I kind of...hate this game (Warning: Long Essay)

[Not So Serious]

Now if you only read the title and don't feel like reading the rest, you are free to tell me all the ways in which I'm a spoiled millennial who doesn't get it, and should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting their dumb opinions upon the world with the assumption that anybody would care.

Alternatively, you could read the rest so that your insults can be a bit more accurate.

Deus Ex has been repeatedly praised as the best game of all time by a lot of people. But as I've been playing, I've reached the Ocean Lab (which I understand to be the level before the last) and all I feel is relief at nearly being done with it.

Now I didn't grow up with it. My first console was the Game Cube, of which I have fond memories. But it was about 1 generation after this. So I don't really consider myself as one of the "kids these days" that just want their games to be easy and laid out perfectly.

But I have had absolutely no fun with this game.

2024 Edit: Funnily enough, despite my opinion becoming a little more nuanced after some time and a couple additional playthroughs, folks still kind of just reply to this initial post. And I honestly can't really blame them.

So I figured I'd add a few edits where my opinion on a topic changed.

Complaint 1: The Gameplay
The exploration isn't nearly as fun as it's talked up to be. Every review I've heard has praised how there's always cool stuff to find, but typically when I go off the beaten path, I end up getting damaged by environmentals or wasting my unlocking devices, only to discover that the reward for that effort was ammo (of which I have in abundance), an augment (that I've likely already unlocked and is thus useless to me), or unlocking tools to replace the ones I just used to get in. Half the time I reload to the quick save I dropped before I went off to explore because I will usually be in a worse spot than when I started.

The stealth is frustrating. It feels like the "sneak up from behind and KO" move only works when it wants to. Making me Quick Save prior to every attack and re-loading until it works. Even with maxed out sneak and a cloaking device, I can still be spotted, which makes sneaking seem like a complete waste of time.

So if the sneaking is bad, the next thing you try is shooting; but the gunplay isn't satisfying at all. It's an awful FPS. The guns have no kick, the enemies don't react to damage and don't display interesting tactics, the augments are awkward to activate. It's not fun.

So if the stealth is frustrating, the combat is bland, and the exploration is unsatisfying, how are you supposed to play? Apparently with gritted teeth and a finger over the quicksave/quickload buttons, at least in my case.

2024 Edit: It turns out a lot of my frustrations came from me playing the GMDX mod, since everyone and their mums told me it was the definitive version.

Turns out, everyone and their mums meant it's the definitive version for repeat playthroughs, because it cranks the difficult way up, introducing the stealth skill and making it so the AI will spot you if they so much as glimpse the foot of your shoe sticking out from a crate from the other side of the map.

Having played a few more times without the mod, I've actually grown to enjoy the gameplay. It is a legitimately fun shooter on Realistic difficulty. Though it only really started becoming a fun shooter on a second playthrough for me. Because I knew the tricks.

I knew the best approach.
I knew to ignore Smuggler since all he offered was overpriced weapon upgrades.
I knew what skills needed to be leveled asap, and what level they started having diminishing returns
I knew where the augmentation canisters were.
I knew to rebind the augmentation keys to the number pad and not leave them on the F row.
I knew what exploration routes were worth looking into, and which held nothing but junk and pain.
I knew to not waste unlocking tools on containers and doors when I can smash them with a crowbar.
I knew to not stress so much about being detected, since there's no consequence to killing everyone (more on that particular problem later).
I knew to play on Realistic and aim for the head.
I knew that a pistol to the back of the head was more effective than a baton.
I knew that the stealth pistol and tranq gun were worthless, and that the GEP gun was the only real choice for starting weapon even though you won't use it much.
I knew what NPCs were important to talk to and which to ignore because they were boring.

Complaint 2: JC Denton and Friends
The characters aren't all that deep, or at least their deepness isn't well represented. JC seems like a dumb actor just blindly going along with whatever the most recent person he's talked to has said. He seems mostly bored with everything and not invested in anything. I know it's a meme that JC is terrible at emoting and comes off as a psychopath, and it's funny. But not very compelling as a character.

I have no investment in any of these people, partly because I don't see JC being invested in any of them. When JC's only reaction to his brother dying is "he was a good man," how am I supposed to see it as a tragedy?

Every single character with a name could drop dead, and it would not cause a single blip on my emotional radar. These aren't people, they're poorly voiced robots that do what they do because that's the role they have to fill in the story.
Navarra and Gunther are psychopathic soldiers because we need Disk 1 Bosses.
Bob Page is an evil scientist because we needed an primary antagonist.
Paul is a kind-hearted "thall shalt not kill" spokesperson because we need someone to tell you "CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!"

Tong, Hugh, Savage, Daedalus; all of these people only exist because somebody needs to tell you what your next objective is.
And you will complete that next objective because you are the main character. We don't need to come up with a motivation for you, that's for you to come up with! After all, you're supposed to be stepping into the shoes of JC Denton! It's alright if he's an emotionless robot and dumb actor that agrees with every plan he hears and doesn't have any motivations of his own, so long as it's in the name of letting players see themselves in his role.

Well I don't really want to see myself in him, I'm not particularly interesting. I would much rather JC be an actual person.

Complaint 3: The Themes
The hottakes it has about society are a bit dated. Some people have talked about how it tackles a lot about corporate control over society, but I don't see it being represented besides lipservice and the occasional comment.

The only really deep conversation I've had in this game was with Daedalus' explanation of why humanity needs to worship, and I'll probably save a spot in my mind for the "God is humanity's dream of good governance" line. It's an interesting statement, but it doesn't really say anything that I haven't heard elsewhere. Maybe it was a hottake in the 90s, I dunno.

The deepest theme I see is about how governments use terrorism and tragedy to justify their overinflated budget and expanding powers. It's a game that definitely feels topical for the era that was defined by the War on Terror and worries over increasing government control over its population.
That is pretty legitimately well-done, but it seems to get dropped in favor of Illuminati vs MJ12 bullcrap about halfway through, once UNATCO gets completely sidelined and drops from plot relevance.

2024 Edit: Looking back, the first few hours kind of does live up to the hype. It's the last 2-thirds of the game that let it down

Any other hottakes it has, it only really talks about without displaying. The most visual class inequality you see is that slums exist, that's hardly a top-down examination of the economics behind the tragedies. And the NSF leader at Liberty Island goes on a tirade about how the government is actually the bad guy. Hardly the bastion of visual storytelling.

Funnily enough, I remember the prequels having more themes than this. The corporate control was a lot more visible, what with the augmentations that people are installing literally having corporate logos on them.

And Mankind Divided had a pretty nuanced look about the cycle of violence. With prejudice -> persecution -> retaliation -> more prejudice. Victims becoming victimizers in a class war spurred on by a media entity who is literally a construct designed to turn people against each other.
World leaders stifling innovation out of fear of it eroding their power base.
Scapegoats being propped up as enemies of the public in order to control the population.

These are themes that are enormously relevant, and have become more relevant than they were when the games came out.
As opposed to the original Deus Ex that, while the problems it talked about exists, they aren't quite the main issues that we have to deal with nowadays.

Complaint 4: Double Standards
There's a bit of a double-standard regarding the "thall shalt not kill...NSF, screw everyone else." The opening missions have Paul and the quartermaster talk a lot about how "these are real people, not targets." Encouraging the player to be a pacifist and treat their enemies humanely (which never held much water for me anyway, considering enemies never really act in a way that portrays them as humans. They're as robotic and kill-happy as the actual killer-robots and turrets).

But it seems this only applies to NSF. Once your enemies are government agents, you can murder-stabby-fun time all day and all night and nobody will bat an eyelid. They worked for the government after all, they made their choice. They definitely didn't have families that loved them. If they did, they wouldn't be working for the bad guy

2024 Edit: Having played a few more times, I almost always stop playing around the point it's time to betray UNATCO, because the story takes a dramatic downturn for pretty much this reason.

Prior to the betrayal, the game builds up like choices actually matter, because the way you accomplish your missions is acknowledged by your comrades who reward and condemn you for it.

But afterwards, JC can do no wrong, your allies will accept you no matter what you do. Barge through the place killing everyone and their dogs, nobody cares.

There's no consequences. And without consequences, choices are meaningless.

Complaint 5: Player Agency and Lack Thereof
This is probably going to get the spiciest reaction, but I think the player agency has been overstated.

To be clear, in levels it's definitely there. Hack the keypad, find the password, go through a window, charge in with the Dragon's Tooth and Regen Augment like a maniac; all are valid and that's pretty good.

But that's where the agency ends. At the end of the day, you and all your friends will have the exact same story.
You'll all have done a few UNATCO missions, betray them after Paul defects, go to Hong Kong to help Tong and the Illuminati take down MJ12, then save some nerds at a science lab and do something at Area 51.
A lot of the big choices that I see talked up don't really matter all that much.

Big Choices:
1: Kill or spare NSF Leader on Liberty Island. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
2: Kill or spare Lebedev. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
3: Kill or spare Manderly. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
4: Save or leave Paul. If you leave, he dies. If you save, you do see him again...and he does nothing of importance.
5: If you kill Navarra early, you get to...not have to kill her later.
6: If you kill Chao early, you get to...not have to kill her later.
7: If you tell all your friends at UNATCO to defect cause it's what the cool kids are doing, you'll later see them at the Illuminati headquarters. where they will gush about how awesome it is to be working for the Illuminati and proceed to not do anything.
8: There's 3 buttons to push at the end (I haven't reached this yet, on the mission just before it. So maybe those 3 buttons will really blow me away, we'll see).
9: If you go into the women's restroom, Manderly will comment on it exactly once and then never again.

Not saying modern games are much better, but this doesn't seem like the kind of variety of storytelling and player freedom I was expecting from the "best game ever" and "most player agency to ever be found in gaming."

2024 Edit: After having finished the game, those 3 buttons really did kind of blow me away. I enjoyed the last mission, and the split between the three endings.

Though it still has the exact same problem that Deus Ex: Human Revolution gets lambasted for: the ending is completely unaffected by every choice that preceded it.
In terms of what ending you get, the only thing that matters is the last 30 minutes.

The ending is not the bastion of player agency. It's just 3 buttons with extra steps.

Funnily enough, I have to give massive props to a hated creature within the Deus Ex community. Invisible War.
Out of the entire series, I think Invisible War does player agency the best.

Not in terms of gameplay, heck no, its gameplay is absolute garbage. But its story is very interesting and in my opinion worth slogging through. For reasons I think a personal anecdote would serve best:

Not long after breaking my leash and being able to explore the first area, I found a night club. In it, the owner asked me to commit some crimes, in exchange I'd be allowed into the VIP lounge. Elsewhere in the club, there's also a police informant who will pay you money to report what goes on in the VIP lounge. So I do the crime, get the VIP access, and in there meet another criminal called the Omar that says "hey, we'll give you a discount for our illegal augmentations if you steal something from the club owner."
So I did crime for the club owner for cash, then betrayed the club to the Omar for augmentations, and then betrayed the Omar to the police for more cash.
And you know who told me to do all that? Nobody, that was just something I came up with and the game let me do.

THAT is player agency done right!

It was especially cathartic after playing OG Deus Ex, where JC gets led around the nose by everybody with his phone number and dumbly going along with whatever the latest voice in his head told him to do.

As JC, you're constantly getting tricked.
As Alex, you can be the trickster.
This is my call to action for folks to stop hating Invisible War on reputation alone without having played it themselves. Give it a chance! (Assuming you can get the garbage PC Port to run)

Conclusion:
I don't like this game.
It's not fun. It doesn't have nearly as much to say as it thinks it does.
Every part of playing is frustrating and I don't walk away from each play session feeling at all enriched by the process.
More often than not, I end a session not because of time or because a feeling of satisfaction, but because I need a break from its janky nonsense.

And all the fans are now free to tell me all the ways in which I'm a spoiled millennial who doesn't get it, and should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting their dumb opinions upon the world with the assumption that anybody would care.

2024 Edit: Not at all going to act like the opinion was "wrong" at the time. That was the impression I had near the end of my first playthrough, and it was the opinion that the game gave me after clogging through it to the near end of it.

But now, I don't really hate the game anymore. It's more like I consider Deus Ex to be the imperfect prototype of games that would later on surpass it in all categories. Gameplay, story, themes, symbolism - all these are done better elsewhere. And those games have Deus Ex to thank for being what they built off of.
And I probably wouldn’t be so harsh on it if it weren’t for so many fans saying things like “pinnacle of the genre, never been topped, best game ever”

[LelandFischer]

Originally posted by Northern:

Originally posted by LelandFischer:

I think the reused textures combined with the lack of mini-map made things way harder to navigate. For example, I had way more trouble navigating MJ12 than I did the Catacombs, and the Catacombs are way more complex. However, I think it was because MJ12 had multiple levels, meanwhile the Catacombs were mostly flat. Same thing with VersaLife - it is 4 stories tall, so navigating it gets pretty confusing. Plus, each of the rooms start to look the same if they're on the same floor.

Catacombs has a minimap so it was a piece of cake for me to navigate, and there aren't many enemies. While Versalife, there are different floors each filled with patrolling robots, soldiers... I still have no idea how I found the objective areas and finally my way out. It was a complete nightmare for me.

I meant to say, a GPS mini-map.

Yes, both levels have a mini-map. My point is more so that having things all on the same floor is much easier to navigate. But reading your comment, it sounds like we are in agreement.

And yes, frequent enemies can make it easy for you to forget what you were doing before the enemy picked a fight with you.

[LelandFischer]

Originally posted by wtf is rep?:

but seriously tho. you can't deny that hong kong theme slaps hard

Everything about Hong Kong is excellent. The music, the gameplay, the exploration, the worldbuilding (this one especially), the abilities/augmentations you are able to use at that point, etc. It's not perfect by any means, there's lots of issues too. But this area is one of my favorite areas in any video game I've played yet.

[Satans Booty Hole]

OP, you’re are 100% valid in feeling the way you do, I’m not gonna jump down your throat or call you wrong for not liking a game that I still consider the best RPG on the PC platform. I don’t like a lot of things people like, so I’m not gonna throw stones in a glass house. Sorry the game didn’t vibe with you completely, but hey there are thousands of games out there that might appeal to you so it’s not a bad thing. And don’t let anyone try and tell you you’re wrong for feeling what you feel. We all feel different things about anything we like or dislike, it’s human nature and more people should be able to respect that.

[dimi]

PILLS. GET PILLS AGAINST MY ORDERS!

[t9]

Sneak doesn't work? Lol it's OP
Gun fighting feels good too. Do u rly play the game?

You dislike the game just for the sake of it. After reading your points one by one it becomes rly clear.

Oh u like Resident Evil. Well

[Astralflame]

Originally posted by Not So Serious:

Now if you only read the title and don't feel like reading the rest, you are free to tell me all the ways in which I'm a spoiled millennial who doesn't get it, and should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting their dumb opinions upon the world with the assumption that anybody would care.

Alternatively, you could read the rest so that your insults can be a bit more accurate.

Deus Ex has been repeatedly praised as the best game of all time by a lot of people. But as I've been playing, I've reached the Ocean Lab (which I understand to be the level before the last) and all I feel is relief at nearly being done with it.

Now I didn't grow up with it. My first console was the Game Cube, of which I have fond memories. But it was about 1 generation after this. So I don't really consider myself as one of the "kids these days" that just want their games to be easy and laid out perfectly.

But I have had absolutely no fun with this game.

Complaint 1: The Gameplay

The exploration isn't nearly as fun as it's talked up to be. Every review I've heard has praised how there's always cool stuff to find, but typically when I go off the beaten path, I end up getting damaged by environmentals or wasting my unlocking devices, only to discover that the reward for that effort was ammo (of which I have in abundance), an augment (that I've likely already unlocked and is thus useless to me), or unlocking tools to replace the ones I just used to get in. Half the time I reload to the quick save I dropped before I went off to explore because I will usually be in a worse spot than when I started.

The stealth is frustrating. It feels like the "sneak up from behind and KO" move only works when it wants to. Making me Quick Save prior to every attack and re-loading until it works. Even with maxed out sneak and a cloaking device, I can still be spotted, which makes sneaking seem like a complete waste of time.

So if the sneaking is bad, the next thing you try is shooting; but the gunplay isn't satisfying at all. It's an awful FPS. The guns have no kick, the enemies don't react to damage and don't display interesting tactics, the augments are awkward to activate. It's not fun.

So if the stealth is frustrating, the combat is bland, and the exploration is unsatisfying, how are you supposed to play? Apparently with gritted teeth and a finger over the quicksave/quickload buttons, at least in my case.

Complaint 2: JC Denton and Friends

The characters aren't all that deep, or at least their deepness isn't well represented. JC seems like a dumb actor just blindly going along with whatever the most recent person he's talked to has said. He seems mostly bored with everything and not invested in anything. I know it's a meme that JC is terrible at emoting and comes off as a psychopath, and it's funny. But not very compelling as a character.

I have no investment in any of these people, partly because I don't see JC being invested in any of them. When JC's only reaction to his brother dying is "he was a good man," how am I supposed to see it as a tragedy?

Every single character with a name could drop dead, and it would not cause a single blip on my emotional radar. These aren't people, they're poorly voiced robots that do what they do because that's the role they have to fill in the story.
Navarra and Gunther are psychopathic soldiers because we need Disk 1 Bosses.
Bob Page is an evil scientist because we needed an primary antagonist.
Paul is a kind-hearted "thall shalt not kill" spokesperson because we need someone to tell you "CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!!"

Tong, Hugh, Savage, Daedalus; all of these people only exist because somebody needs to tell you what your next objective is.
And you will complete that next objective because you are the main character. We don't need to come up with a motivation for you, that's for you to come up with! After all, you're supposed to be stepping into the shoes of JC Denton! It's alright if he's an emotionless robot and dumb actor that agrees with every plan he hears and doesn't have any motivations of his own, so long as it's in the name of letting players see themselves in his role.
Well I don't really want to see myself in him, I'm not particularly interesting. I would much rather JC be an actual person.

Complaint 3: The Themes

The hottakes it has about society are a bit dated. Some people have talked about how it tackles a lot about corporate control over society, but I don't see it being represented besides lipservice and the occasional comment.

The only really deep conversation I've had in this game was with Daedalus' explanation of why humanity needs to worship, and I'll probably save a spot in my mind for the "God is humanity's dream of good governance" line. It's an interesting statement, but it doesn't really say anything that I haven't heard elsewhere. Maybe it was a hottake in the 90s, I dunno.

The deepest theme I see is about how governments use terrorism and tragedy to justify their overinflated budget and expanding powers. It's a game that definitely feels topical for the era that was defined by the War on Terror and worries over increasing government control over its population.
That is pretty legitimately well-done, but it seems to get dropped in favor of Illuminati vs MJ12 bullcrap about halfway through, once UNATCO gets completely sidelined and drops from plot relevance.
Any other hottakes it has, it only really talks about without displaying. The most visual class inequality you see is that slums exist. And the NSF leader at Liberty Island goes on a tirade about how the government is actually the bad guy. Hardly the bastion of visual storytelling.

Funnily enough, I remember the prequels having more themes than this. The corporate control was a lot more visible, what with the augmentations that people are installing literally having corporate logos on them.
And Mankind Divided had a pretty nuanced look about the cycle of violence. With prejudice -> persecution -> retaliation -> more prejudice. Victims becoming victimizers in a class war spurred on by a media entity who is literally a construct designed to turn people against each other.
World leaders stifling innovation out of fear of it eroding their power base.
Scapegoats being propped up as enemies of the public in order to control the population.
These are themes that are enormously relavent, and have become more relavent than they were when the games came out.
As opposed to the original Deus Ex that, while the problems it talked about exists, they aren't quite the main issues that we have to deal with nowadays.

Complaint 4: Double Standards

There's a bit of a double-standard regarding the "thall shalt not kill...NSF, screw everyone else." The opening missions have Paul and the quartermaster talk a lot about how "these are real people, not targets." Encouraging the player to be a pacifist and treat their enemies humanely (which never held much water for me anyway, considering enemies never really act in a way that portrays them as humans. They're as robotic and kill-happy as the actual killer-robots and turrets).
But it seems this only applies to NSF. Once your enemies are government agents, you can murder-stabby-fun time all day and all night and nobody will bat an eyelid. They worked for the government after all, they made their choice. They definitely didn't have families that loved them. If they did, they wouldn't be working for the bad guy

Complain 5: Player Agency and Lack Thereof

This is probably going to get the spiciest reaction, but I think the player agency has been overstated.
To be clear, in levels it's definitely there. Hack the keypad, find the password, go through a window, charge in with the Dragon's Tooth and Regen Augment like a maniac; all are valid and that's pretty good.

But that's where the agency ends. At the end of the day, you and all your friends will have the exact same story.
You'll all have done a few UNATCO missions, betray them after Paul defects, go to Hong Kong to help Tong and the Illuminati take down MJ12, then save some nerds at a science lab and do something at Area 51.
A lot of the big choices that I see talked up don't really matter all that much.
Big Choices:
1: Kill or spare NSF Leader on Liberty Island. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
2: Kill or spare Lebedev. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
3: Kill or spare Manderly. If you kill him, you never see him again. If you spare him, you never see him again.
4: Save or leave Paul. If you leave, he dies. If you save, you do see him again...and he does nothing of importance.
5: If you kill Navarra early, you get to...not have to kill her later.
6: If you kill Chao early, you get to...not have to kill her later.
7: If you tell all your friends at UNATCO to defect cause it's what the cool kids are doing, you'll later see them at the Illuminati headquarters. where they will gush about how awesome it is to be working for the Illuminati and proceed to not do anything.
8: There's 3 buttons to push at the end (I haven't reached this yet, on the mission just before it. So maybe those 3 buttons will really blow me away, we'll see).

Not saying modern games are much better, but this doesn't seem like the kind of variety of storytelling and player freedom I was expecting from the "best game ever" and "most player agency to ever be found in gaming."

Conclusion:
I don't like this game.
It's not fun. It doesn't have nearly as much to say as it thinks it does.
Every part of playing is frustrating and I don't walk away from each play session feeling at all enriched by the process.
More often than not, I end a session not because of time or because a feeling of satisfaction, but because I need a break from its janky nonsense.

And all the fans are now free to tell me all the ways in which I'm a spoiled millennial who doesn't get it, and should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting their dumb opinions upon the world with the assumption that anybody would care.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgJazjz9ZsA feels like a necro at this point but heres a good video essay on the qualities of both games. I'm a bigger fan of the first one for story telling and the world. The prequel felt too much like a rehash of the first game railroaded with an edgy voice over. Still like it and I get that the old one is pretty damn dated, even though i got to only back in 2014 and was really impressed with the small details of character interactions.

[Tweakertje]

It seems you did not do a good play-through. if you are bothered with the death of Paul. consider this. you have to keep Paul alive, and you will meet him again in Hong-Kong. and if you read all the books computers and data pads in all secret and normal places in the game you will have so much more story in the characters. and the overall story. If you played the game good a lot of the fights can be evaded by different routes or other ways by hacking or around by ducts or other shortcuts

[Virgil]

Originally posted by Tweakertje:

It seems you did not do a good play-through. if you are bothered with the death of Paul. consider this. you have to keep Paul alive, and you will meet him again in Hong-Kong. and if you read all the books computers and data pads in all secret and normal places in the game you will have so much more story in the characters. and the overall story. If you played the game good a lot of the fights can be evaded by different routes or other ways by hacking or around by ducts or other shortcuts

You'll meet him again in Area 51. He'll replace Gary Savage as the one directing you to the Helios ending (the canon ending according to Invisible War). Still, I prefer letting Paul and Jock both perish because I think it adds a bit of credibility to the threat of MJ12.

[Fosty]

I skimmed through it. Fair points I guess.
But you hate the game?

What a shame.

[Siddha]

Deus Ex was revolutionary in its time and holds up even today. Like Doom and Diablo, Deus Ex is a classic of gaming history. In that context Deus Ex is one of the greatest games ever made.

[biceps always together!!]

You should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting your dumb opinions upon the world.

[ernstjunger]

Wow, actually a very good and thorough review!

I'm an oldschool gamer myself, grew up with the original 1993 Doom, played Deus Ex upon release (& kept coming back later to give it another try), was always fascinated by it, but could never get very far in the game because it was "too hard". (I've now completed the game and was bitterly disappointed.) Don't get me wrong, I think it's a very important game in the history of games, but it's very hard to recommend in 2020s. There is almost nothing in the game that hasn't been done much better elsewhere. And yes, it's janky and buggy as hell and generally not fun.

For all the conspiracy / mind-opening stuff, just go watch the Matrix from 1999 - you'll have much more fun!

Or better yet go read Marx's Communist manifesto - after having watched the Matrix - and understand that the Matrix is about capitalist exploitation and ideology [and not the FBI / Wall Street concocted "trans coming out story" (a divide & conquer plot by the ruling elite)].

{Yes, there's also Plato's Republic, but that might be a bit too much for an average reader of random Steam Forum discussions.}

[That's Nuts!]

you can only truly enjoy this game if your extremeley autistic

[Not So Serious]

Originally posted by Siddha:

Deus Ex was revolutionary in its time

True. It was the pioneer of the immersive sim genre, as well as was a frontrunner for games as social commentary.

Originally posted by Siddha:

and holds up even today.

False. Much of its gameplay is outdated, it's buggy, has terrible AI, and its societal hottakes are very much a product of the early 2000s.

Originally posted by Siddha:

Like Doom and Diablo, Deus Ex is a classic of gaming history.

True. It's a classic and an important part of gaming history.

Originally posted by Siddha:

In that context Deus Ex is one of the greatest games ever made.

False. There have been better games that came out since then. It's been beat in pretty much every field and coasts by on a reputation that it earned just by being the first to do it.

Originally posted by biceps always together!!:

You should just go back to playing CoD and stop inflicting your dumb opinions upon the world.

Joke's on you, I don't play CoD

Originally posted by anton:

you can only truly enjoy this game if your extremeley autistic

That's a bit of of an exaggeration.
There's plenty of legitimate reasons to like the game.

I just don't talk about them much here, because they are talked about to death pretty much everywhere else. But they exist. There's folks in this very forum (shoutout to Virgil) that could very intelligently explain why the game I despise is a masterpiece.
And to quote a previous comment: "Writing off your opposition using degenerative language does in no way strengthen your own position. It just makes you look like a jerk."

Originally posted by Fosty:

I skimmed through it. Fair points I guess.
But you hate the game?

What a shame. :jcdenton:

Lip Smack What a rotten way to skim.

Originally posted by Lemerde:

A feels like a necro at this point but heres a good video essay on the qualities of both games. I'm a bigger fan of the first one for story telling and the world. The prequel felt too much like a rehash of the first game railroaded with an edgy voice over. Still like it and I get that the old one is pretty damn dated, even though i got to only back in 2014 and was really impressed with the small details of character interactions.

Seen the video, and it's another one of those things that make me pause and think "did we play the same game?"

What story telling and world? It's a linear sequence of chapters broken up by hub areas and people spewing paragraphs of dated early-2000s societal hottakes. Its social commentary peaks with the guy in the statue of liberty.
It starts off with a pretty interesting premise of being a member of a clearly corrupt government organization using a crisis to gain power, and then leaps into a nonsensical war between conspiracies.

And saying that the prequels were "railroady" by comparison just feels horribly inaccurate.
You play the same levels in the same order every time, face the same enemies, have the same conversations with the same people with hardly anything in the way of player choice.
Sure, Manderly comments on it if you visit the lady's restroom. It doesn't change that JC Denton never makes any meaningful decisions that alter the story's trajectory.
It only feels nonlinear because you can explore the levels to your heart's content. But that was a feature in a whole lot of shooters at the time, Deus Ex wasn't the first and there's been games that have done it better. But having wide-open levels does not a nonlinear game make.

And I'll go to bat for Adam Jenson being a better character than JC Denton.
Sure, Adam may be a pretty generic gravely voiced anti-hero, but a generic character is at least a character. And by the time of Mankind Divided, he's become a really tragic one that I legitimately feel for as he's been consistently crushed by the weight of all the conspiracies he's actively fighting against, often without any support.
Which is more than can be said about the sociopathic meme machine that is Denton, reacting to everything that happens with dull boredom and numbly going along with whatever plan the latest guy to spit a paragraph at him came up with.

[The Asskins Diet]

Like OP, I'm also in a Millennial (in my 30s), didn't play this one growing up. But my first consoles were NES and SNES. I have an appreciation for old games and still enjoy them as much as new ones. I will preface this with, I'm playing the game with GMDX mod. I have stamina system disabled, so I'm breaking the game partially. I wonder if OP would have had a better time with having the ability to climb stuff. That's where the bulk of my fun has been. Stealthing around with a scoped silence pistol, climbing and assassinating everyone. The gameplay loop, at least with the mod I'm using, and the playstyle I've chosen. I can see why people like it. I reminds me of Fallout 1 and 2, or Arcanum, in terms of the random branching choices and consequences of the scenarios, right down to those scenarios making them buggy as hell. Just not nearly as deep.

I'm not really into the story. It's hard to take it seriously when the main guy looks and sounds as stupid as he does. Like I just want a mod to make his character model not wearing a Matrix trench coat getup. The referencing of real world (anti Semitic) conspiracy theories doesn't help and actively takes me out of the story. I'm also aware the devs weren't endorsing them, it just comes off a bit yikes with the kind of social damage these narratives have done IRL. The music and tone are nice. I keep trying to play the new Prey, and it's awesome, but I had this urge to play some of the genre predecessors first.