beautiful with how well detailed the whole thing is. I'm not usually a stickler for graphics in games but I will heap praise onto Division for its rendition of New York.
The shooting's your standard 3rd person shooting. It works well for what it is and if you've played any other 3rd person shooter you'll get it right away.
Obviously I can't speak for Wildlands but I ended up liking The Division a lot more than I expected to. There was a lot of negativity surrounding the game when it was first released and my friend and I suggested we wait until it went on sale and then split the cost. For me it was well worth the money. We ended up doing every story mission, side quest and ended up getting all the collectables. The only thing we didn't do was the PVP aspect due to it being thoroughly broken and unenjoyable. (It's pretty much people with the highest level gear constantly killing lower tier people who stand no chance over and over again with them not being able to progress or take part properly and the high level players receiving no repercussions. It's also apparently filled with hackers on PC.) (I played both on PS4 and give Division a solid 7/10.)
TL;DR: I didn't like the Wildlands betas and I liked The Division a lot more than I thought I would and I'd label it good but not great. Worth picking up if you can get it on sale.
