Even though game publishers are gigantic entities run by hundreds of people, it’s interesting to see how they’re gradually personified through the way they conduct business. EA may run over twenty development studios, but most people would know them for buying studios, having them put out mediocre sequels, and shutting them down. Square Enix meanwhile is known for situations like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Human Revolution revitalized the brand, and Square immediately saw the potential to make Deus Ex into a multimedia franchise. Mobile spinoffs, comics, and sequels would immediately be moved into production, attempting to capitalize on the hype as soon as possible. Mankind Divided itself was going to be the core of this push, being a huge upgrade over the first game with a bigger team and a higher budget. That was a fine plan, at least until Square Enix’s dreams of a franchise got the better of them. The game was essentially cut in half, with the idea being to use its parts for two games instead of one. The multi-hub setup was cut down to just one location, and the runtime was fifteen hours instead of twenty-four. The story comes to an abrupt conclusion halfway through, which can charitably be called a cliffhanger for the planned third installment. Naturally, this didn’t go over well, and Mankind Divided sold well below expectations. Even when the game looks beautiful, has a great city hub to explore, and fun augmentations, getting cut off in the middle of the action was a massive letdown. Instead of Square Enix taking this as a sign that the next Deus Ex should be more fleshed out, they saw it as people losing interest in the franchise, and the DLC was the last Deus Ex media that would release for (at the time of writing) five years. This really is the most painful way for a franchise to end, with the game being good enough to where fans mourn the lost potential, but bad enough to where even an unlikely sequel wouldn’t get the budget it deserves. With how Square followed the same pattern of getting ahead of themselves and killing a franchise before it really began with Avengers though, I’m not holding my breath for Deus Ex to make the comeback I’m hoping for.

It reminds me of BioShock 2-both are sequels to games that went hard on narrative chops, both fell a bit short on gameplay, so they 180’d and focused on mechanics while letting the story fall to the wayside. With MD, I had more freedom to engage with the world than I did with Human Revolution, but the hokey comparison of “augmented hate=racism” was trite (tying trans-humanism with class, racial, and gender issues has been done better before) and it ended up costing them the character development, worldbuilding, and the overall plot. The plot I noticed was most affected as it felt shorter than HR. It wasn’t physically shorter-my runtimes for each game was the same-but the pacing and lack of depth helped to reinforce that wanting feel. For fairness’ sake though, I do acknowledge that this game did have Square Enix buffoonery affect it just like the last game. I hope that with this recent Embracer Group purchase, Eidos can take the otherwise great mechanics of this game and translate it to a stronger sequel.

I think people overstate how "unfinished" the game is. Don't get me wrong, you get the feeling that there are some loose threads and that a portion of the game got cut in the making but what's there is 100% polished and well worth playing though. Prague is beautiful, climatic, dense, with some side stories to uncover and many apartments to break into. The story is nothing to write home about, but it's fun to go through the city uncovering conspiracies, exploring abandoned buildings, knocking out cops, messing around with the environmental interactibles, and finding your way around locked doors and security devices.

That being said there's less variety in locations than in Human Revolution, while the gameplay is dumbed down comparatively at the same time. Yes, you have more augs and many more weapons to choose from, but HR's more open approach to quest and level designs took 2 steps back, which is a trend since HR already took 3 steps back in that regard from the original Deus Ex.

Despite this, this is clearly a game made by people with passion who deserved better, but sadly they got Square Enix'd.

My most recent playthrough made me realize that I had been too hard on this game before when comparing it to Human Revolution.

In terms of the actual gameplay it improved more on Human Revolution than I gave it credit for. Both the stealth and gunplay are much improved and it definitely feels like it gives you many more options to get through areas.

I wish I could say the same about the story but Square's meddling in the development of the game made sure that it ended up being weaker overall even if there are definitely spots that I thought were much improved over HR. I thought the side missions were much more interesting and much more fleshed out than before with more thought put into the story of each of them with and with multiple of them having different stages that occur over your different visits to Prague that all come together at the end of the game where you can see the different people Jensen helped throughout the game joined together under a singular cause. One side mission "thread" I would like to single out is the Harvester missions. Those on their own are much more fleshed out than anything in HR and are some of the best parts of the game.

The main story is a step down from HR but in general is still interesting enough to stay engaging until it completely drops the ball with the ending where instead of having anything actually important happen it just zooms in on a tv while the news tells you about all the things you did.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided received at launch many negative reviews for its lack of a clear cut conclusion to a plotline that definitely couldn’t end with this game – as the first Deus Ex in 2000 still exist apparently – and because of Square Enix egregious policy of shipping the game with an online mode nobody asked for, which turned out to be another cash grab for people with money spending disorders. Also, the onetime use only DLCs. These two latter are probably the worst offenders, as the lack of definitive conclusion could either be justified on the developer part as an intentional choice to respect the series canon or to make Mankind Divided work as a middle chapter much like Mass Effect 2 did already for its own saga. Sure, there are enough reasons to call out on Square Enix for being a greedy company that preys on its brands’ legacy, let’s not push too much stress on the guys at Eidos.

I digress.

Mankind Divided works as a direct sequel to Human Revolution, more or less. What happened in the two years gap between the games is never fully explained, and suddenly the series shifted from being a cyberpunk spy story about mega corps and their wrongdoings to a tale about the problem of racism and social acceptance in the modern and futuristic society. Considering the sci-fi setting, this new premise works beautifully intertwined with renowned cyberpunk thematic, especially in our modern times where it is apparently important to remind people what bring racism to arise and why it is important to actively argument against it. Or maybe, more simply, Square Enix ordered Eidos to remove any reference to massive corporations being evil and all since they have become one themselves in the last decade.

I digress again.

The plotline is more of the same from previous games and the characters aren’t much different or interesting either, they are actually quantifiably less memorable than any previous major titles of the series since there is a lack of significant development for any of them, nor the charisma previous casts had. The gameplay also is almost identical to Human Revolution, except for some new augmentations which are funny to play with but rarely really useful on the long run if the players liked the series for its stealth approach rather than the ability to use a massive plasma cannon or firing explosive blades. Especially since the game actually rewards players the less they raise alarms and kill anyone, so it would be counterproductive to use most of these new destructive gadgets. Shame tho.

What makes the game shine and be worth the purchase, especially now since the prolonged negative responses to it made it terrific cheap to buy, is the magnificent and vast hub of Prague City, full of secrets, quests to be discovered and it generally makes the game into a glorious cyberpunk sandbox stealth game. That’s where hours will be spent, choosing different routes to same objectives, trying to unlock everything before the player is even able to reach that point and just getting lost in the massively and detailed world of the Czech’s futuristic capital. If you think this kind of freedom united with the renowned stealth mechanics are enough to interest you, then the game will be a blast, albeit the replay value will probably be mostly lost if the challenge of higher difficulties or the storyline aren’t of interest, since doing everything from the top again will prove to be quite tedious without the incentive of interesting collectibles, aside from lore related e-books and scarce achievements from doing random stuff and side quests.

These side quests are often times smartly written and integrated with the setting, but many times are either completely disjointed from the plot or feel pointless and just a massive waste of time considering the backtrack involved. They are however a nice distraction and incentive to further explore what might have been missed in the giant hub.

Mankind Divided is on many levels a great upgrade to its previous iteration, for what concerns the technical department – graphic, music, some gameplay mechanic, – but on many others it feels surely incomplete and missing the gripping storytelling the series is famous for. It is still one of the best and rare examples of a modern well-done cyberpunk video game, or a first-person hybrid RPG-stealth video game for that matter.

Deus Ex is an old well-loved franchise and the reboot with Human Revolution was well received despite its many flaws. Mankind Divided is a direct sequel taking place right after the terrorist bombing from the end of the last game, and Adam Jensen is at it again trying to solve murder mysteries, stop more terrorists, and put an end to the hatred against augmented humans. Dealing with racism, discrimination, classism, and many other dystopian issues, Mankind Divided delivers an atmospheric world to explore with great characters.

The gameplay elements from Human Revolution carry over and feel more polished and nuanced, but this game has its own set of issues. Starting with exploration, Mankind Divided has small areas in Prague you can explore and complete side missions and sadly that’s all. You can’t talk to 90% of the characters, and there are only a dozen side missions in the whole game. Prague just feels very cramped and small in scope and the Deus Ex franchise has enough lore and interesting things going on that it could be an open world game. Despite the areas being full of NPCs, open buildings, police walking about, etc., it just feels so empty and lonely. The amount of interaction is so little and there’s no real point exploring anything expect to hack computers to read emails and find ebooks, but even these don’t really give a lot of insight to the surrounding world.

Once you get into a mission the combat is actually rather versatile. You can go completely stealth using silenced weapons and takedowns, or augment yourself for combat with powerful melee moves, more health, shields, and more. I went the hacker/stealth route upgrading all my hacking augs and bio cell meter for stealth shields and extra takedowns. Every area has multiple routes to get to the goal by either shooting through all the enemies, hacking your way around turrets, cameras, and security, or just taking everyone down one by one and sneaking through vents. It’s rather satisfying to find your own path and I rarely had issues in which I didn’t know how to get to a particular area. The shooting is rather satisfying as well, but sadly the game is designed to use very little of it. I never used anything outside of my silenced pistol despite holding on to 4 different weapons through the entire game. You can pick up grenades, software to help hacking, and various healing items, but I never really needed most of it.

Outside of shooting, cover mechanics, and various combat abilities, there’s nothing else to the game. The story and characters are interesting enough to keep you going, but it’s mostly forgettable. The overall terrorist plotline is done to death in other games, and I’d rather know more about the surrounding world and how the people live day to day in this dystopian police-state world. That interested me more than anything Adam and his cohorts were working on. I honestly enjoyed the side missions more than the main storyline which is odd for a video game in general. There are some persuasion dialog mini-games where you must sway a character in your favor, but it’s easy and the outcomes don’t really affect the overall story.

Thankfully, Mankind Divided is for both action fans and stealth fans despite the game being built for stealth gameplay. There are no bosses this time around and the game has a lot of technical issues. At launch, the game was nearly unplayable for most people, and now after many patches, the engine is incredibly unoptimized with even two video card generations later, the engine struggles to stay at 60FPS with load times for menus even! MSAA is nearly impossible to enable with frames dipping into single digits, there’s a lot of chugging when turning the camera as well. On anything but the latest GPUs you’re not going to enjoy this game at all and it will murder your system. The game looks really good though with good lighting, high-res textures, and great character models.

Overall, Mankind Divided expands on its predecessor, but not on the overall series. More interactive areas would have been great, bigger areas to explore and more side missions, and even more insight to the day to day lives of the citizens in Prague. With a terribly optimized engine, and the fun factor of combat and stealth varying from satisfying to incredibly frustrating within minutes of each other, Deus Ex just needs a reboot before coming back. The story is enough to keep you moving along, but it’s nothing memorable.

I've played through all the other Deus Ex games, and for the most part loved them. Mankind Divided is a lot more of what made those games great; I love the flexible game design, you play your way, either stealth or combat focused, and you'll deal with the limitations and rewards of either play style. The cyberpunk setting is awesome and really lends itself to that great feeling in an action RPG where you slowly get tougher and unlock new abilities (in this case by installing new Augs). The combat is fun, and the puzzle aspects of finding new ways to approach each level is cool. However, this time I had a major gripe. The story just got in the way. The characters talked so much that it stopped being fun and started being tedious. Normally I enjoy the story part of RPG's, but in this case halfway in I just gave up and starting skipping every dialog scene by mashing buttons. In the end I don't feel like I missed anything other than delays until I could start having fun again. If they make another Deus Ex game, I hope they really tone down the excessive chatter.

It's weird how one game can be some of the best and some of the worst stuff you'd expect from AAA games at the same time. Mankind Divided has great gameplay and presentation, a fun story, a cool world, and some pretty awesome ideas, but awful performance and microtransactions at launch, weird budget and/or time cuts resulting in an unfinished main campaign, and a tacked-on multiplayer and companion app to scan fucking QR codes. A shame, too, because this "Deus Ex Universe" initiative could've been some of the best shit in videogames if it weren't for the Warner Bros. goofiness that somehow found it's way in Square Enix, trying to establish some sort of big franchise off the back of one successful game and a promising sequel you decide to not have enough faith in at the last minute, which only goes to ruin any prospects your franchise might have had in the first place. I hope that Eidos Montreal is now at least in a real position to make a real continuation of this game, because, though the social commentary isn't the best, the aesthetics and the immersive-simmness of the Deus Ex reboot games cannot be left by the wayside. Make Jensen kill God already, you fucking Canuks!

Also yeah the original Deus Ex is kinda boring and only post-ironically enjoyable today, don't even tell me otherwise.

Mankind Divided is a step up from Human Revolution in just about every way. The most important area of improvement is undoubtedly level design. The levels in MD are much closer to the original Deus Ex than HR’s are in terms of openness and room for player creativity. In Human Revolution each level has maybe two or three infiltration routes. The levels in MD give you the feeling that the options for tackling them are basically limitless. This was one of the great strengths of the original and is mostly replicated here.

Story here is a bit stronger than HR’s, which is to say a pretty decent take on the themes and tropes of Deus Ex. The premise of an augmented apartheid being manipulated and taken advantage of by various parties is definitely more interesting and feels more grounded here than the anti aug bias in HR. In HR the anti-aug factions mostly appealed to ideas of human purity in a philosophical sense, which was a pretty weak and boring argument considering much more compelling material arguments against augmentations that the game didn’t really tackle e.g. hardening class boundaries, mandatory augmentation for certain jobs, etc.

The anti-aug violence in MD feels much more grounded and realistic due to the aug incident and the way those in power paint augmented people as dangerous and deviant. This groundedness causes the players actions and choices in the game to hold more weight. Instead of being asked to stop a Luddite holding people hostage you’re being sent to arrest a peaceful leader for aug rights that your corrupt bosses want you to get rid of. This sense of working for the bad guys but trying to somehow do the right thing or at least minimize the damage you’re causing is very much present in the original deus ex and it is here as well. The same can’t be said for Human Revolution.

The only step down from HR in my opinion is probably the visual aesthetic. HR had a very unique and striking cyber renaissance aesthetic, which MD replaces with a drab world in collapse saturated with greys and blues. While this change makes sense and I’m glad they didn’t just keep the same aesthetic from HR, this new aesthetic doesn’t really do anything interesting or creative to stand out.

The length was also a bit of an issue for me. MD is on the shorter side, the 2nd shortest DE game after invisible war, and I wish it was longer and had more levels outside of the Prague hub world which takes up most of the game. Some of the best levels in the game, like the London and Golem levels involve you traveling to a new visually unique area, and I wish there was more of that.

Overall this is a really enjoyable game and the first in the Deus Ex series to feel like a worthy follow up to the original. It doesn’t have anything really special to elevate it to the level of the original, but it’s a quality game nonetheless.