Great Looking Game, Highly Tunable Graphics
The Division is a great looking game and although I wouldn't call the game groundbreaking, its visuals are still remarkable. The day one patch brought a bunch of graphical improvements over the beta we tested a few months ago and the game looks more polished for it.
Unfortunately, the game is still suffering from several issues, though Ubisoft does appear determined to solve them quickly. Just one day after release the game was offline for a few hours for server maintenance, which is not great timing especially since the game can't be played in any capacity without server connectivity.
Even with the teething issues the game has been a heap of fun so far. If only I had more time to explore it...
From a performance standpoint it runs well on both AMD and Nvidia hardware – exceptionally well on AMD's hardware for a GameWorks title. This is great news for Radeon owners, and those wielding a Fury X can stick it to their brethren with a 980 Ti.
Those with mid-range hardware will want to adjust settings and resolution and use the high preset which offers a good balance of IQ and frame performance. The GTX 960 was good for 43fps at 1080p and with a few tweaks we feel 60fps gaming is achievable.
CPU performance doesn't appear particularly important as long as you have four threads to play with. Although I was able to load the game on the Intel dual-core processors, such as the G4400, the load time was extremely long and the game did suffer from crashes, so for now we've left the dual-core results out. AMD's APUs also performed poorly – we'll have to see if this is solved via a game update or if it's something low-end CPU owners will have to live with.
Those gaming with an AMD FX or Intel i5, i7 processor are set and shouldn't run into any problems.
Despite the previously mentioned issues, The Division is fun to play and has highly tuneable graphics. I feel like PC gamers are being looked after. At the same time, maybe I am cutting Ubisoft too much slack. After all, didn't the game have a heavily played beta? Perhaps I am just so acclimatized to horrible game launches that mostly working games now appear flawless.