I remember really liking the first of the Deus Ex reboots when I played it a few years back, so I was excited to see the sequel that I never got around to available to play Game Pass. I figured I'd like this too but didn't know how much, and it ended up being one of my favorite games I've played this year. I did a stealth (no alarms) non-lethal run on normal difficulty doing all the side missions and lots of exploring, and it took me around 43 hours.
A continuation of the first game, Human Revolution, this game follows Adam Jensen as he continues to try and uncover and stop the conspiracy against augmented humans and the rest of the world by the shadowy Illuminati. He's a member of Task Force 29, a UN task force that's a counter-terrorism agency with global jurisdiction. Working out of Prague, a hotbed of anit-augmented and pro-augmented divisiveness, it's your mission to try and stop the bloodshed while also uncovering who's really orchestrating it in the first place. The game has a 12 minute recap of the events of the first game you can choose to watch if you want. I chose to and was promptly reminded just how little of the first game I remembered, so I'm glad it was there XD. Regardless, the plot of the first game doesn't impact this one THAT much. You'll be able to follow this game just fine without having played the first one, even without watching the recap, but having that context will definitely help the world and events in it (not to mention several side characters who are returning cast from the first game) make more sense.
The foundation of Mankind Divided's plot is the unjust discrimination facing mechanically augmented people after an Illuminati plot caused their neuro-circuitry to malfunction and send them into violent frenzies two years before the plot of this game. It does this using a lot of cues from real-world prejudice and institutions, and I think it pulls it off fairly well. The Illuminati being framed as the cause of the division from the very start of the game (it even opens on an Illuminati meeting only the audience is privy to) does a nice job of framing these divisions as institutional and not simply the fault of certain individuals. It has plenty of bad actors on both sides (both those who hate the augmented and want to see them suffer as well as augmented retaliating for how shitty they're treated but in irredeemable ways), but the constant context of Jensen's mission is that they are victims of a system designed to act against all of their interests. It's certainly not perfect (it basically ignores any connotations of things like race and being augmented or not is the sole source of prejudice in this alternate history of the world), but I think it deals with the themes well from the perspective it takes on things. I honestly got fairly similar feelings to it that I did from The Outer Worlds, in that the people at the top are the only really "evil" ones pitting the rest of society against itself.
The other aspects of the writing, characters and world building, I really enjoyed. The game has a lot of great minor and major characters (some I wish were in the game more than they were, to be honest) that really add a lot of color to 2029 Prague. The books you find lying around and TV reports you can watch (and even many conversations you can overhear) are also fun to peek into for glimpses at the wider world outside of Jensen's mission. There are little references to things from the original Deus Ex games here and there, from characters to organization names, but nothing really major. It does a good job of standing on its own divorced from the original games, and telling a story whose stakes feel engaging even though things like knowledge of a conspiracy are a constant known factor (and therefore can't be used for a twist).
The gameplay parts of Deus Ex are very similar to the previous Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but more specifically the Director's Cut of Human Revolution. It's a first person action game not unlike Dishonored, where the option to do things lethally or non-lethally is always present. Unlike the original Human Revolution, any "boss" encounters can be dealt with non-lethally, and there is always an option forward for whatever kind of playthrough you're going for (stealth, guns blazing, non-lethal, etc). There's only one real boss in the game, as opposed to the three of Human Revolution, and it's not a forced combat scenario that screws over people who opted to go entirely into hacking/stealth like the original Human Revolution did. Weaved into their place are debates that Jensen can have (he was captain of the debate team in high school XD) with important NPCs, like he could in the first game. The main difference here is that he can also have them with important enemy NPCs, and can deescalate a problem before it even becomes violent if you say the right things (and this is made even easier with an augmentation). Where I found a lot of the debates in the first game super easy, they were much more difficult in this game, and the "correct" option was far more difficult to pinpoint.
This being a sequel to Human Revolution, there are of course tons of augmentations you can give Adam Jensen to boost his capabilities in everything from hacking to stealthing to shooting. Leveling up from fighting enemies, completing quests, or even just exploring gives you Praxis points which are skill points that can be fed into these. Praxis cards can also be found around the world if you explore enough, allowing for free level ups if you hunt around. You start out the game fairly tooled up, and quickly gain access to a whole new series of augmentations. These new augmentations, as was the case in the last game, mostly lend themselves to a guns blazing-style playthrough, but far from all, and I never really had the problem as I did in the first game of having way too many skill points and basically nothing useful to spend them on because they were useless for stealth.
I did a stealth playthrough, so I can't really comment on the action elements, but the stealth elements work great. They're great at communicating information clearly to the player about when they're being noticed and from where, and cover is always advantageous in the player's favor. Whenever you're noticed, it's 100% your fault. As a big fan of stealth games with action options, I found this game scratched that itch perfectly for me.
Performance and presentation wise, this game definitely shows its age. It's a game from 2016, but it clearly reuses a lot of animations and models from Human Revolution. NPC's dialogue often doesn't match up with how their lips say it (although it does sometimes, mostly on important characters), and the NPCs have a very video gamey style to their body language in conversations. The game stutters a little bit from time to time on my base-model Xbox One, but it otherwise ran fine and the loading time are pretty quick too (at least compared to Dishonored 2, which came out the same year). It's a fairly pretty game, but it's hardly The Witcher 3. The music does a good job of setting the atmosphere and tone, but it's nothing you'll wanna put on your MP3 player, I'd imagine.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Easily the new #2 spot in my favorite games I've played this year. This is a stellar stealth/action game with great writing and it's a damn shame we'll never get any more of it (unless Squenix suddenly decides to revive it, I suppose). Regardless, the story feels satisfying even with the tiny cliffhangers at the end, and if you like stealth/action games, this is a great choice to pick up, especially if you have the option to dip into it for free with Game Pass like I did~
A continuation of the first game, Human Revolution, this game follows Adam Jensen as he continues to try and uncover and stop the conspiracy against augmented humans and the rest of the world by the shadowy Illuminati. He's a member of Task Force 29, a UN task force that's a counter-terrorism agency with global jurisdiction. Working out of Prague, a hotbed of anit-augmented and pro-augmented divisiveness, it's your mission to try and stop the bloodshed while also uncovering who's really orchestrating it in the first place. The game has a 12 minute recap of the events of the first game you can choose to watch if you want. I chose to and was promptly reminded just how little of the first game I remembered, so I'm glad it was there XD. Regardless, the plot of the first game doesn't impact this one THAT much. You'll be able to follow this game just fine without having played the first one, even without watching the recap, but having that context will definitely help the world and events in it (not to mention several side characters who are returning cast from the first game) make more sense.
The foundation of Mankind Divided's plot is the unjust discrimination facing mechanically augmented people after an Illuminati plot caused their neuro-circuitry to malfunction and send them into violent frenzies two years before the plot of this game. It does this using a lot of cues from real-world prejudice and institutions, and I think it pulls it off fairly well. The Illuminati being framed as the cause of the division from the very start of the game (it even opens on an Illuminati meeting only the audience is privy to) does a nice job of framing these divisions as institutional and not simply the fault of certain individuals. It has plenty of bad actors on both sides (both those who hate the augmented and want to see them suffer as well as augmented retaliating for how shitty they're treated but in irredeemable ways), but the constant context of Jensen's mission is that they are victims of a system designed to act against all of their interests. It's certainly not perfect (it basically ignores any connotations of things like race and being augmented or not is the sole source of prejudice in this alternate history of the world), but I think it deals with the themes well from the perspective it takes on things. I honestly got fairly similar feelings to it that I did from The Outer Worlds, in that the people at the top are the only really "evil" ones pitting the rest of society against itself.
The other aspects of the writing, characters and world building, I really enjoyed. The game has a lot of great minor and major characters (some I wish were in the game more than they were, to be honest) that really add a lot of color to 2029 Prague. The books you find lying around and TV reports you can watch (and even many conversations you can overhear) are also fun to peek into for glimpses at the wider world outside of Jensen's mission. There are little references to things from the original Deus Ex games here and there, from characters to organization names, but nothing really major. It does a good job of standing on its own divorced from the original games, and telling a story whose stakes feel engaging even though things like knowledge of a conspiracy are a constant known factor (and therefore can't be used for a twist).
The gameplay parts of Deus Ex are very similar to the previous Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but more specifically the Director's Cut of Human Revolution. It's a first person action game not unlike Dishonored, where the option to do things lethally or non-lethally is always present. Unlike the original Human Revolution, any "boss" encounters can be dealt with non-lethally, and there is always an option forward for whatever kind of playthrough you're going for (stealth, guns blazing, non-lethal, etc). There's only one real boss in the game, as opposed to the three of Human Revolution, and it's not a forced combat scenario that screws over people who opted to go entirely into hacking/stealth like the original Human Revolution did. Weaved into their place are debates that Jensen can have (he was captain of the debate team in high school XD) with important NPCs, like he could in the first game. The main difference here is that he can also have them with important enemy NPCs, and can deescalate a problem before it even becomes violent if you say the right things (and this is made even easier with an augmentation). Where I found a lot of the debates in the first game super easy, they were much more difficult in this game, and the "correct" option was far more difficult to pinpoint.
This being a sequel to Human Revolution, there are of course tons of augmentations you can give Adam Jensen to boost his capabilities in everything from hacking to stealthing to shooting. Leveling up from fighting enemies, completing quests, or even just exploring gives you Praxis points which are skill points that can be fed into these. Praxis cards can also be found around the world if you explore enough, allowing for free level ups if you hunt around. You start out the game fairly tooled up, and quickly gain access to a whole new series of augmentations. These new augmentations, as was the case in the last game, mostly lend themselves to a guns blazing-style playthrough, but far from all, and I never really had the problem as I did in the first game of having way too many skill points and basically nothing useful to spend them on because they were useless for stealth.
I did a stealth playthrough, so I can't really comment on the action elements, but the stealth elements work great. They're great at communicating information clearly to the player about when they're being noticed and from where, and cover is always advantageous in the player's favor. Whenever you're noticed, it's 100% your fault. As a big fan of stealth games with action options, I found this game scratched that itch perfectly for me.
Performance and presentation wise, this game definitely shows its age. It's a game from 2016, but it clearly reuses a lot of animations and models from Human Revolution. NPC's dialogue often doesn't match up with how their lips say it (although it does sometimes, mostly on important characters), and the NPCs have a very video gamey style to their body language in conversations. The game stutters a little bit from time to time on my base-model Xbox One, but it otherwise ran fine and the loading time are pretty quick too (at least compared to Dishonored 2, which came out the same year). It's a fairly pretty game, but it's hardly The Witcher 3. The music does a good job of setting the atmosphere and tone, but it's nothing you'll wanna put on your MP3 player, I'd imagine.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Easily the new #2 spot in my favorite games I've played this year. This is a stellar stealth/action game with great writing and it's a damn shame we'll never get any more of it (unless Squenix suddenly decides to revive it, I suppose). Regardless, the story feels satisfying even with the tiny cliffhangers at the end, and if you like stealth/action games, this is a great choice to pick up, especially if you have the option to dip into it for free with Game Pass like I did~