Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

The Good
Multiple solutions to puzzles; satisfying stealth mechanics; choices taken affect the gameplay and story line; more open world-ed than the previous installments.

The Bad
Outdated graphics; the game conclusion is disappointing; the plot is not that interesting or compelling; navigation can be cumbersome.

The Bottom Line
Let me begin by saying that I hold a soft spot for the Deus Ex franchise. Finishing the first game in the series back in the day really changed something in me - the philosophical aspects of that game, it's lore and design, all accumulated into a masterpiece (it won several GOTY awards) that left me with a truly moving experience. To this day I can talk about DX1 and the way it made me feel when I've played it 16 years ago.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the fourth (if you leave Deus Ex: The Fall out, and please do!) installment in the series. It starts two years after Deus Ex: Human Revolution and is therefore too a prequel to DX1. Adam Jansen reprises his role as the game mechanically augmented protagonist.

Following an incident that caused a riot among the augmented at the end of DX:HR, the game world now consists of an Augmentation Apartheid. There are stores, subways and restaurants that forbid the entrance of augmented people and even concentration camps where the augmented are sent against their will. It feels a bit far fetched and anyone who played DX1 knows that this is not what the series was aiming to but it builds well on top of the the story line from DX:HR.

Adam, now augmented with a set of mysterious new augmentations, is an agent for the Interpol that also acts a as double agent for an underground, shadowy movement called the Juggernaut Collective.

Like the previous games in the series, DX:MD presents the player with a puzzle or obstacle and allows numerous ways to overcome it. For example, in order to gain access to a building, you can either enter by force with your guns shooting, infiltrate by an air vent, or make your way quietly behind the backs of your foes. Some puzzles can be resolved using the game parkour (clanky) mechanics.

I always enjoyed playing DX games as stealthy as possible and made no exception here as well, finishing the game without killing a single person and even winning the "Pacifist" award. The game stealth mechanics are excellent and were improved from DX:HR, such as now when in stealth mode you get a cleared view on how to move between hiding points without being detected.

For those who don't want to play stealthy, DX:MD offers a good shoot-em-up experience. There are no melee weapons and the overall number of arms is small however those available can be customized, from scopes and targeting lasers to recoil and damage adjustments. The GUI was also improved and it's now fun to switch between ammunition or change your fire-rate mode during battles.

The player can customize Adam augmentations in a variety of ways, some of them lean towards an aggressive gameplay and other to a stealthy one. They divide around this way, even though some augmentations are useful for both approaches.

One of the complaints many gamers had to with DX:HR was the boss fights. A pacifist player such as myself, who dedicated all of his XP and unlocked only augmentations that help with stealth maneuvers and infiltration, still had to fire-fight tough bosses. This angered many players and Square listened. There is only 1 boss fight in the game, that can be defeated non-lethaly; so no need to stack on weapons or grenades for a rainy day.

DX:MD feels more open world than it's predecessors. The central base of operations is the city of Prauge, which is of satisfying in-game size. There are lots of side quests and stuff to do in the city, and even though for some missions the player is transferred to more confine locations, the fact that you always come back to it and can continue whatever quests you left gives the game a more non-linear and open feeling.

The graphics in the game are good, but I expected more from a 2016 PS4 game. I don't know how it looks on PC, but on the console it looks like an enhanced PS3 game. The music on the other hand is nice and follows the futuristic tunes of DX:HR while Adam is voiced by the same actor as in the previous installment.

Since the areas in the game are quite big, I found myself relying on the frustrating, in-game navigational system. One of it's main flaws is that you can walk all the way to your target objective just to get the objective icon thrown all over the HUD as what your're looking for is actually just beneath you.

Another problem is that you can't add custom waypoints, so walking to a location on the map (a merchant, for example) that is not part of a mission is a real hassle as it requires to keep opening the game map and trying to figure out the location as the HUD mini-map is too small to navigate with.

Surprisingly, the plot in DX:MD is its weakest part. It comes to me as a surprise as complex stories and impossible conspiracies have become synonym for the series. In fact, the release of DX1 for the PS2 was called Deus Ex: The Conspiracy.

Without spoiling anything, the plot of DX:MD feels far less epic than the one in DX1, DX2 or DX:HR. In these games, you felt as part of something bigger than you. In DX1, there was the gray death plague and of course that unforgettable ending, where the player was able to alter the future of the human race forever. In DX2, it was the resurrection of a failed society. In DX:HR, the dawn of a new age for the human race, and that final last stand that lead to the disastrous event that set the ground for DX:MD.

In DX:MD, it just feels casual. Like it's a normal day in Adam's life. Not as nearly as epic. And for me, this is the biggest problem with the game. It's not that the plot line isn't interesting or that nothing happens. There is even replay value to the story, as choices made do affect your progress. It's just that DX games are supposed to provide bigger than life conspiracies and plot lines, and it's missing here. This is also the first DX game I played that is not concluded within itself. Many plot lines are left opened and unattended; there's even a major cliff hanger - a first in series.

By all means, DX:MD is not a bad game. It was built with the DX formula in mind and holds all of it's core aspects and values. It's just that to me, the story line is what made the series so epic and compelling.

And that's too bad, as for DX:HR we had to way 8 years and for DX:MD 5 years. Who knows how long we'll have to wait until we get the next, great DX game.