Let's get it out of the way : Deus Ex Human Revolution is a masterpiece, easily one of the 10 best games ever made in the history of video games. If you can get your hands on a NON director's cut version, by all mean do yourself a favour and play that.

However, I do not recommend the Director's Cut edition, for a simple reason : technically, it's a mess, one of the worst botch job ever.

I heard they somehow managed to lose the code of the proper Human Revolution PC game with its updates, and had to work from the WiiU version to create the DC edition. True or not, it certainly is believable considering how blurry the textures are compared to the original game, how inferior the lighting and bloom are, and generally speaking how the whole game feels like playing an almost finished beta version of the original instead of an upgrade. Honest, I had to check my settings because I thought I was playing at a lower resolution. It's murky, and not just slightly so. Oh, and of course there are some stuttering issues, even on a rig far more than capable of running it.

Even worse is the fact the game was abandonned the moment it was out. DC edition has the version number 2.0.0.0, meaning it was NEVER updated. You have bugs that didn't exist in the original game, or at least had been fixed. And then you have bugs pertaining to the content that was was added, as it should have been in the first place, but poorly so.

For instance, The Missing Link used to be standalone, so there was no question about what gear you had when you arrived there and what gear you would have when leaving. With it streamlined into the main game, they included the possibility to recover all your weapons shortly after escaping, and the rest of your stuff later on. ALL your weapons ? Not quite. Apparently the job was done by an intern on their first week of coding ever. The silenced sniper rifle isn't included in the recovery list. Gotta love upgrading a weapon only to lose it forever.

There are also some issues like guards ALWAYS knowing exactly where you are even though you shot their buddy from a mile away with your silenced sniper, body glitching through the environment and thus being impossible to hide, and so on. And if you try to launch the game while offline, it will not tell you you can't, it will just crash at launch with a runtime error.

Then, the boss battles. They were the ONE flaw in the original game, they remain a wart. First boss seems even more stupid as he doesn't seem to know how to climb a ladder or check what's going on when a door mysteriously opens. Second boss "workaround" to avoid fighting her directly involves VERY long and VERY tight corridors in which you can't really dodge. She always knows where you are, and she's invisible. In the original game I beat her on first try, even though I was playing a stealthy character. There, took me about 10 tries, because I insisted on trying the alternate method, wich ended up being FAR more dangerous. No idea what the third boss is like, I didn't have the patience to get there.

I never asked for this. Gonna replay the original instead.

A pale shadow of the original, DX:HR's troubles aren't its mediocre gameplay or poor game design. It's the story, and the story's presentation. The original game introduced the villains quickly, and always kept them -- and their motivations -- just inside the shadows, giving players a delight in discovering the depths of their schemes. HR's villains are either so deep in the darkness that their motivations, even at the end of the game, are inscrutable and their methods obscure, while others are so front-and-centre that they border on the comical. Even the cast of protagonists flail about like marionettes, their strings being clumsily pulled to and fro by the writers with no idea of how to tell a compelling story.

The out-of-touch boss fights are the most direct merging of the bad story-telling with the poor gameplay, and the "alternative stealthy solutions" to those fights in this Director's Cut edition boil down to nothing more than some hackable turrets or sentries with which to gun down the bosses, clumsily added to levels without even bothering to update the minimap for the new level areas

It's true that you can choose to shoot, hack, subdue, or sneak, but the game clearly favours sneaking, hacking, and subduing, with massive XP loss if you fail to hack every terminal (even when you know the password!), search every vent, and knock out every guard. Do all this, and the XP rewards ensure you will be a veritable God by the endgame, invulnerable to the pathetic attempt at shock and horror in the final level.

No matter how you choose to play Adam Jensen in the game, he will never be as stupid or as incompetent as he is in the cutscenes, which serve to ham-handedly enforce idiotic plot twists. And whereas the original gave three interesting solutions to humanity's future, with different, equally valid reasons to select, presented by different, generally equally likeable characters, offering differing mission challenges, and brief, direct, and meaningful conclusions, this game gives us a choice of four buttons to press in the final room, followed by vague philosophical meandering to a vague montage that wouldn't look out of place on a YouTube conspiracy video.

Long story short: The gameplay is disappointing and the story is not compelling. It's a mediocre ride at best, and does a disservice to the Deus Ex name.

No

!!! DO NOT BUY THIS GAME !!!

Director's Cut is a scam. The game uses an old version of the original game, which means it has all the bugs that were patched years ago in THE ORIGINAL GAME! Only handful were fixed in DC. In addition to the new bugs players have found, this version also seems to have downgraded graphics, such as low quality SSAO, broken Post Processing, streched textures, missing colors etc.

Game's forums on Steam and on Eidos site shows no one in the company - including moderates - care about this game. Steam discussions page shows at least 144 unfixed, missing features/bugs for this game.

The only "enhancement" in this version is the toned down yellow tint a.k.a. piss filter, which IMO was too much in some areas of the original game. It's an artistic question. I personally prefer it off just because I have finished the game and found it hiding details in otherwise dated looking game. I also like more vibrant colors in general. They could've just toned it down in the areas where it was too much, not in the whole game. There should've been at least an option to turn it back on if desired.

If you like the toned down yellow tint in DC, you are better off with the original as you get far better results by trying out different SweetFX profiles.


To people who own the original and TML:

Play those instead. You save HDD/SSD space, have the best bug-free experience with less chance to get graphical glitches. Yes, the boss battles were questionable, but you are only missing slightly more open areas in boss battles that were probably done by some trainee in one weekend anyway.


To people who don't own the original nor TML:

Find a boxed copy on your local store's bargain bin or get an activation code for Steam from a legitimate cd-key market site. Don't worry about TML (The Missing Link). It's like the fourth episode in Duke Nukem 3D. Unnecessary. Just a nice extra. TML only explains "three days in statis" and is attached to the main story in DC.

There was no need for explanation really. I didn't even notice days were passed at that point of the game. You can get a key for TML online, e.g. Amazon if you really want.

The game itself is good. Just not the Directors Cut sadly. Riddled with bugs and poor performance and other issues the game is unplayable for most people, including me.

One step forward, two steps back.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a good game; a bit flawed, but a great experience overall. This is essentially a glorified (and badly-executed) patch/cash grab, which reworks a few things (mainly boss fights and DLC integration), but breaks a lot of things that were already fixed in patches.

The reworked boss fights are great, especially for those who prefer the stealth/non-lethal approach and had trouble dealing with the bosses in the original version. The Missing Link DLC's integrated into the game now, though it still feels disjointed, and an option to skip it or launch it from the menu instead of having to go through it on every playthrough would have been nice.

Unfortunately, in everything else, this "ultimate" edition of the game falls flat on its face compared to the original DXHR. Performance is worse, the game takes up nearly twice as much space (18.2 GB vs 10.6 GB for the original + DLC) for no apparent reason, and bugs that were fixed in the original version are back, along with some that weren't even in the original release (look here for a list: http://steamcommunity.com/app/238010/discussions/0/810939350891608249/), lending credence to the idea that they used an older build of the game for development. The much-complained-about gold tint's gone, but I'm not certain that change was intentional, because post-processing (which includes the gold filter) simply does not work. Depth of field doesn't work either, and a lot of the textures have problems appearing correctly.

I've uploaded a few comparison screenshots here so you can see the graphical issues I'm talking about: http://imgur.com/a/AjaRg

If you don't own Human Revolution yet, find a retail copy of the original if you can; it's not available on the Steam store anymore. You'll miss out on the DLC, but at least you won't have to play through a bug-infested main game. If you already have the original, don't bother buying this unless you _really_ want to see the updated boss fights, do a New Game+ playthrough (you'll have to start from the beginning, though; saves from the original don't carry over), and/or listen to the developer's commentary, because that's all the Director's Cut really has to offer.

EDIT 2014-03-29: kamil950 shares that while the original game's been removed from the Steam store, other digital stores still have the standard edition + DLCs which can be activated on Steam. (http://isthereanydeal.com/#/search:deus%20ex%20human%20revolution;/scroll:%23gamelist)

While this version includes a few nice features and combines the excellent Missing Link DLC into the main game, it is simply NOT worth it.

The pc version of the directors cut is based off of an old build, so all the bugs and issues that plagued the original game on release that were patched out are back. Besides that, the postprocessing that was part of what gave the original game its interesting aesthetics don't work at all (the setting does nothing), so the game looks markedly worse than the original in my opinion. (opinions differ on this, YMMV.)

My conclusion: see if you can find the disc based version of the original release and buy the missing link separately (if possible.)

Do NOT buy this version of the game! If you still have access to the original version somehow, play that instead! It is shocking that the graphics would actually be downgraded for a "Director's Cut" and yet here we are. I can only assume we have Square Enix meddling to thank for this.

Just from replaying the intro mission of both this version of the game and the original version you can immediately notice significantly lower texture resolution and the removal of the "piss filter". While there was a lot of belly-aching about this filter upon release, the whole game's art direction was centered around it. The lighting, color schemes, outfits, and environments all centered around it and were enhanced by it. The Director's Cut removes it (or greatly dimishes it), making the game look like every other generic FPS from that time. The filter also had a bit of bloom on it, and the lack of that filter removed that dreamy glow from the game. It's a small touch, but broad, simple strokes have the greatest effect on the canvas.

Supposedly this version of the game was ported from the Wii U version of the game, and while I don't have any hard evidence of it, I honestly believe it because of the terrible texture resolution. The textures in this version of the game are visibly far worse between versions without requiring a side-by-side comparison. The original version of HR looks fine by modern standards but this version is much mudder, lower resolution, and sometimes brightened or even tiled in some instances! Again, this is just from my experience from the intro mission but if they muddied such an important part of the game, who knows what they did to the rest of it?

My main issue graphically with the original release of HR was the low resolution cutscenes. They were clearly compressed to fit onto console releases, rendered at a lower resolution that hardly looked better than the in-game graphics. This version slightly improves them, but I think it's just a denoiser or a sharpening filter. If this game had re-rendered 1080p cutscenes I might be able to tolerate all the issues but there's barely any improvements here.

This "Director's Cut" is actually a significant downgrade from the original release. The Missing Link DLC is a speed-bump that was optional in the original game but is now mandatory in this version. There are supposedly new boss fights to replace the outsourced ones of the original but they don't counterbalance all of the other issues. I imagine the original version was pulled from Steam because of publisher meddling so they could push a Director's Cut on everyone to re-buy. If you somehow still have access to the original version, play that instead. Again, I have nothing against the original version of this game (I have 32 hours in it and I loved it), but this isn't the HR you're looking for.

A downgrade, basically.

While the new boss options are nice everything else about the Director's Cut is worse than the original. The biggest issue is in looks, where the gold filter has been massively toned down. Even if you disliked the gold however this change disrupts a lot of textures, effects and backgrounds and makes the game look odd in several sections. Also since the game was originally designed around the gold you're suddenly navigating endless grey hallways without much unique about them, which is disappointing. There are also scattered texture glitches, and on my PC the loading stutters are back, though they were originally fixed. In short it looks and performs worse.

The DLC being integrated is poorly handled. The silenced sniper rifle is available almost immediately and is way too powerful for the game. The automated unlocking mechanisms are plentiful enough to make investing in the hacking tree much less important than it originally was. The Missing Link add-on mission still resets your augmentations, then the game clumsily gives them back to you at the end along with what you just earned again, making you way overexperienced heading toward the finale.

Game design and balance is a tough thing. Throwing in weird overpowered items can throw off this carefully made balance, and changing art styles via a simple processing change can't negate years of work designing the game around a different style. The Director's Cut changes the game in ways detrimental to the intended experience, and even the added boss options feel pasted on to a different skeleton. The best way to play Human Revolution is the original version, and to play the Missing Link add-on separately, as was intended. This version is an added expense for a lesser version.

The game itself is brilliant, just play the regular game then the expansion separately because in the expansion you are stripped of your neuromods on capture but you don't get them all back when you free yourself - had 32 installed, got 17 back. Playing this mission half way through the main plot can seriously nerf your character for the rest of the main storyline.