Quick answer: Yes, and more than it was at launch. The Division 2 shipped in March 2019 as a good but flawed looter shooter, came within touching distance of being abandoned in late 2020, and then got seven years of support instead. It now has two expansions, a reworked endgame, and an Escalation mode with ten difficulty tiers added in April 2026. Buy it on sale or play it on Game Pass, and get Warlords of New York before anything else.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Most reviews of this game are frozen in 2019. They'll tell you co-op scaling is broken, that the endgame is nothing but damage stacking, and that the Dark Zone feels deserted. All three of those were true once. None of them are true now, and repeating them does you no good at all if you're deciding whether to install it tonight.
So this is a review of the game as it actually exists, with the dates attached so you can tell how fresh it is. The short version is that The Division 2 is one of the stranger survival stories in live service, a game that was quietly scheduled for the scrapheap and then came back.
The part nobody tells you: this game almost ended
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Support was supposed to stop after Season 4 of Warlords of New York, around December 2020. Contracts on the development team were winding down and staff were being moved to other projects. Then player numbers climbed through the pandemic, Ubisoft reversed the decision, and a largely new team was assembled to keep it going.
That matters for a review because it explains the shape of the game. There's a long quiet stretch in the middle where very little arrived, then a steady run of free modes, then two paid expansions five years apart. If you bounced off it at some point between 2020 and 2023, you were playing during the gap. Plenty of live service games never get a second act at all, as the shutdown list in our look at the live service graveyard makes fairly grim reading on.
Everything added since that 2019 review
| What | When | Cost | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warlords of New York | Mar 2020 | Paid | New York zone, level cap 40, reworked gear. Widely treated as the real full game |
| Summit, Countdown, Descent, Incursions | 2020 to 2023 | Free | Four distinct endgame modes added at no charge |
| Battle for Brooklyn | 27 May 2025 | $14.99 | First new open-world zone since 2020. Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo, 3 main and 4 world missions, autumn setting, Smart Cover returns, level 40 boost, +50 stash |
| Xbox Game Pass | 27 May 2025 | Subscription | Base game on PC and console. Brooklyn still sold separately |
| Year 7 seasons: Crossroads, The Pact, Mutiny | 2025 to 2026 | Free track | Seasonal journey reworked for co-op. All new gear sits on the free tier |
| Year 8 "Rise Up", patch 2.24 | 2 Apr 2026 | Free | Escalation mode with ten difficulty tiers, a new Prototype Gear tier above High-End, new Exotics |
Count the money column. In seven years this game has charged for exactly two expansions, one of them $15. Every mode, every season's gear, every balance pass has been free. Premium passes exist and sell cosmetics and loot caches, and the items that actually matter stay on the free track. That's an unusually restrained model for a Ubisoft live service game, and it's worth saying out loud given how the rest of the industry behaves. We dug into why that restraint is so rare in why big budget games stopped being fun.
What still holds up
The cover shooting remains the best thing here, and it was always the best thing here. This isn't a power fantasy like Destiny. Enemies flank fast, flush you out deliberately, and punish you for holding one piece of cover too long. A hard fight is a sequence of small repositioning decisions, and winning one feels earned in a way that very few shooters manage.
Washington DC is still an exceptional setting. Overgrown, cluttered, convincingly abandoned, and dense enough that wandering off a main road almost always finds you something. Brooklyn in autumn, added in 2025, is the first time the game changes season, and the shift in light does more for the atmosphere than you'd expect.
Solo play is properly supported. Enemy counts scale down, matchmaking is optional rather than forced, and you can finish everything alone if you want to. If you want a sense of how this world compares in raw scale to the usual suspects, we measured them properly in the biggest open world maps, actually measured.
What does not hold up
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
The story is still thin. Most of it arrives through an earpiece while you're shooting someone, the dialogue is functional at best, and an interesting premise about a collapsed society mostly resolves into hostile factions standing in your way. Seven years of seasonal narrative layered on top has made it harder to follow, not easier, which is why Brooklyn's plot reads as nonsense if you skipped the seasons it continues from.
The opening hours feel their age. Levels 1 to 30 are the oldest content in the game and it shows in the mission design and the pacing. If you own Brooklyn you get a level 40 boost that skips past it entirely, which is a reasonable option and a slightly damning one.
Bullet-sponge melee enemies are still irritating, and Battle for Brooklyn itself got a genuinely mixed reception. Positive outlets called it the best $15 they'd spent in a while. Others scored it around 6/10, calling it safe and forgettable, and a fair chunk of the community thought the level design was the weakest the game has produced. Its launch week in June 2025 also had server and login problems. Buy it for the setting and the extra skills, not expecting a second Warlords.
On player numbers. One outlet reported that Steam concurrents spiked more than 400% following the Year 8 roadmap reveal in 2026. The spike is widely corroborated, the claim that it reached an all-time high is not, so treat the size of it with caution. What is safe to say is that queues are fast and the game is comfortably populated.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| New to the series | Buy on sale | Base game plus Warlords of New York. Deep discounts are frequent. Skip Brooklyn until level 40 |
| On Game Pass already | Just play it | Costs nothing extra. Check whether Warlords is included in your tier before buying it |
| Lapsed since 2020 to 2023 | Come back | You missed four free modes and the Year 8 endgame. Start with Escalation |
| Playing actively, own Warlords | Brooklyn is optional | $15 for roughly 6 to 10 hours, plus Smart Cover and extra stash. Fine, not essential |
| You disliked it before | Skip | The core loop has not changed. If cover shooting and loot grinding bored you, more of it won't help |
One ordering note that trips people up constantly: Battle for Brooklyn requires Warlords of New York, and it only unlocks at level 40. Buying Brooklyn first does nothing for a new player.
Before you install
This is a large download that has grown steadily with seven years of content, so budget for well over 100 GB once updates land. On a 25 Mbps connection that's most of a day, and on 60 Mbps you're looking at roughly four to five hours. Start it before you go to bed rather than when you want to play.
It's an always-online game, so a stable connection matters more than raw speed, and there is no offline mode even for solo play. Worth knowing before you commit the storage. If your connection makes a download this size impractical, the smaller open world options in our mobile open world roundup are a far better fit.
If you like this, try these
- Cyberpunk 2077, the other big open world shooter that was written off at launch and fixed over years
- Days Gone, if the ruined-America setting is the part you're here for
- Battlefield V, for gunplay without the loot grind
- Marvel's Spider-Man, if you want a dense city with an actual story attached
Verdict
Recommended, with a caveat. The combat is still among the best in the genre, the city is still one of the most convincing in any shooter, and the support record over seven years is genuinely rare. The story is weak, the first thirty levels are dated, and the latest expansion is modest. Get it cheap or through Game Pass, get Warlords of New York, and treat Brooklyn as a bonus. Assessed against the game as of Year 8, patch 2.24, April 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Is The Division 2 still worth playing?
Yes, particularly on sale or via Game Pass. Year 8 landed on 2 April 2026 with the Escalation mode and a new Prototype Gear tier, so the endgame is deeper now than at any previous point.
Do I need Warlords of New York?
Effectively yes. It raises the level cap to 40, reworks the gear system, and is required for Battle for Brooklyn. Most of the community treats it as part of the full game rather than optional.
Is Battle for Brooklyn worth $15?
For existing players, probably. It's roughly 6 to 10 hours, adds Smart Cover, the Catalyst Exotic, 50 stash slots and a level 40 boost. Reception was mixed, with scores around 6/10 from some outlets calling it safe. It is not a second Warlords.
Can I play solo?
Yes, start to finish. Enemy counts scale to the number of players and matchmaking is never forced. Raids and Incursions are the main things that genuinely want a group.
Is it pay to win?
No. The only paid content is the two expansions. Every new seasonal item that affects gameplay sits on the free pass track. Premium passes sell cosmetics and loot caches.
Is the co-op level scaling bug fixed?
Yes. That was a 2019 launch issue where low-level players were killed instantly alongside higher-level friends. It has long since been resolved. Any review still citing it is describing the launch build.
Is a Division 3 coming?
A new mainline entry has been acknowledged as in development, with no release date. The Division Resurgence is a separate mobile project. Year 8 content for this game is continuing regardless.