Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Pro tip: turn off MSAA. It makes the game run terribly.

I'll just play through the last mission on YouTube then...

Very fun stealth game with a big world to explore. I think really the main issue with it is that the story sucks. It's kind of important for this sort of game because you are exploring the world in a deep way, picking up documents, that sort of thing. I'd say the issues with the story are the following: - A really boring, stale main character - The story relies on phone entries of the series which most players probably have not played, and doesn't bother to recap any of this information ("Who is the Juggernaut Collective?" should be like... something explained in the first 5 minutes but the game never really tells you even though you work with them throughout the whole game). - Some themes that I think people might find unappealing or "problematic" where being augmented is compared to racism, but that's such an emotional, political hotbed, that the game really didn't do the best job of it. All that said, if you like stealth games, games like Dishonored, Thief, Prey, you'll almost certainly like this game. Recommend for sure.

Gameplay: Gameplay-wise there's so many options for you to apporach the levels, but it basically restricts you to one avenue and punishes you if you try anything other than total stealth. There's so many cool combat mechanics but you rarely get a chance to use them for more than 3 seconds because you're as fragile as glass. You also have to put a ton of praxis points into hacking or else you're going to have a really bad time. I completed the game far too quickly because at the beginning of each level there's usually a vent hidden behind a box that takes you directly to where you need to go and bypasses everything else. Performance: It's awful, even years after release if you have anything less than a NASA computer you're going to get about 40 frames for the entire game with huge frame drops anytime somebody fires a gun. And I hope you like loading screens because these ones are exruciatingly long. Many people say Deus Ex Invisible war was bad at this but I think this is actually worse because these take much longer, enjoy waiting upwards of 2 minutes each time you die or have to run around in the boring hub world. Story: This game suffers from Millenial writing syndrome and is a perfect example of how that destroys a game. The characters can't go more than 5 seconds without swearing or using some pretentious socialist/anarchist buzzwords. The writers couldn't write anything more than shallow allegories about modern identity issues that don't even make sense in the context of the game's universe. It sincerely wants you to beleive that not liking robot arms is comparable to racism. The plot is a giant nothingburger and lacks any depth or interesting moral questions to think about, It's by far the weakest story in the series. (Yes, even Invisible War)

Getting it to run is one hassle but another is it running without crashing. An ancient game complaining about memory resources... Please!