Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

WARNING: Some minor spoilers DX:HR was good: solid story, emotionally attractive characters, replayable mechanics and the spirit of the original DX. Mankind Divided, unfortunately, falls short on lots of things: - Balance. Game is very easy even on the hardest level (get Icarus, Gas & Electrical protections to avoid accidental death). Closer to the end I had no idea how to spend acquired praxis kits. Remote hacking kills any difficulty of stealth. New Game Plus is a joke. - Size. DX:HR had two big locations. DX:MD has only one - Prague. While beautifully drawn, it is mostly empty. There are only 13 side quests for the whole game, and almost no side interactions outside of it. - Story. Much weaker than original. Lots of things either unclear or simply illogical. Maybe it was a setup for the next game, but it could've been done better. Also, the rat in the F29 is obvious at first encounter. - NPC. Most of the old characters are gone. New characters are washy and flat. I didn't get emotionally attached to any of them. Funny how what is remain of the old ones is still better. - Dialogs. That was a weak part in HR, but here they are even worse. There are 3 or 4 places in the whole game where your choice matters. All other interactions are straightforward and chosen options don't change anything. Also, you can go through the game without killing anyone, but it would never appear in the dialogs, and one of the NPC's would even ask you not to kill any more people. - Interface. Just auful. Animations that can't be skipped, limited keyboard support, huge icons but tiny action menu items, and so on. - And finally - technical. DX12 just doesn't work, stick to DX11. Takedown of two NPC's doesn't work if one of them sit. Bodies stuck in textures. Prague district, smaller than Novigrad in Witcher 3, isn't loaded as a whole. You must use metro to travel between two of its parts. DX:MD has beautiful graphics and joy of stealth, but that isn't enough to make it a suitable sequel.

The game has promise, I could play through the tutorial section but when I reached the open area Prague chapter, the game crashed over and over. I crashed a couple of times during the turorial but I could reboot and continue. Once I reached Prague, it keeps crashing on loading, as soon as I turn the screen with the mouse. I've tried multiple fixes I've found from others in forums, ie the page file settings, DX12/DX11, etc, but none work for me personally. I'm happy for you who can play this game using these fixes, but for me neither works and I'm a bit pissed off the game ships with this issue even after being ~5+ years old at the time of me writing this review. I gave it 2 stars because the little I saw seemed so promising, but it's unplayable. I've asked for a refund, it's like buying a car that just won't drive, but let's see. Anyways, I hope you have more luck than me but don't be surprised if you encounter the same error. Read about the crashed BEFORE buying and decide whether or not you want to take the risk for yourself. Good luck.

+ graphic +sounds +side quests -characters and story (characters are just sloppy cliches and story is one big plothole without any explanations where needed, over exaggerated gestures during dialogues don't help) -length (criminally short for AAA title, cut short without proper ending) -stealth (sorry to all those who praise it, but most of the stealth in the game is just ventilation crawling...) -optimization (dx 12 is not working properly, crashes quite often) It is pretty clear, that the game needed more time in the oven and even if finished I think the story, the characters and stealth mechanics would leave something to be desired (outdated in 2020),

Apparently buying DLCs is useless, if they do not work. They used to work some time in past, but no longer do. With or without galaxy install with galaxy or offline. No fix. DLcs are NOT playable with or without galaxy client in 2022 March.

No matter how good a game is, it's all for nothing if it can't work. I tried everything and found that there are plenty of other people who have experienced this. This game is very prone to crashing to the desktop. It's not known what the cause is, it just seems to happen whenever it wants. I really wanted to play this game but with the constant CTD (crash to desktop) I just couldn't play it. Utterly broken.