Buy Tom Clancy's The Division 2

When The Division 2 launched early last year, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. As someone who missed the first game, I quickly got drawn into both the story and the upgrade loop of The Division 2. Learning about the story by exploring Washington, D.C., shooting bad guys (or getting them to shoot each other), and finding the perfect build provided plenty of fun — until a few months had passed and I moved onto new games, leaving my agent on the back burner. With that said, after playing an hour or so of the new expansion, Warlords of New York, I'm ready to jump back in with The Division 2.

Set in lower Manhattan, Warlords of New York is the first major piece of paid DLC for The Division 2. The first three episodes (the newest of which releases tomorrow, Feb. 12, for Year 1 pass holders and Feb. 19 for everyone else) are bite-sized affairs that offer a handful of missions and an advancement of the story. Warlords of New York is a full expansion, offering up multiple bosses, plenty of missions, and a completely new environment to explore. It also promises a final confrontation with the villain of the franchise, Aaron Keener.

Playing Episode 3 will act as a sort of prologue to Warlords of New York as you venture north to Coney Island and face off against the Cleaners, a faction from the first game. You'll continue fighting the Cleaners in Warlords of New York, along with the Rikers faction.

Set approximately eight months after the events of The Division, Warlords of New York isn't just a rehash of old locations and enemies. There has been additional damage to the city in the interim, including a hurricane that swept through a few weeks before your arrival. It's a great excuse for the level designers to go all out on the environmental damage.

While Keener is the big bad of the expansion (and the franchise), you'll need to face off against his four lieutenants before you can go head-to-head with the virus master himself. Each lieutenant runs a section of lower Manhattan: Battery Park, Civic Center, Financial District, and Two Bridges. Like Keener, these lieutenants are also rogue agents, so they're intended to be a challenge. They each possess a high-tech skill that you can claim after defeating them.

The four new skills that you can claim by defeating Keener's crew are:

• Decoy - creates a holographic clone to distract the enemy
• Shock Trap - cover an area with shock mines
• Sticky Bomb Launcher - explosive
• Sticky Bomb Launcher - fire

For the demo, Ubisoft let us play one of core missions in the Tombs. The goal was to take out Leo Parnell, one of Keener's lieutenants. The first thing I noticed, as we were waiting to pair up outside the Tombs, was the eagerness of the AI to engage with one another. You and other agents are still primary threats as far as the factions are concerned, but if you're not in sight, they're more than willing to take each other out. Before my partner and I even started the mission, an accidental sticky bomb launch into the starting mission area set two factions onto each other.

Going through the Tombs, the first thing I noticed was how much faster Warlords of New York felt while playing. When The Division 2 launched, going through missions was somewhat methodical. There is still that sense of purpose here, but the action felt more intense than I remembered. It's possible the game has been rebalanced, but it's also possible that the increase in action was due to the default builds that were set up on the demo machines.

Fighting against the AI is still a challenge, as it smartly reacts to your presence. The core gameplay loop hasn't changed, as you're still going to face off against groups at forced checkpoints, and you'll be blocked from progressing at certain points unless you eliminate all the enemies, but even in close quarters, the enemies will rarely swarm. Instead, they'll flank, use cover and special weapons, and try to work together.

The boss fight against Parnell with a little less inventive than the rest of the mission, with him relying more on his decoy skill and a flood of low-level enemies than any real strategy. Yes, it was a way to highlight the skill, but just having to pick out the "right" Parnell from a series of holograms felt like it leaned more to the tedious side of the fence than challenging.

Because Warlords of New York requires a high-level character (level 30, World Tier 5) to access the content, The Division 2 is taking a page from Assassins Creed Odyssey and the Fate of Atlantis DLC. When you load up Warlords of New York, you have the option of using an existing character, or starting new with a level 30 agent. The latter choice means skipping the bulk of the main game, but it allows you to jump right to the new content if that's your thing.

All in all, Warlords of New York is promising five core missions, eight side missions, eight control points, and four safe houses that also act as communities. It also raises the level cap from 30 to 40 and adds an infinite progression system, dubbed the SHD level. Ubisoft and Massive are promising a new end game, along with a new legendary difficultly to increase the challenge.

Keeping the action going once you've finished the story in Warlords of New York are the three-month season events. These each contain a mini-campaign, along with league challenges (to unlock rewards) and a seasonal manhunt. Global events will randomly appear during seasons, and each season promises to introduce new cosmetics, gear, and skill mods. A premium (AKA paid) battle pass will be available to purchase, but the details on what is included were not provided.

In addition to the Warlords of New York-specific content, all owners of The Division 2 get to benefit from the loot and game balance upgrades.

God rolls make their return, and the UI has been updated to show the roll ranges for each stat on every piece of gear. The recalibration station updates allow you to save key stats in a library, while removing some of the annoying restrictions on moving attributes from one piece of gear to another. This should help make crafting your ideal piece of gear more a function of planning and less a function of getting just the right RNG roll.

Finally, the Dark Zones in Washington, D.C., are getting a revamp. All Dark Zone loot is going to be improved (and contaminated), and the interactions are refocusing around player-vs.-player interaction with a simpler rogue mechanic. By streamlining the game loop, the team hopes to make the Dark Zones more appealing and ensure that the interactions are engaging.

Although my hands-on time with the Warlords of New York DLC was limited, it was enough to rekindle my interest in The Division 2. After playing the demo at Ubisoft, I went home and fired up my old save. I can't wait to check out the rest of it when it releases next month.

Editor's Note: To promote the upcoming expansion, Ubisoft is currently selling The Division 2 base game for $2.99 via Amazon, PSN, Xbox Live, and Uplay.