Deus Ex™ GOTY Edition

PLEASE GIVE THIS OLD GAME A CHANCE

There is nothing that can be said about this masterpiece thats hasn't been already told or so I thought because every playthrough you will find something new. The music, the atmosphere, the dialogue, the politics and the philosophy behind this game is unparalleled in the games yet to come (apart from SMAC which is on equal footing, heh). For linux (+ lutris) you will have to thinker with the resolution by editing the xy lines in the DeusEx.ini file since it cant go past the 700x700 something.

From a story standpoint it's an awesome tale of deception, turncoats and cyberpunk dystopia. The gameplay makes every point you invest in make a difference, with only 2 skill that aren't useful(swimming and environment are dump stats). For those who say the shooting is bad, you're forgetting it's an immersive sim. If you don't invest in your weapon skill then you're not gonna have much fun. That being said the AI isn't the greatest. Enemies forget about you in seconds a la an Elder Scrolls game. It's also pretty clunky, which was the style at the time. Despite the flaws, I wholeheartedly reccomend this game. Buy it at full price even. There's a reason it's held in high regard.

For context: I played DX and DX2 for the first time in 2024, so nostalgia wasn't a factor for me. Didn’t expect the same production values or level of refinement from HR or MD, but all core mechanics were already in place and the lineage clear to see. GMDX did smooth out some of the rougher edges and made it a supremely playable experience even today, though granted HR and MD generally do everything just a little bit better (as they should as AAA releases). Most levels were very large with few loading screens in between to interrupt the action (unlike DX2), with multiple ways to accomplish one’s objectives through stealth, combat or both. I really did enjoy the large degree of player freedom, but the game certainly didn’t do any handholding! It was up to me to figure out how to solve any given objective and manage my resources very thoughtfully as they’re very scarce in GMDX. Almost softlocked myself on multiple occasions because of that, but discovering a way to progress regardless felt very rewarding. Navigating numerous environmental hazards or around them added to the feeling of tension and danger in face of overwhelming enemy opposition. No minimap either. While I was free to pick whichever perks or augmentations I wanted, it appeared to be a good idea to specialize in one or two areas due to the increased difficulty overall in GMDX and limited number of skill points. Guess it also made more sense from a narrative point of view. While I could question some of the story points as being a little over the top (HR and MD were more subtle and believable in their representation of conspiracies), it didn’t detract from my experience and was immersed from start to finish. Voice acting wasn’t all that great, but dialogue was delivered in a much more natural fashion than DX2. Sour points: the poor gunplay, lack of enemy variety and almost-instakill bullshit like plasma weapons or alien death rays. Otherwise a fantastic old school RPG experience worth your time.

I love the feel and atmosphere of the game, it hits all the marks on those repsects. One of those games you play with the lights off, cup of coffee, and blanket. HOWEVER, leaving this here for those that might struggle with running this game. Make sure to install both revision files. When you do go to whatever folder you saved game files to, go to Deus Ex GOTY>Revision>System>Revision.exe. The base game insta crashes with no error code and after messing with it seems to be tied to sound related hardware and fullscreen mode (probably cause most peeps have modern pc). So if you open the .exe in the goty system folder is gonna do this. Giving it 4 stars instead of 5 because the game has 0 functionality without the revision files and it should just be baked into the game being sold here. I guarantee if you got any refunds its because people probably just downloaded the base game and it crashed.