Most combat situations revolved around switching between 3rd and 1st person anyway you know. I can't imagine it would be that difficult to just allow you to stick to 3rd person. Well, more animations, camera controls and testing to see if it doesn't allow you to see something you shouldn't, but that's about it really - there was absolutely nothing that would rely on 1st person in any shape or form, there were substantial parts that relied on 3rd person tho.

Like everyone else, I don't care for the boss battles and the way the endings were handled. Still, I have some nitpicks of my own.

1: You can't take your safehouse inventory with you between hubs. I think this could have been better handled by making this into a locker that is found at any safehouse. I think that I also recall scattering my excess inventory all across the floor in the safehouse, which is unappealing to the eye and inconvenient.

2: I would have preferred to have all of the batteries to be capable of fully recharging themselves without using items. Just make it slow enough that using an item would be preferable in a pinch.

3: Megan Reed represents issues with the game as a character and plot device. To start with, forcing Jensen, and therefore the player into having an established relationship with her feels unnatural. The pilot is a much more interesting and appealing character because we have enough time to warm up to her. Not so with Megan Reed, who I actually came to consider to be one of the game's villains. Also, she imitates Princess Peach a few too many times, which actually contributes to my dislike of her because it avoids opportunities to understand her in a positive light.

4: Putting aside the issues of how the boss battles don't fit the gameplay, they are also narrative blocks. Even if the player was doing a nonlethal playthrough of the game, there is an assumption that the player was intending to kill these characters.

I am with you on your take.

DE:HR was exactly as hard as you wanted it to be. I instantly saw the achievements "play through while never being detected" and "Kill no one except bosses" and decided that that was how I'd play. That made the game way harder. But of course, it became optionally hard.

DE:HR is my favorite kind of game, literally letting the player choose their own difficulty and dropping subtle hints about optional challenge.

As for the anti-military sentiment, that's a real human touch put on Jensen's character, not a over-arching moralistic statement (there were others). It's the kind of thing that makes us believe he's real, the same as finding that big macho tough guy you know rolls around on the floor to play with his 3 year old nieces and nephews. Real people have opinions about things, there was a plot point about the military and it made sense for Jensen to care about it one way or another. The anti-military stance actually made him interesting as he was basically the ideal soldier due to his augs.
Boss battle solution: throw 6 frag mines, it's over in less than 10 seconds. Pretend it didn't happen.

This works for every boss until the last one.

I would have wanted this too, makes experimenting more fun than worrying about keeping track of resources as I usually dislike that, at least if they're scarce. However, I believe it's possible to achieve this by changing a few lines in the ini files and it's possible someone made a easy mod for it or just uploaded a changed ini file for it.

What do you know, there was one: Here is a Full Battery Recharge Fix/Script/Mod/Cheat

You can do that, of course, this will make Jensen and unstoppable force, though. You can pretty much stealth past any challenging in the game with this.

What in the world is 2nd person when it comes to gaming? :-)

My biggest gripe was the greatly amped up rewards for being an absolute pacifist.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it should be a run and gun killing spree, but in the original Deus Ex, you were rewarded fairly evenly for accomplishing different goals and hidden routes. In HR, you get buckets more points for pacifist takedowns than lethal ones.

I didn't like being shoehorned into one particular way of play.

I'm not entirely sure, i heard a while back in some magazine, that second person was over the shoulder or the top of the head, and third person was a little farther back.

I see. I'm so used to games that scroll from first to third that I never realized someone gave the in-between a name!

don't quote me on that, i'm listening to spoon and that always makes me a little bold in my assertions!

1st person is when you see what you're interacting with through your character's own eyes.

2nd person is extremely unusual - you see your character through the eyes of another character who is interacting with you.

3rd person is effectively seeing from the point of view of "someone else" who is not actually part of the scene, like an invisible cameraman who follows you around.

Am I the only one who didn't have a problem with boss fights? O__o' Yes, different options other than fighting/murdering them would be nice, but I didn't dislike'em in anyway.

Things I didn't like (but didn't hurt my enjoyment of the game):
- I could only regenerate one power level by myself. The rest, only with food. I found it silly. Food should just make it instantaneous.
- Take down system: I could understand consuming power to bring the blades out, but to punch people? Maybe a different approach to melee would really make more sense.
- Praxis/augmentations: by the time I finished the game I had all the really useful augmentations, so I see little reason for not allowing me to have the rest too, that is, there should be more praxis/xp avaliable to buy the rest of them.

And that's it. But I really had a blast playing through it. :)

Stealth and combat, which take up most of the game's length, are impossible without the cover system. That's hardly "brief." You are spending a great deal of time in third person. Unless you're wandering around looking for places to hack-farm you are in fact in 3rd person a great deal.

Yeah you can fight against the game and play the whole thing in 1st person, but that's not ideal because, well your fighting against mechanics that are soldered the core game and how it was meant to be played.

I found the game to be pleasantly neutral politically. Very objective and realistic, Deus Ex is the only kind of series of games that's brought me into such a believable future, including Human Revolution even with it's bright orange nonsense and cliche sci fi style.

The anti-military thing however stands out like a sore thumb, and it's clear it was shoehorned in, much like the 3rd person, by somebody completely out of touch with the overall political tone the game takes. Logic begets logic, stupidity begets stupidity. Jensen generally is a very cool and calm person. Like JC, he's no bullshitter, he sees things for how they are. That's why I like that the game calls out the whole environmental debate. I am no scientist, I'm limited in how I can argue the science of anthropogenic climate change, but when I see the bright fake smiles of politicians and their new proposed taxes and "projects" I smell bullshit instantly. I'm glad the game did as much in that category.
As said, stupidity begets stupidity. Jensen is not s stupid character, is a highly logical one. The anti-military sentiment simply does not fit him at all. It doesn't add to his character, it betrays it.

As said, to be against certain military leaders or military organizations is one thing, but to be against a military for being what it is is incredibly stupid. A country without a strong military can't accomplish anything. Jensen isn't a stupid character, so this is why this aspect of his personality betrays him.

However much time it is, it didn't bother me.