Deus Ex: Invisible War is the greatest game in the entire series.
Let me go into a bit of history here.
I'd heard about Deus Ex back in the early 2000's when it was first released. Never gave it the time of day because back then I was a console gamer and didn't own a powerful PC.
Then, around December-January of last year, I decided to buy Deus Ex: GOTY off Steam. I loved it. It was 20 hours of some of the best gameplay I'd ever experienced. But there were a few problems.
The first Deus Ex separated the RPG elements into two distinct categories: Skills, which you acquired from gaining experience and completing objectives, and Augmentations, which you acquired from augmentation canisters. A third RPG element was introduced called upgrade canisters. These would allow you to upgrade one of your augmentations to the next level.
Augmentations were a big selling point for the first Deus Ex, but as I played it, I found that they were largely useless and didn't matter. This was really disappointing for me. It didn't matter what augmentations you had equipped because there was always a way to do what you wanted to do. I just couldn't help but feel that the augmentations were an unnecessary addition to the game, and were even poorly implemented. Almost all augmentations in Deus Ex: GOTY were active, when I felt many of them, such as "Run Silent" should have been passive.
The real meat of Deus Ex GOTY's RPG elements were in its skill system, a system that I felt was more a formality than anything else.
How did you play Deus Ex: GOTY? Did you specialize in a weapon type of your choice, of which there were only 4, get a point in Computers and Electronics, and then max Lockpicking? So did I.
As far as RPG elements went, Deus Ex: GOTY felt as watered down as they come. At best, helpful in select situations, and at worst, totally unnecessary.
This isn't to say Deus Ex: GOTY was a bad game. It's one of my favorite games of all time. However, what skills and augmentations you chose didn't have a significant impact on how you played the game, unless you went out of your way to play differently, which usually involved you in some way handicapping yourself. The RPG elements just were not that deep, and even somewhat of a hindrance at times.
Enter Deus Ex: Invisible War. This game is not without its technical flaws, but in terms of its gameplay, story and RPG elements, it truly shines in my view.
In Deus Ex: IW, the skill system was done away with altogether. Now you won't specialize in Low Tech weaponry only to find out later you don't need it when you get a particularly powerful sword.
Nope. Skills and augmentations have been combined into "biomods", which is just another name for augmentations. Now the player has to choose: Do you want to be a supreme hacker, or do you want to have a cloaking ability? You can't have both.
And it's in this area, ladies and gents, that Deus Ex: Invisible War shines. You actually have to devise a build, and your build will have a significant impact on how you play through the game. Want to hack? You can't cloak then. Want to regenerate health? Then you have to choose between the Regeneration biomod, which locks out all eye-related biomods, or Health Leech Drone, which locks out all other movement-related biomods.
Biomods can only be upgraded to level 3, and biomod canisters are abundant in this game, meaning you can even switch your build later on if you don't like the one you're currently using! I loved that. Some people say it's "dumbed down", but I believe this simplified system creates more freedom to roleplay, and has a greater impact on how you play the game, therefore, it has more depth to me.
Another improvement over GOTY is that many of IW's biomods are passive. You no longer need to activate your Strength augmentation. It's always on, and it doesn't consume any bioelectric energy (Deus Ex speak for "MP").
Not only that, but unlike in GOTY, you can play a true super villain in this game. So many choices you make in Invisible War are morally gray, and even though Alex D sounds like your run-of-the-mill good guy, but I never felt that his "nice guy" demeanor got in the way of my villainy. Maybe that's just me, though.
Deus Ex: IW is a true roleplaying game through and through, if you allow yourself to get into that headspace. To give you an example, I remember on my first playthrough, I didn't know who I wanted to ally with: The WTO or the Order Church. I got picked on by some thugs, ran away, and one of the Order Church's followers came to my aid with her bolt gun - after I had just told her off! It was then that I decided to see what the Church had to say.
It was fun for me, but be warned - to enjoy IW to the fullest, you *must* roleplay in it.
There is so much I can say about this game that was great, but I think I will stop here. A fantastic, wonderful, misunderstood game with a very strange HUD that can be difficult on the eyes even at the best of times.
But you can, however, reconfigure the HUD and turn it off almost completely in the options menu.
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