devtrackers.gg
As I'm way too lazy I almost never go to forums or such to comment on anyting, but this...
Anyway - please excuse my temper and my English - as you might guessed I'm not a native speaker so typos will happen.
This is the third time I'm trying to play this garbage...
Okay... where do we start here...
Lets discus the good.
The exploration in this game is great. It's not just above avarage - it actively makes me want to go around the game and explore new places. Some of the exploration puzzles are great. Props for the team responsible! For me personally this is the only thing that would make keep going. If tomorrow the game deletes all its "enemies" I wouldn't care for a dog fart.
The aestetics are also quite nice, not as good as the exploration, but they are okay-ish and I'd like Ubi to drop the "realistic-only" protagonists faces policy and make some really good looking human faces, but I guess its matter of taste. I like the fact that most of the visual details on your character can be modified, at least at the begining of the game. If you like that rugged look, or you want to be casual-looking the game offers a lot of options. If you want some more "corporate" or "militant" outlook there are some options, but they doesnt seems to be so developed.
Love some of the environments. Truly great looking and impressive to walk trough. Love most of the visual effects (shadows, sun glares, vapours, reflections at some surfaces)- nice, consistent visual outlook of most of them. Absolutely can be benefit for most of the enironments. They can be better, but even at this stage they are good enough and compeling to look at at most cases.
I just love most of the character animations - it seems a lot of work have been poured in them. Although they are not too varied, they are still quite good and mostly smooth (excluding the bugged ones of course, but I hardly saw any animation bugging to be honest).
The bad...
The user interface on PC... its hot garbage. The game insist to hold buttons left and right. This is not a tuch controll game from some of the mobile app stores - why do I have to keep holding buttons for mundane functions? I can't just grab loot from the enironment - I have to hold button to interact or it will just pop open a window with the contents in the middle of the fight in most cases. I think reversing the function (eg - holding shows the dialog instead of tapping or even better - configurable option) might fix this. I can somewhat understand the holding button when going from cover to cover, but still - you can just tap the button again and stop the command in mid animation or aiming your weapon can cancel the movement. By the way - why no animation canceling? Got killed on multiple occasions as I start reloading and my avatar in game keeps fumbling with the reload animation and getting shot at. Please no responses of the "its more realistic" type - there is nothing realistic in the reload in the game - might as well make it more comforatble to use. But I digress - I'd argue that "Genshin Impact" is better looter than "The Division 2", simply because in "Genshin" you can (and most often will) run at full speed and just pick and pluck all the loot around you.
The AI - the enemies have very simplistic behaviour pattern, no way around it. And that kinda leads to the next problem, but I will discuss it in the next point. In most cases the enemies are just fighting for my attention. Literally. The only other thing they will do is just crouch behind cover or rush towards me.
The clown car enemies. Ever seen a circus trick of couple clowns push a small car - whith a size of "Smart" for example and then like 12-15-ish clowns will exit from it. Its quite fun... if you are five years old and you and your parents are at the circus. It's complete garbage if that is how the enemies are handled in a "tactical" game. It removes the ability to plan any engagement if that is your first time doing it, but just the first time. After that it becomes stupid and tiersome. Personally I think this is the worst aspect of this game. It ruins most of the engagements and makes the enemies look like brainles zombies. The worst of it is that this removes any depth from the game. The combat in this game is passable (as at mechanical level you have passible options and methods to interact with your enemies), but the engagements are hot garbage, puked from a dog. All the battles are really cheesy. Especially in linear missions I can tell when a battle will ocure just by observing how the environment is set up. As the AI is really simplistic in most cases the game is placing you in bad starting position so it can cover up for the limited options of the AI. Every god-damned time... I had like 1 or maybe 2 times when that was not the case. It gets old really quick.
The ugly...
You might ask your self why the previous point (which is the absolute ruin of this game for me personally) is not placed here. Well its personal preference - I just dont like the "clown car" enemies effect, but other players might not care about it.
The engagements. I have touched on this in my previous point, but let me re-iterate on it for a bit. As the limitations of the AI seems to be the problem and this problem has to be covered by the previously mentioned methods makes most boss fights really anti-climactic. First - full disclamer - I have not raided in "The Division 2", none of my friends will ever touch this game seriously, therefore all my expirience is coming from the single player missions (and yes, I do played them solo). The first boss in the game is some sniper (can't remeber the name, to be honest) at the end of a level and its trivial. She (/it) is dumb as they get, the only reason I can remember this fight is that after you killed her, the game spawns like 5-6 "clown car" enemies. That felt so bad... Why? Why after you killed the boss? It felt really unnecessary - like "we want you to waste some more time here" unnecessary. These enemies had no real significance, flavour, explanation, reason for appearing. It felt like the game actively tries to waste my time and I really don't like that. Please do not do that ever again... I have long list of examples, but I think you get the point - the game needs more careful approach to spawning enemies (adds) in the boss fights, and needs some better scripting events in boss fights so the boss wont be just the next over-blown bullet spunge goon.
The AI (Isaac)... Okay... this one is a bit harder to explain. The ingame helper/context driver Isaac is actually quite good... except when it is not. I love the added context provided by Isaac - it is meaningfull and well placed. I would like to make it a bit sparce on obvius things and a bit more directed on not-so-obvious things. Let me explain. I don't need the constant "civilians in danger" reminder - once or twice is enough. I do need to be reminded where the mission objectives regions are in expeditions. "Sports club", "Pumping station", Routunda", "Cafeteria" is aboslutely meaningless for me. I refuse to remeber this trivial bulsh*t since I have a perfectly good AI (Isaac) with perfectly good AR to gide me. And I have plenty to remember in my real life, sorry.
The environments. Well how can you love and hate them in the same time? Well you can... I just don't like pitch black night corners where I can't see a thing (yes I know that pistol underbarrel attchment lighter exists, I know), often bumping in objects or unable to locate interactables or even aim at enemies when needed or when I'm in mission and two or even more direct light sources are pointed at me and there is absolute blackness behind them. It makes it dramatic and so on, but I end up with sore eyes and headache - I would like to not have to go trough that again please. Or when you are in bowl shapped arena and you are in the center/bottom of the "bowl" and everyone is pouring lead from every direction imaginable (and not so imaginable) every goddamned time when the missions decide that you need to be killed. I just want to have some more options in that regard.
This is all the time I have for now, will probably add some personal suggestions to this thread if I have the time.