Note: while I own the Day-One Edition, in the interest of fairness, this review is based on the vanilla experience of the game. No extras, no pre-order bonus and no patch. I played the game unpatched to give a more ample feeling, specially for those who just can't download the patch at the moment.
The original Deus Ex was, and still is, one of the best videogames in existence. It brought innovative, extensive choice-based freedom, an interesting story that played with expectations and a fun system that let you choose how you wanted to play and allowed for emergent gameplay. Its sequel, Invisible War, while not really a bad game, was dissapointing, as it didn't display the same level of depth and suffered from bad porting. It wasn't until the prequel, Human Revolution, released a decade after the original, that the series got back on track. That game, while not as extensive in gameplay as the original, was still a worthy successor, and while its original release suffered from tacked-on unnecessary and unavoidable boss battles, those issues were fixed in the later "Director's Cut" version.
When Mankind Divided was announced, people were both excited and aprehensive. Would it be a great game that built on its predecessor or would it suffer the same fate from Invisible War, relegated to merely a place in the shadow of the last one? Fear not, the game is out now and I tell you: it's just as good as Human Revolution. While it falters at areas that HR didn't, it improves in others, balancing itself well enough to be called a worthy sequel.
MD picks up a couple of years after the events of the last game, where, at the climax, the great majority of augmented people (Augs) suffered from a psychic meltdown that turned them temporarily insane due to the machinations of a billonaire who didn't want humanity to continue the path of augmentation. While HR had multiple endings, only one of them is considered canonical, and it's the one where the building protagonist Adam Jensen is buried in the sea. He manages to survive for a new adventure, though, marking this as the first game in the series to have a returning main character (understandable, since Adam is easily the most popular protagonist in the series). Adam now works for Interpol, in a world that fears and hates Augs because of the madness event, and it's put in the middle of a fight between groups of people who want a law to control the augmented passed, and those who don't.
Gameplay-wise, if you played the previous game, you'll feel right at home here. The same basic gameplay is present, but tweaked to be improved in almost every way. You can still choose to be lethal or non-lethal. You can still choose the stealth route or the noisy one. You can still choose to be nice or rude to people. You can still improve your character by gaining experience. Difficulty is well balanced, and you'll rarely feel you lost because of something unfair. All of those things are complemented by new weapons and abilities at your disposal, as expected, but some new changes are going to make it hard to go back to the previous game, as they're going to be missed.
For instance, Adam can now pull an enemy from behind a corner to attack and hide him instantly. Sounds simple, but it's really helpful. He can also distract enemies much easier. New augmentations like the ability to hack cameras from a distance will let you wonder how did you ever live without them. And guns now can use different ammo and have different add-ons that can be changed on the fly (Crysis-style). There's also a crafting system now. You can find scraps that allow you to craft useful objects or even improve your weapons. Most importantly, bosses are not mandatory now. I only found one, and it's because I went expressly looking for him. Once I did, I found I could deal with him a number of ways instead of being forced to use lethal force.
The world is extensive. You have a major hub city (Prague), which is inmensely detailed, and a smaller one later in the game. While inside stages are large and having a lot to explore. After the tutorial stage, once you reach Prague, you'll easily spend hours exploring, finding side-quests and improving your character even before getting to launch your first mission. There's an inmense amount of freedom here, specially since the quests and exploration can be approached in a number of ways, so you can choose the style you prefer. Hacking, brute force, sneaking, convincing, stealing, taking the long path, etc. Graphics are, of course, very good, though there's some noticeable slow down in some of the in-engine cutscenes.
So, in general, this game is an improvement over the previous one in almost every aspect. Let's talk now about the parts the game did worse.
The most noticeable one is the story. Or, at least, the approach to it. First of all, it doesn't feel finished. The game ends with a triumph (well, assuming the best ending is canon), but it's too open and doesn't actually finish the presented conflict. It really feels like they cut this to present as DLC or a sequel, and that alone is dissapointing. The real problem, though, is the presentation. The game wants to present Aug discrimination as an allegory to racism, and that just absolutely doesn't work. There's a clear difference between disliking someone for having a different skin color than disliking him because at any time it might snap and dismember you, or even kill you (remember, the hate for Augs is based purely on the incident where such a thing actually happened). But the game runs with it anyway, and it feels completely ridiculous. You see Augs being forced to use a different entry, or constanly being called racist terms even by the police, and it's the absolute great majority of people who hate them. Society doesn't work that way, it just doesn't regress centuries back, even when they actually have valid reasons for fear of others.
There are also a few bugs (remember, though, I'm playing the unpatched version). Once I lost all quest markers and was unable to regain them. Another time I lost the ability to save the game, so I had to quit the game and reload. One time finishing a side-quest unmarked the other ones from the map. And once a side-quest got permanently marked on the map and was never marked as finished, until I reached the game's ending (this was the only one that wasn't solved by reloading). Nothing game breaking, assuming you keep at least one save besides the automatic one (which I most certainly recommend).
The last one, and most important one, are the microtransactions. Yes, this is a single-player game, and it has microtransactions. Turns out that those pre-order bonuses are one-time only. They're tied to your save, so once you use them, they're gone and can't be recovered, and the same goes for everything you buy with real money (the only way around this is to keep a save game right after you start the game before taking the items out of storage and start all your new games from it). Then the game allows you to buy more stuff. Yes, this is disgusting, greedy and should not be supported, but understand: it's completely and utterly unnecessary. You don't need those items, you don't need the extra experience. Again, I played this game without the pre-order items and I finished the story with 4 extra un-allocated praxis points (those would mean at least TWO extra powers, by the way) and, in fact, didn't even know I could purchase more with real money until it was pointed out to me by another review. Yes, the publisher is clearly trying to take your money with this practice, but clearly the game was not developed around this practice. Vote with your wallet, don't buy those items.
Anyway, those problems I mentioned didn't hinder my experience. I still had a a blast with this game, and I haven't even touched the extra missions. There's a lot of replayabilty here, and as long as you don't give the publisher money they don't deserve by not buying their ridiculous and unnecessary microtransactions I definitely recommend you buy the game. It's one of the best games out there right now.
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Customer reviews
Excellent Level Design: Play How You Want
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2017
If you played a Dues Ex game in the past, the game is basically the same first person, RPG Stealth game with more/better augmentation or upgrade tree.Gameplay is really good, each level is designed so that there's no one way to tackle it, you can either go guns blazing, stealth or somewhere in between. If it's your first play though it'd probably be the latter as going full guns blazing and stealth require a lot of upgrades especially on higher levels which you can purchase through micro-transactions in the game which is very disappointing or if you're a pro in past titles it's not needed. You can literally go through the game without killing any enemy/boss in any lethal means which can net you a PSN trophy. This game has great flow compared to past titles in it's level design, you can zip through enemies and go in/out through levels very smoothy once you get good at the game as it feel very satisfyingGraphics are really good, nice attention to detail in the environments as in some parts there are a lot of random little trinkets and paintings scattered throughout the room or level. Characters animate well, but the lip syncing can be horrible at times.Story is your basic trying to get rid of a terrorist organization plot with racial tension in a form of human augmentation. This game does a good job with a recap video for those who haven't played or forgot what happened in prior titles in the series. There's a lot of good exposition when talking to NPC for world building if you're into that sort of thing. Game ends in an abrupt note as it seems like this title is just a setup for the the next one.Overall best game in the franchise thus far in terms of level design and gameplay. Story is a bit disappointing since it's just a teaser for the next title.
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2017
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Buenísimo
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Muy buen juego!
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Gran juego y excelente secuela.
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