This is a frustrating game to rate, so I'll be writing a review. Unpatched, this game is borderline unplayable, or at least you're not going to want to keep playing because of the buggy AI companions, constantly having to babysit them, and the limited saves. However playing with the community patch actually makes this game pretty decent, and since the patch is endorsed by Romero himself that's what I'll be basing my rating on.

It still suffers from having probably one of the worst first impressions to a video game I've ever experienced though. The first two levels are a swamp followed by a sewer, the enemies you fight are annoying, everything is green, and most of the weapons you get are garbage. The first episode is by far the worst part of the game, but the 2nd and 3rd episodes are genuinely pretty great and remind me a lot of Hexen II, which I like a lot. The weapon variety is sweet and besides most of the episode 1 guns, are satisfying and fun to use. I particularly like the ballista that you can "rocket jump" with and the demon summoning staff that uses gibs as ammo, which is such a Romero thing to design it made me lose my shit. Having unique weapons and enemies depending on which time period you're in works pretty well and is definitely a highlight of the game for me.

Another thing I personally feel works well enough is the rpg mechanic where you can put a point in a stat of your choosing. It allows flexibility in how you want to play and I like it. I focused on damage and health because I figured I'd probably have a hard time eventually but by the time I reached the 4th episode I was practically unkillable. I do feel like you already move quickly enough without points in the speed stat, and the acrobatics stat feels kinda useless besides for getting certain secrets, but they're there for people who want to run and jump around like crazy. Getting kills with the Daikatana will level up the sword instead of yourself so it gets more powerful, but I feel like it isn't really worth it. The story is nothing special and it has the habit of dumping you with exposition all the time. Personally I don't really care about story in an fps game but if you're expecting good writing then it isn't here. The music however is really good and fits the theme of each time period well. Check out the songs "Iced Passage I", "Gangland", and "Modern Mystery" if you want a taste, those are my highlights.

Would I recommend Daikatana? Well, if you can stomach the first episode of the game, then I think there's stuff to like here. I could only recommend playing it with the 1.3 patch though and to be honest, playing with AI companions disabled wouldn't be a bad idea since I feel like they don't add much to the game anyway and just serve as an annoyance. All you'd be missing out on are some comments they make on things during gameplay. Do I think Daikatana is overhated? No, not really. I think the hate for the unpatched game is 100% deserved and I can understand how it'd be hard to appreciate the good in this game when you're constantly dealing with the AI shenanigans. It's frustrating because this game is way too ambitious for it's own good and could have easily been so much better, but unfortunately that's not what we got.

I think the ideological clash between the WTO and the Order is interesting enough, and I like the concept of NG Resonance. I think that's everything I like about this game!

Last time I revisited this about two years ago, it was really hitting me just how tiny every map is, and I remember standing in the WTO air terminal looking out at the Seattle skyline texture and I just felt like none of it matched. The aggressively miniscule maps made me feel like this giant metropolis I was looking at simply couldn't exist in the world of this game. Maybe that's why they blow up Chicago in the intro, it doesn't belong.

The other major thing for me, where it really pales in comparison to the first game stylistically, is how much they let you take the piss with working for everyone until it's finally time to pick who you're backing and what ending you're going for. Deus Ex does leave your ultimate choice until the endgame too, but it feels more natural to me: JC Denton spends much of the game still reading from the UNATCO charter, getting his augmented ass handed to him in every debate and discussion he has, over the course of the game having his received worldview broken down and so he and the player finally reaching the point where they have to decide what to stand for feels earned. Alex D, on the other hand, learns that his home org was bullshitting him in the first ten minutes of the game, and from that point on is free to alternate between becoming besties with a given faction or mowing them down the next morning after a complete reversal of chosen ideology, never incurring any penalty other than a tetchy phone call asking you to please be a bit more considerate next time. When it finally comes, your last choice just feels meaningless in the face of it all. Just goes to show you that badly-accented bartenders are more important than we could have ever realised.

Also, the universal ammo. Come the fuck on.

Hey Elon Musk, I know your fucking nerd fans love that you used JC Denton on twitter as a profile pic, but the one most likely to be a part of an evil organization of rich assholes running the world is you, you fucking fascist billionaire. Fuck Elon Musk.


Also good game, fun times with soy food and cybernetics.

EDIT: this review is funnier after the whole twitter thing. I’m glad that pompous dickhead is finally getting publicly humiliated so thoroughly.

how many people do u think believe covids a government conspiracy because of this game specifically. its gotta be a non zero amount. Anyway

Frankly too much has been written about how prophetic Deus Ex was in seeing the future of our world. You already know the spiel: Something something massive government surveillance, world plague, illuminati, soy food, the whole nine yards. You don’t need me to tell you how the good folks at Ion Storm were “genius lumineers who could see the future” for correctly determining the obvious path our world hellscape was barrelling down like dozens of other writers did (Though the soy food thing was weirdly accurate). No, I think what’s particularly prescient from Day of Sex is how it managed to capture the farce that our modern world is become. Every turn of Denton’s journey blowing up government bunkers and megacorporations, he’s met with dozens upon dozens of employees who either don’t know what they’re doing or just don’t care. Everyone works endlessly on tasks that serve nobody but those vying for power and are completely ambivalent to it. We all know the system is fucked, and we know we’re too little to do anything ourselves, so we all play into it. This facade that the world of Deus Ex puts on that our society makes sense and our actions benefit anyone is its true strength.

Obviously, the other great storytelling aspect of Day of Sex is our protagonist. Our idiosyncratic cyborg who exclusively speaks in political jargon and action movie quips. He’s the straight shooter that slashes through the layers and layers of obfuscation in our world. It’s a shame Jay Franke has done (as far as I’m aware) literally zero other voiceover work, because it can’t be overstated how he does an absolutely perfect job embodying JC (and Paul to a lesser extent). Put simply, man’s an all timer.

Similarly, too much has been said about the level of freedom this game gives the player. “You can finish each mission any way your heart desires!” scream the voices of the hundreds of /v/ types who constantly sing its praises, and while this is true, let’s not act like the best solution to every problem isn’t the exact same thing: Aggroing every enemy NPC from halfway across the map with a gun, then hiding behind a corner and swinging at them wildly once they pass by with your laser sword like some half-rate matador act. The more cynical of you may see me describe that and take it as an insult of the game, but quite the contrary, this literally never stops being incredibly fun. I was giggling like a schoolgirl every time I ran headfirst into a massive pile of enemies, flamethrower in hand as I threw my safety to the wind, hoping to some divine power above I can last until the next Medbot. Sure, the combat’s kinda jank, but I think the jank adds a lot of fun to what otherwise might be a pretty rudimentary experience. It benefits all modes of play too; Knowing at any moment your perfect stealth run might be ruined by the AI randomly noticing your footsteps, or your epic parkour over everything can end from you clipping weirdly off the edge of a metal crate (Even when not platforming like once every 30 minutes my model would react weirdly with an animal carcass on the ground and I’d go sliding in a random direction). Game always keeps you on your toes, whether or not it really sets out to do that.

i was originally gonna complain about one major issue i had with the game, and thats that it felt weirdly dark. not in tone or anything, in actual brightness. it wasn't until halfway through the game i realized there was a weird issue running it on modern pcs that made the lighting engine all fucky. oops

So yeah, every single person on /v/ is 100% right about this game. Play it if you haven’t. It’s action packed! It’s gripping! It’s dense! It’s fun! It’s got weird voice acting! Everything that makes a true piece of kino.

What makes Deus Ex so impressive isn't just the amount of choices you're given, it's the way that they're presented to you and how they entertain your curiosity. When the game responds to your decisions from such an early point, it sets the tone of the rest of the experience: if it'll call you out for something as inconspicuous as messing around with the bathrooms, what else is it going to track? What other actions can you get it to react to?

It's this relationship of your curiosity being encouraged and then rewarded that defines Deus Ex. Although there are extrinsic bonuses for exploration (upgrade points, weapon mods, etc.), most of my motivation was intrinsic. There was never a time where I stumbled upon an unlocked vent and didn't want to see where it lead. Deus Ex's story deserves its own review, but the gameplay is about you and the designers. It's about inspecting every painting in a building and trusting that one of them will have a secret vault behind it. It's about lockpicking your way into a building at the front door before stopping yourself and asking "Wait, I bet there's another way" and reloading your save to see how else you can break in.

Sometimes it's very unbalanced, occasionally frustrating, jarringly unintuitive (especially considering the extended tutorial sequence), many aspects that would normally hold it back. But it doesn't need to be perfect, because these issues ultimately become drowned out as you're constantly making new decisions, answering new questions, and testing how mechanics interact with each other. Your imagination keeps being sparked and once you reach a certain point these shortcomings will suddenly stop mattering--nothing can break that unstoppable desire to see what the game has to offer next as everything finally clicks together.

This is, again, not even beginning on the story, atmosphere, or especially the music (because holy shit the OST is phenomenal). The gameplay alone is fantastic but the experience as a whole is just as special and is absolutely worth your time if you can get past some initial frustrations. The payoff is worth it.

It's fun, it can definitely use some more polishing though. Sometimes it feels unresponsive or not responsive enough, it lacks of basic modern rhythm game options such as custom maps, skins (or any type of mod loader in general), multiplayer and remaps for the keys. These types of games must be played with keys on a horizontal line because the way they're layed out on a normal keyboard makes it uncomfortable to play at times.

A lot of people love the presentation but I honestly hesitated to try it for that motive, I think the "quirky simplistic" artstyle has already died down for me.
Honestly, it's free, you can try it out and it's fun. I just hope it gets some more basic features because the week system gets old quickly. A multiplayer mode could really benefit from the "duel" type of rhythm game in which both sides are displayed.

genuinely the worst rhythm game engine ive ever experienced in my life. i feel bad for shitting on it cus i know this games for beginners and i have 300 hours across osumania, etterna and quaver but like. unmodded this game uses ARROW KEYS/WASD WITH NO OPTIONS FOR REBINDING? YOU LOSE HEALTH FOR PRESSING BUTTONS WHEN THERES NOTHING ON SCREEN? not to mention how awful latency and input dropping is. literally no one makes rhythm games like this anymore what the fuck is this. i know theres mods that fix this but you shouldnt need to mod the game to even make it playable