[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote]
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (DXMD for short) is a weird game to me. It's vastly improved compared to Human Revolution (DXHR for short), and yet, feels inferior to it at the same time. Not only it looks like some of the ideas were forcibly used on purpose (like the story themes/events and marketing slangs referencing real life), but also the publisher has definitely messed with the development to a bigger extent than the "Augment Your Preorder" fiasco. So, the game is great at some points, and yet feels like a time/money constrainted disappointment at the others.
I will state my thoughts soon, but while I'm normally against this, I have to disable comments on this review as I have to briefly comment on the story and its themes, and I have no time to deal with edgelords who might try to argue about politics on a gaming website.
[h2]Your past choices? Not important.[/h2]
The events of DXMD happen after DXHR's... well... any of the endings. As it turns out, whatever you did at the end of that game had no effect, because everyone ignored it to deal with the chaos that was going on instead. I understand why the devs went this way, but it feels bad to realize nothing actually mattered and the choices were illusions.
Anyway... two years have passed since the "Aug Incident" at the end of previous game and mankind is divided (heh) because of it. Humanity has come down hard on augmentations, segregating augmented people, stripping them of their rights and forcing them to live in ghettos. This leads into augmented people rising up against those injustices, even resorting to terrorist attacks in order to fight for equality. You once again appear as Adam Jensen, now working as a part of "Task Force 29" anti-terrorist group and also an undercover agent who aims to expose The Illuminati.
The main storyline has a lot of good things to it, but I can't help but feel unsatisfied with it. I mean... you're telling me that in the world of Deus Ex, there was really no way to prevent more aug incidents other than next gen racism? Why has the world opted for segregation and apartheid, when DXHR showed you can easily affect augmented people's chips, if the intent was not to deliberately reference real events and activist movements? You're telling me the writers were so out of ideas that they, too, have went for the trope of "horribly represented Middle Eastern bad guys" to kick off the story and set up possibilities of them being behind a bomb attack? And all of this, is without mentioning the cliffhanger at the end of the game.
[h2]So... what was the point?[/h2]
Then we have the side missions and... I gotta say, a whole lot of them are unsatisfactory. Now to be fair, some of the side missions are really good and the way talking to random NPCs or hearing their speech gives you new missions to pursue is honestly great. But still, a lot of them are big wastes of a player's time. A majority of these side missions are actually a series of back-to-back fetch quests that have you running from one location to the other, and hunting down specific items in a specific area.
Moreover, they don't motivate the player to care, create any tension, or give you proper conclusions. You start these missions, finish them and then start wondering... what was the point? Why did I do that? What did I get aside from EXP and ammo? For example, you investigate an illegal drug that [spoiler]causes augmented people to die[/spoiler], but despite the premise, the game never makes you feel any urgency or that you are actually doing something. You go through the mission without any proper development or challenge, and then it abruptly ends without any effect on the world or Jensen commenting on what he did. You confront a cop for [spoiler]being a fake and scamming people[/spoiler], yet none of the outcomes (and especially the pacifist one) feel satisfying.
It doesn't help that many of the choices feel unsubstantial too, as the game barely does anything to build up any importance and make you feel the consequences of your actions. Take that cop's mission for example. To take the pacifist route, you need to convince another cop to interfere by revealing either: [spoiler]1- The scam operation or 2- The forgery operation and even who the forger is.[/spoiler] When I saw that, I thought that picking the 2nd option would abruptly end the mission... but no, nothing happens. So, why even give me that option and make me think about its outcomes when it apparently changes nothing?
[h2]No Punch Man[/h2]
Unfortunately, the rest of the game stays in this mixed-bag limbo as well. The gameplay is very fun, the new augmentations are very interesting, and the game gives you a whole bunch of options on how you want to accomplish the objectives. You can opt for a pacifist approach, quietly navigate the environment like a ghost, attack head-on, or even trick enemies into getting themselves killed.
A lot of people's gripes with the first game have been fixed as well. You get to the gameplay much faster and exposition dumps are left for later, tutorials are optional, all approach methods reward the same amount of EXP, boss fights have non-lethal solutions, you find a lot more ammo, and combat is more challenging. In addition, there are new things such as quick menus for for augments/items, and different ammo types.
However, there are also things that DXMD has either ignored/refused to improve, or has made them worse. Speech animations are now comically mechanical (which directly affect the delivery of dialogues), takedowns are still cinematic and require energy, melee attacks/weapons are still missing, and odd inconsistencies (such as security strengths not fitting the importance of the device) are still there. Then we have the hubs, which are the biggest additions to this game and yet are not satisfactory either.
[h2]Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better[/h2]
While DXMD features a number of hubs that you can freely move around them, the exploration is not as interesting as you would think. A large number of areas require specific augments or very high hacking skills to be accessible, forcing you to either bruteforce them or leave and come back later. And if you opt for the latter, the game does not let you mark those points of interest so you won't forget about them later. Sometimes, even the rewards you get for exploring the environment or hacking is not interesting either, as you might either find nothing, or get back the exact resources you had spent to breach security. Speaking of hacking...
In the previous game, hacking was a simple, yet overused minigame that many went with it only because it gave more EXP. For some odd reason, not only DXMD brings that back, but makes it much more intolerable. The hacking minigame now features big 3D maps that are harder to control, is much more difficult thanks to the strict timers and firewalls (to the point even level 1 hacks are very challenging), and to top it all off, has the audacity to introduce a fog of war mechanic that forces you to gradually reveal the map unless you use a specific item.
DXHR was like a movie. It had an intro, a tightly-crafted yet linear set of events, and a definitive ending. However, DXMD feels like a TV show. It tries to tackle many topics, its quality fluctuates every episode, and ends things in anticipation of another season that gets axed later on. It's not awful, it has some qualities, it can be fun... and yet you can't help but be disappointed of it as a whole.
[h2]TL;DR[/h2]
Improves upon previous game in many aspects, yet neglects some issues and even makes new problems of its own, while fumbling opportunities. It's not awful, it might be fun, but still very disappointing.
