Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Sadly does not compare with its predecessor. Got boring a lot earlier, but the inclusion of such places as Prague was a welcome sight, it's not every day you get to see sci-fi Czechia.

A smaller scale follow up to Human Revolution that while not reaching the same heights in terms of story, the gameplay is a mark improvement. Mankind Divided fixes a lot of the problems I had with the previous game by allowing more ways to tackle mission objectives and also making a non-lethal playthrough viable and enjoyable.

I personally have no qualms with the story being a lot smaller and scale as I felt it was a logical follow up to the monumental ending of Human Revolution. What I will criticize is how short it is with there being only four levels outside of the hub with one of those being the tutorial. I'm all for shorter games but I felt here it does the story a disservice by not fleshing out certain plot points and characters as much as I wish they did. What makes up for this is the hub setting of Prague is a lot of fun to explore and the side quests are interesting and often pose interesting moral dilemmas.

I think what interests me the most about this game is how immersive sims have evolved since its release. The indie scene has evolved the genre to new heights so I think we are all due for a new entry in the series. The world is utterly fascinating and I really like Adam Jensen as a protagonist, now if only Square Enix would stop being so screwy with the franchise.

This is a major let-down after near perfect Human Revolution. The two biggest flaws are writing and level-design. To put it briefly: though the playing area is small, I got lost a lot, and I didn't really care to find my way around. The story didn't compel me to explore either. I didn't care much for Jensen's cause. Neither did I feel empathy for other characters. They all feel flat and uninteresting, with boring dialog lines.
Additionally, the gameplay feels a bit clunky. Even when HR isn't without issues in that regard, it is way smoother than MD. And the loading times... Holy crap, when you have such small levels, it should NOT take several minutes to from press "Continue" to being able to play! And people dare criticising Witcher 3 on this.
All in all, this is a poor game that people should avoid. Especially the ones that fell in love with the previous Deus Ex.

I played this about a month ago and its been a little over a year since I beat Human Revolutions, I game I found to be a downgrade from the original Deus Ex but still found decent enough in its own right. This on the other hand is essentially Human Revolutions 1.5, it does nothing to improve the franchise and feels more or less like an add on to that game. There just wasn't much I remembered about this, most of the missions bored me and weren't as well designed as Human Revolutions. The characters were boring, the story wasn't that great, the ending was bad, and the game felt a lot shorter and more limited. The only decent thing about this were a few of the side missions were unique and interesting, but for every interesting side mission on the other hand you had one that was generic and had you going through the usual motions. The main story is incredibly short and even shorter than the side quests. I mean to be fair I wasn't expecting much from this since I didn't even think Human Revolutions was a great game, but I expected it to at least improve the formula and maybe go a little more back to its roots. Instead its just a pretty mediocre stealth game with an uninteresting story and it adds nothing to the franchise.

While not exactly terrible, with some excellent level design when you get down to it, Mankind Divided falls well short of the mark with a borked pace, a story that starts interesting but just gets confusing and loses its luster, a refusal to commit to its message, and most of all, the most transparent instance of an ending being mangled in production. Whether it was to sell DLC later on or the developers simply running out of time, the ending is as far from traditionally satisfying as you can get, and soured me on the game in a way that had not happened in ages.

A decent purchase if on sale, or if the GOTY version turns out to be cheap, but by no means should you play this before Human Revolution or the original.

Despite a rift of five years between Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, this new adventure feels rushed and lazy in the way one expects of annual sequels in the Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty series. It fails to take advantage of a new generation of consoles in novel ways, while failing to deliver a gripping narrative and excellent pacing of Eidos Montreal's first stab at the series. It is still a worthwhile game for series fans, but much like Deus Ex: Invisible War, the team comes across as clueless as to what made the first game such a success.

The biggest change in this sequel is largely superficial. Instead of taking place across multiple hubs, MD takes place in one large central hub of Prague with visits to interior environments elsewhere around the world for one-off main missions. What happens within them is identical to the previous game, give or take a few new augmentation abilities, a new -- and rather pointless -- crafting system and a revamped cover system that lets the player sprint to cover spots like in recent Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games.

When the game gives you a lengthy mission in a large, detailed environment, it's as good as its prequel. The problem is that there are only three of these in the game and the first doesn't come until you are halfway your playthrough, assuming you do all the side-missions. This odd pacing doesn't only hurt player engagement, it also throws off the balance of the game as I went into the first major mission with most of my important augs unlocked and most of the weapons in my inventory.

A larger issue is that the game is so easy -- yes, even on the hardest difficulty available without beating the game -- that I rarely needed to make use of my battle augs or weapons. To put some perspective on things, the final confrontation in the game is four basic enemies and a turret at an elevator: I was able to take them all down with one ability and beat the game. The original Deus Ex opened with confrontations on the level that MD ends with. This made the game overall less fun than the previous game which, while not as difficult as the original Deus Ex, had difficulty spikes and got downright masochistic in its DLC.

Perhaps it's a more subjective topic, but I didn't like how most missions in MD revolved around innocent opponents that only a psychopath would kill in cold blood. We are talking security, police and grunt soldiers for neutral organizations. I liked how in previous series entries I was always justified in going loud with guns if the situation demanded it, but that only applies to the final missions of this Deus Ex. This resulted in a game that felt far more repetitive than its prequel. I am to blame as a player, but as someone committed to roleplaying Adam Jensen, it doesn't make sense for him to kill a bunch of innocent cops and guards.

On almost every level, Mankind Divided is a step down. Other than visuals and the new stealth system, nothing is improved upon. Some elements are downright terrible, like the character animation that feels like something from the early days of polygonal graphics with characters jumping around like cartoon characters going against the game's grounded tone and setting. Other elements are disappointing, like the city hub that feels underpopulated in comparison to other open-world settings this gen, including SquareEnix's own Hitman series. Then there is the unremarkable story and it's abrupt ending which is as graceful as a record slap.

I've hit upon a lot of negative points, but it's important to restate that MD still contains the great elements of Human Revolution. Whether you should pick-up this sequel depends on how you felt about that original attempt at a reboot. If you loved it, you'll be able to bare MD's shortcomings and find enjoyment in more of the same. But fans who want a game truer to the original will be disappointed to find a game that only goes further away from what made the 2000 original great.