I love this game! I played the snot out of Human Revolution a few years ago and was excited to get around to this one. Having played the original Deus Ex in 2009 as well, I'm pretty comfortably a DX veteran by now. It's pretty much impossible for me to review this game without establishing the context of how I felt about Human Revolution, to which Mankind Divided is definitely the most similar, so forgive me for that.

I'm a huge fan of Human Revolution's aesthetics and atmosphere, and found the story quite compelling. Compared to that, Mankind Divided's world is immediately noticeable as stark, cold and bright, and kinda uncomfortable. After a nice little set piece intro level in Dubai, being thrust into the streets of Prague is a lot like walking to work in the morning with a hangover, having forgotten your sunglasses, before realising they're built into your face. Czechia, 2029, in the wake of the Aug Incident, is a harrowing and authoritarian setting. And - I won't spoil what happens later, but lets just say the atmosphere returns in absolute FORCE. To be honest, I felt the art direction in this game to be a little bit lacking compared to the magical Human Revolution, but perhaps that was inevitable.

Personally, I'm always here for the cool cyberpunk conspiracy fantasy, but I found that stuff unfortunately took even more of a back seat than it did in Human Revolution. The themes beat me over the head at times, I'm not sure why the side mission writing in particular beleaguered the point SO hard to the exclusion of everything else, and I can only conclude that it is due to the game's production being a tad rushed. A certain mid-game main mission section was however confronting and well-executed - perhaps it's a case of "show, don't tell" not always being followed.

Mankind Divided expands on the series' trend to alternate large open levels with smaller, tighter ones; Prague is easily the largest Deus Ex level so far and many have referred to it as "open world" - I'm not sure I'd go that far, to be honest. But, you will be there a lot, and there is a hell of a lot to find.

With Mankind Divided as it is sold now (there's no Director's Cut edition etc), there are three separate DLC missions in addition to the main campaign (one of these is pretty short though). All together, I think the game is slightly longer than Human Revolution. Don't take my played hours as an accurate value here, I'm infamous for leaving games running while I get distracted doing something else. I'm not a "100%"er, more like a "80%"er, but I think there's a fair bit of replayability here owing to the enormous variety of ways you can take on the challenges the game presents to you. No seriously, it's ridiculous how many options you have. The story elements (hacking computers to read emails, digging around for random bits of plot) will get stale long before the gameplay will.

I played the campaign and all three DLCs on "Give Me Deus Ex" mode, also known as Hard difficulty. Much like Human Revolution, this isn't a very hard game. You can play it stealthily or not: if you opt for stealth, being seen is often times a binary pass/fail mechanic which means you'll save scum (which I did). If you go in guns blazing (as it were.. since you can take out foes in many ways aside from just guns), you probably won't have the save scum problem. The game is balanced around mouse+keyboard, whereas I play with a controller (and I'm pretty bad at aiming with analog sticks), which means gunfights were just about impossible for me. Yeah, I know I said the game isn't very hard, but if I were to switch over to mouse+keyboard gunfights would be a cakewalk. This mouse+keyboard versus controller gun aim balance problem affects a lot of games on PC, I've noticed. As far as I know, the difficulty setting doesn't affect the level layout "puzzles" in any material way; they're fun to explore and deeper than in Human Revolution - especially Prague - but I still found myself wanting more complexity.

Anyway - the primary, and overwhelming, reason I found this game easy is that augmentations are overpowered. Early in the game, unlocking new augs feels awesome and very useful; every single unlock feels great. The problem is it doesn't stay like that, eventually you figure out some augs are way more powerful than others and you'll have to deliberately avoid using them in order to enjoy yourself - well, if you're anything like me. I'm guessing the balance curve is just not tuned for the kind of player I am, and that's fine. I've seen other games limit your player power based on how far progressed you are through the story, and I think quite possibly would've been a good design decision here too. Don't get me wrong, though, the augs are cool as fug and there's way more of them than in HR too (because literally everything from that game returns, plus the new ones).

Eidos Montreal is clearly aware of the augmentation power problem though, as the final DLC, "A Criminal Past", starts with your augs disabled and about 10 minutes in offers you the choice to enable them again. I chose to keep them disabled and it was an absolute blast - yeah, it was a bit weird not being Super Cyberpunk Man, but it was challenging the whole way through.

Regarding graphics - let's get one thing out of the way: this isn't as good looking as Cyberpunk 2077. BUT that said, it's still a very nice looking game indeed, particularly the environments. My least favourite was the aforementioned "morning hangover Prague" but largely it was all great. I had a "wtf" moment when I noticed how beautiful some of the real time lighting was despite this game pre-dating RTX support. The music and sound design were fantastic as well, just like Human Revolution there.

Having played this on two gaming rigs but using the same graphics card both times, the venerable GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB of VRAM, the performance was the same, so I'll not mention specific PC stats. Playing on Windows 10 or Linux with Proton made no difference either. For testing, first I tried my 1440p 155hz monitor - with the Medium preset, and MSAA set to 2x, I got about 50-65fps; choppy but playable. However, I ended up playing the game exclusively on my old 1080p 60hz TV - MSAA also on 2x and the Very High preset: solid 60fps that way, beautiful AND responsive. I tried with and without DirectX12 and noticed that DX12 provides a significant performance boost.

So yeah, overall, I love this game. Random arbitrary numbers are weird but lets say 89/100.

I love this game! I played the snot out of Human Revolution a few years ago and was excited to get around to this one. Having played the original Deus Ex in 2009 as well, I'm pretty comfortably a DX veteran by now. It's pretty much impossible for me to review this game without establishing the context of how I felt about Human Revolution, to which Mankind Divided is definitely the most similar, so forgive me for that. I'm a huge fan of Human Revolution's aesthetics and atmosphere, and found the story quite compelling. Compared to that, Mankind Divided's world is immediately noticeable as stark, cold and bright, and kinda uncomfortable. After a nice little set piece intro level in Dubai, being thrust into the streets of Prague is a lot like walking to work in the morning with a hangover, having forgotten your sunglasses, before realising they're built into your face. Czechia, 2029, in the wake of the Aug Incident, is a harrowing and authoritarian setting. And - I won't spoil what happens later, but lets just say the atmosphere returns in absolute FORCE. To be honest, I felt the art direction in this game to be a little bit lacking compared to the magical Human Revolution, but perhaps that was inevitable. Personally, I'm always here for the cool cyberpunk conspiracy fantasy, but I found that stuff unfortunately took even more of a back seat than it did in Human Revolution. The themes beat me over the head at times, I'm not sure why the side mission writing in particular beleaguered the point SO hard to the exclusion of everything else, and I can only conclude that it is due to the game's production being a tad rushed. A certain mid-game main mission section was however confronting and well-executed - perhaps it's a case of "show, don't tell" not always being followed. Mankind Divided expands on the series' trend to alternate large open levels with smaller, tighter ones; Prague is easily the largest Deus Ex level so far and many have referred to it as "open world" - I'm not sure I'd go that far, to be honest. But, you will be there a lot, and there is a hell of a lot to find. With Mankind Divided as it is sold now (there's no Director's Cut edition etc), there are three separate DLC missions in addition to the main campaign (one of these is pretty short though). All together, I think the game is slightly longer than Human Revolution. Don't take my played hours as an accurate value here, I'm infamous for leaving games running while I get distracted doing something else. I'm not a "100%"er, more like a "80%"er, but I think there's a fair bit of replayability here owing to the enormous variety of ways you can take on the challenges the game presents to you. No seriously, it's ridiculous how many options you have. The story elements (hacking computers to read emails, digging around for random bits of plot) will get stale long before the gameplay will. I played the campaign and all three DLCs on "Give Me Deus Ex" mode, also known as Hard difficulty. Much like Human Revolution, this isn't a very hard game. You can play it stealthily or not: if you opt for stealth, being seen is often times a binary pass/fail mechanic which means you'll save scum (which I did). If you go in guns blazing (as it were.. since you can take out foes in many ways aside from just guns), you probably won't have the save scum problem. The game is balanced around mouse+keyboard, whereas I play with a controller (and I'm pretty bad at aiming with analog sticks), which means gunfights were just about impossible for me. Yeah, I know I said the game isn't very hard, but if I were to switch over to mouse+keyboard gunfights would be a cakewalk. This mouse+keyboard versus controller gun aim balance problem affects a lot of games on PC, I've noticed. As far as I know, the difficulty setting doesn't affect the level layout "puzzles" in any material way; they're fun to explore and deeper than in Human Revolution - especially Prague - but I still found myself wanting more complexity. Anyway - the primary, and overwhelming, reason I found this game easy is that augmentations are overpowered. Early in the game, unlocking new augs feels awesome and very useful; every single unlock feels great. The problem is it doesn't stay like that, eventually you figure out some augs are way more powerful than others and you'll have to deliberately avoid using them in order to enjoy yourself - well, if you're anything like me. I'm guessing the balance curve is just not tuned for the kind of player I am, and that's fine. I've seen other games limit your player power based on how far progressed you are through the story, and I think quite possibly would've been a good design decision here too. Don't get me wrong, though, the augs are cool as fug and there's way more of them than in HR too (because literally everything from that game returns, plus the new ones). Eidos Montreal is clearly aware of the augmentation power problem though, as the final DLC, "A Criminal Past", starts with your augs disabled and about 10 minutes in offers you the choice to enable them again. I chose to keep them disabled and it was an absolute blast - yeah, it was a bit weird not being Super Cyberpunk Man, but it was challenging the whole way through. Regarding graphics - let's get one thing out of the way: this isn't as good looking as Cyberpunk 2077. BUT that said, it's still a very nice looking game indeed, particularly the environments. My least favourite was the aforementioned "morning hangover Prague" but largely it was all great. I had a "wtf" moment when I noticed how beautiful some of the real time lighting was despite this game pre-dating RTX support. The music and sound design were fantastic as well, just like Human Revolution there. Having played this on two gaming rigs but using the same graphics card both times, the venerable GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB of VRAM, the performance was the same, so I'll not mention specific PC stats. Playing on Windows 10 or Linux with Proton made no difference either. For testing, first I tried my 1440p 155hz monitor - with the Medium preset, and MSAA set to 2x, I got about 50-65fps; choppy but playable. However, I ended up playing the game exclusively on my old 1080p 60hz TV - MSAA also on 2x and the Very High preset: solid 60fps that way, beautiful AND responsive. I tried with and without DirectX12 and noticed that DX12 provides a significant performance boost. So yeah, overall, I love this game. Random arbitrary numbers are weird but lets say 89/100.