I've had a good amount of fun playing through Deus Ex twice now. While it is a fun game, it's lacking in multiple critical areas. I'm constantly feeling crunched on Praxis for a decent chunk of the game, with way too few being spread over multiple necessary augmentations. Should I move heavier things or jump higher? Should I improve the level of hacking I can do, or make it harder to detect? The beginning of the game really pulls me in too many directions at once. The city is also somewhat annoying to navigate with how linear its paths are. I would expect a big city like this to have many different alleys and divergent paths rather than 3 or 4 routes with a small handful of shortcuts. Those shortcuts are opened up by improving your arm augmentations and so it's an extremely handy augment, but as soon as those obstacles are removed there isn't much of a reason to have that augment anymore, making me feel like I wasted those Praxis points to some degree. When prowling through an enemy-infested building, there isn't a way to distract them or throw them off your scent. There's an augment for becoming invisible for a short period, but unless you have that all you can do is wait for the NPC to follow their programmed path, which leads to very slow gameplay if you're going for stealth. The game rewards you for being stealthy over running in guns blazing, and Deus Ex comes alive when you're sneaking through a high security area and only a gunshot away from dying. I really wish they'd implemented some kind of distraction mechanic. In that same vein, why are there boss fights where your only option is to go head on guns blazing? This is a game that highly rewards stealthy and non-lethal gameplay. It's very jarring. There is quite a lot to love about this game, though I'm sure you can find any number of other people praising it so just read those. I have a few small issues along with those larger ones, but overall I think it's a fun experience.
