I've played perhaps 15-20 hours of it so far? Not sure, but I'm on the part where you (and not to go into too many spoilers or anything since this is for those that hadn't finished the game yet) have to go into Jim Miller's computer after I did the final Dvali mission in the Red Light District. First off, I just wanted to say, I just beat Deus Ex: The Fall last month, and though I remember it clearly, I didn't connect the name to the characters, because there's a pilot in it that helps you near the end, and that's a prominent character in this, which is Alex Vega. I also didn't connect Janus to the entity you talk to in The Fall either. Anyways, I'm really liking the game so far. It's what I expected, but really what I wanted out of it. It's more Human Revolution, but better in ways. The first ten or so hours were a little slow to me in Prague, because I am one to explore everything possible before going into the main mission, and walking back and forth to see if I did everything became somewhat tiresome as it doesn't really consist with that much action, be it shooting dudes or sneaking past.

I'm silently knocking everyone out here, and only killed one guy with heavy armor. By and large, the quests are a lot of fun. While I like Prague, Detroit, Hengsha and all the places you go to as the bigger hub-like areas, it's the more story-driven areas that I love and find this game and HR to have as strengths. They feature the best music in the game, and the funnest gameplay moments as well as, at least to me, the best settings that I find most intriguing. Also, I'm not sure if it was the intention, but in the first Deus Ex game, the UNATCO theme was really good, and in this, I feel like they did their own with Task Force 29, which is somewhat similar, and to me, similarly great (also, the group is led by the same person!) Yeah, I'm really enjoying it a lot. I want to play it soon. It's probably my favorite game of the year already. You can definitely look at it and think, okay, this is a new generation of console, and it's been five years since the last, the game should be much more improved over the last, but the game is good enough to me that it doesn't really bother me.

I could say that I should be disappointed considering it's not more than what I expected in most respects, but right now, I'm just not.

I have finished it, but I can give my thoughts without spoiling anything.

As a HUGE fan of the last game (as in, it's probably one of my favorite games of the last generation), I was supremely disappointed in this game. For a game five years in the making, I'm shocked at how similar and unimproved it is. Prague, while an interestingly unique setting for a video game, feels lifeless when compared to my memories of Detroit and Hengsha. I also don't like the way it's segmented with a lengthy load. Most of the new augments are not very interesting or useful (at least for my playstyle). The main story, particularly the ending, is remarkably bad. Also, none of the new supporting cast stuck out positively to me in any way.

On the plus side, the new side missions are really good and some of the clunkier UI and gameplay systems have been cleaned nicely. Sadly, nearly everything else feels either equal to or lesser in quality when compared to Human Revolution, not something you want to hear with a sequel that had so much time to iterate. I still think it's a game I enjoyed overall, but my high expectations and deep love/familiarity with the previous game really soured this "new" experience for me.

Its a bummer that its not a big step forward for the franchise and just more of the same but slightly better. That said, Im still loving it. It feels like a much more polished but still janky Human Revolution.

I've only done the tutorial mission so far and it feels a bit janky doing stealth, especially in the last part I couldn't figure out what to do for the life of me. I hope time limits aren't a thing in this game, cause they fucking suck especially for stealth.

There are a couple of time sensitive situations, but none of them lead to game over screens. The sandstorm in the tutorial mission being a good example of this.
My only issues in the game have been the button mapping. Like the space-bar being used to leave the loading screen and also running to cover.
So every time I load a save where I'm in cover, Jensen will immediately run out of cover as soon as the game loads.

I only started it last night so I'm still very early, but so far it's a major disappointment. Besides looking better, I can't point to a single system or aspect of the presentation that's dramatically better than Human Revolution. It feels more like a standalone expansion than a proper sequel.

@oursin_360: If you're talking about the helicopter part then yeah, i had no clue what to do to complete the side task. I eventually just dashed straight to the objective, which seemed to do the trick. But apart from that, time limits aren't ever a factor (at least that i've encountered).

I feel like i'm close to finishing the game - micro game length spoiler: I've just left prague for the 3rd time Location Spoiler: London, and I've been having a blast. Though i would agree that the game could and should have been more polished given the time it took (I have the vision cone upgrade for the minimap. Is there any way to tell if a camera is actually on the same level as me? I've been seing vision cones from cameras two floors above me, which has tripped me up multiple times), all i really wanted out of the new Deus Ex is more Deus Ex, which this is.

Well i'm 32 hours in and only now got to the first mission in the bombing investigation. Took all that time to ransack the entire Prague hub from top to bottom, every hidden path, up top apartments, sewers, the bank, roofs, stations, everything. I am now sitting on 80k credits and over 90k xp. It's a completionist/exploratory wet dream, so yeah loving it.

Now it's great whenever I get a side mission, it's like - go steal some shit from the bank, alright - waltzes in, takes the lift, picks up the documents from a completely neutralized top floor with 0 security. :P

@wemibelec90: Yeah, HR is one of my favorite games of last-gen as well. I played through it a few times, and bought the Director's Cut on the Wii U and Steam. I played it for a while last month. The game is similar, but better in some instances. I don't yet know how I'll feel about it overall since I hadn't finished it, but it's pretty much what I wanted out of it. The load times are exclusive to the train; and they don't feel that long to me. You compare it to HR, and HR was load every time you go into specific buildings, like Sarif, or VersaLife. If Mankind Divided was the same, it'd have you load every time you enter the bank and what have you. As for the city being livelier, I don't know. There seems to be more going on, and people walking around more in Prague than in Detroit or Hengsha. Those had rather static A.I. That said, the color had a more distinctive hue, which could give that feeling of it being more impressive. The new augs minus the hack and dash aren't really necessary for me, so I haven't put anything into them. I have pretty much put everything into what I want, so now it's just to finish it up. As for side characters, I am actually to a liking to them right off the bat, similar to Malik in the last game, and I like that Manderly is in this. It helps that the voice work is better too. It's always cool to see the characters from the past games being shown in the new. As for the story, I don't know really, I feel like I've hardly touched it, but I'm intrigued right now, and want to see where it goes.

Edit - I said VersaLife, but I'm thinking of the Limb Clinic.

@oursin_360: Only one real time part, and I thought it was fine, in an interesting side mission. All you do is hack a few things, open a door and turn a timer off. Time isn't a huge thing from what I've played. In the final part of the tutorial, Jensen started choking or something, so I booked it to the helicopter and finished it. That's probably what you're supposed to do, but for a few seconds when the cutscene happened, I wasn't sure if there was another way to go about it. Playing more, the stealth is good. The only thing I didn't like in the training part, was that I felt exposed in some cover, and I was still getting used to the controls: not used to L1 as getting in cover(I set the controls to standard). It feels natural now. The cover system is hardly unique, nor is it better than Splinter Cell: Conviction's, which it's most similar to, but it's works well. It feels good to tranq a guy, then use the line that shows up to push forth up on a guy that noticed his friend get shot, to take him out with a takedown before he goes on alert. To me, it makes me feel more like Jensen, or a stealthy person than in HR.

@tennmuerti: I'm finding that there's more money than needed in this. In HR, through both exploring, and going to shops, you find upgrades and praxis kits; that's not really the case in this as much. I find myself selling a lot, and buying little. Plus, some upgrades that you can buy, I either already have for the weapon, or you can't insert it. There has only been one time that I could buy a praxis. As for exploring, yeah, I explored as much as I could with the upgrades I had at the time. I didn't venture into areas that had gas then, and I didn't have the upgrade to smash the wall open, otherwise I tried doing everything I could. So far, there's not much reason to do it for items, but I don't want to miss any side missions, which is why I explore first and foremost. Also, there are parts in the main missions, the more linear ones if you will, where you can go about getting through the stage in more than one way, I'll venture back through a bunch of guys, taking them down, ending back to the first part just so I don't miss anything.

@conmulligan: Honestly, for me, all I really would have liked to put it that step above, where I'd feel it was major, is just the animations, from facial to body. That was an issue in the last game, and it still is here. Having more realistic NPC's would have impressed me, and made not just the conversation moments slightly better, but just walking around the hub areas more immersive. Something this game does, that happened in HR as well to some extent, is that bodies can get stuck on objects, and that's somewhat annoying, because it'll make it harder to move them, and sometimes impossible, where it may even kill them. One time I took a guy down, and started dragging him out of sight, and what happened was that when Jensen let him go due to the environment not letting him cross it, he flew across the room, and when I checked him out, he was dead so I had to reload.

It's been a ton of fun so far, except for Breach, which is stupid but you can thankfully ignore that.

I think they made the combat a little too easy compared to HR, and I miss the color filter, but overall it's been a blast. I've been doing my damn best to steal all the alcohol and give Jensen cyber-cirrhosis

That's weird, I don't get that (playing on PS4). The cameras work the same way as dudes for me - if the icon is hollow, it means it's on a different floor.

Yep, if the vision cone is a solid, bright white, rather than hollow, or gray-ish, it means they're on the same floor.

I'm gonna sound weird...

I wish the game was way more restrictive than it is.

If we're playing in a world where we are playing a character whose people he's a part of and claims he wants to save (or not, honestly the storytelling here is a gigantic mess) are segregated and forced into impoverished ghettos, then at least make it harder than it is to traverse the world without outside repercussion. I shouldn't easily jump on buildings with police looking at me and doing nothing about it. Yeah, making games more restrictive like that would be harder to make with probably less critical acclaim, but at least have the story make sense, especially if you're using real world problems as a big basis of selling point. The story here is a garbled conspiracy mess with nothing to say. Worse yet is that all the characters seem to lack humanity, they're all cardboard cutouts and exposition dumps, especially Jensen.

It's a fun, buggy game that feels too safe for its own good. I'm enjoying the game despite of itself. It's too easy, the physics bugs are laughably bad, and the protagonist is gruff and annoying, but it's a fun sandbox stealth game. It's just I feel it shouldn't have been given the subject matter.

@shivermetimbers: Yeah, that's one of those things though. It's not a big issue to me personally. It's kind of like when you're in the Task Force HQ, and you can hack every single computer right in front of the person that uses it. MacCready--someone that isn't so sure about Jensen--was walking back to his computer, looking straight at me as I hacked his computer, and read his emails. He did nothing, he just sat down and started working once I got up. There are only a few instances that they take it seriously, but most of the time it's awkwardly lax when it should always realistically be an issue. It's that they didn't want to go that far with the A.I. because they wanted to keep it fun, but to me, that doesn't really break the experience overall in other places. The story is really related to what Deus Ex has always been about, which is conspiracy, Illuminati stuff. It's interesting in the way of government control, if you look at it in that way, the issues between aug and human is just a part of the world they're in, and you're experiencing: the events of that time period; it's really the backdrop. It's not really garbled whatsoever if you're paying attention.

Take the Illuminati aspect out, and you have the typical story about government control without societal knowledge, but from the get-go (the first Deus Ex), it's done well and has me interested, and I especially love seeing old characters in this. I like Adam Jensen, and I think I like him a bit more in this, that said, that is Elias Toufexis' real voice, but I agree that he could use a little more range. It's possible that it was intentional though. I think whether Jensen is for or against the Augs is a struggle for him as he 'didn't ask' to be augmented, but it also comes down to player choice. Also, playing on PS4, there's not really any bugs. There have been a couple. One of which is clipping of the A.I. when they're dead, or two instances when an enemy went through a wall, or near an elevator they're weren't meant to me. Also, in the beginning, you walk into a building and there's a telescope, I looked into it, and it was impossible to exit it, so I had to reload the save. Otherwise it's totally fine.

@ntm: Here's the thing I find the most odd about all this (and why I find it garbled, but you could substitute a word like impenetrable), is that we're meant to believe that the rich people who bought those aug implants were forced into poverty by the illuminati for reasons following the "aug incident" in which augs were forced to kill people. There are things here that we have to suspend our disbelief for, that's fine I guess, but I just find it tone deaf and emotionless. There are themes of control, influence, corporate conspiracy, propaganda, and the like with the illuminati on top of the hierarchy. Themes and depth do not a story make. That's the world building part of a story, not the interaction part. I wouldn't mind suspending my disbelief for the holes if the game gave me a reason to care to beyond the fact that it's interesting for interesting's sake.

@shivermetimbers:I think you're misunderstanding something, most people with augs were never rich. They're people who got augs by their employer for work purposes or lost limbs in accidents. The actual rich people with augs have enough influence to keep their comfy life. Unless they get in the way of Illuminati scheming.

huh, i guess i just wasnt paying close enough attention then. Just beat the game. lol @ the mid-credits reveal. Now onto another 5+ years of waiting for the next of these great games!

It's pretty heavy-handed with the racism themes and not subtle in the slightest. I expect better writing from a Deus Ex game, however I think they have nailed the cyberpunk theme. Adam Jensen as a character is probably the worst, and the raspy batman voice isn't helping. I'm about halfway through by my estimate and I feel like the conspiracy/illuminati aspects are a little light. By this time in the previous games we were knee-deep into Majestic 12 and Illuminati conspiracy theories but so far in this game I've only encountered that about 3 times despite every major character in the game mentioning the Illuminati like it's an open secret.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying the game, but at this point I kind of just want the Jensen stuff to be over so we can start with the the oroigns of the Denton era. I feel like they are trying to stretch things out over 2-4 games that probably should have been handled within 1.

I wonder if their ultimate goal is to remake the original Deus Ex? Like, keep the story mostly the same but with some extra stuff to justify the Jensen storylines while adding some new stuff? They could probably get away with an entire reimagining of the first game at this point, I mean nobody cares about Invisible War and the ending to the franchise, so why not do it over?

Sorry for the rant. I've been thinking about this way too much the last few days.

@darkwingduck: I definitely want to play that mid-credits reveal game, by comparison the actual story in the game felt like a stretched out side-quest.

See, that was never really established in these games. In HR, I remember industries fighting over monopolization of augments with Sarif being pretty much the top dog. I remember the game stating that it was a luxury reserved with those with wealth and that corporate greed was the main driving force. I won't deny that I'm probably not getting the whole picture, but if we were to dissect this further, there would probably be a few holes, which like I said wouldn't be a big deal for me if the game wasn't so tone deaf in character development.

I had a blast. How much fun you'll have is based on how much you want to play more Human Revolution, as it really is just more of that; it feels the same, the majority of your augments are the same, levels are designed the same, etc. I think your playstyle will determine what changes you notice; they took some stealth/non-lethal player complaints to heart and fixed the structure of the game to accommodate that, possibly at the expense of people who play it more as a traditional shooter (specifically, the removal/negation of almost all bosses). I did a non-lethal run the first time, and am trying a full murder-spree for my second, and both seem really enjoyable (with the caveat that just shooting dudes seems WAY easier).

The story felt a bit rushed and overall kind of meh, with some voice actors doing a better job than others, but on the whole I had a lot of fun just playing the damn thing, which is more than I can say for some other games this year.

@ntm: Admittedly, the load times might have something to do with the poor PC performance (which is where I played it) and/or my lack of SSD; either way, they sometimes took several minutes. In regards to Prague, I guess I didn't exactly mean that it wasn't as lively. It just wasn't as memorable to me whatsoever. I can fondly remember tons of locations from Human Revolution, but I can only really remember your agency base from this game despite having just played it. This is likely due to the bigger size of Prague, where the locations are spread out a bit more; also, I'm more familiar with the original, which probably helps. On this note, however, there are certainly fewer one-off locations in this game AND they aren't as memorable. Finally, the lack of interesting new augs meant I built my character in pretty much the exact same way, which made the contrived reset super annoying as I could have just had all those things from the beginning.

On the whole, I still just think Mankind Divided feels thin in a lot of ways, even thinner than its predecessor at times. For a sequel after a five year gap, this still strikes me as a bit disappointing.

I'm still making the mistake of standing up when I want to crouch. But other than that bit of control jank, it's alright. I enjoyed Human Revolution for how it played and wasn't really into it for the story, which is okay but nothing really spectacular. Mankind Divided seems like it's more of the same which is fine by me. The main story is alright so far, but I'm really enjoying the stories happening in the side missions.

I understand why people are disappointed that the game is very similar to HR but so far (im about 25 hours in) I think it's better than HR in every way expect I wish it had more than 1 hub.

@wemibelec90: It's probably because there weren't that many stores and what have you in Hengsha and Detroit, and though they were somewhat big areas, they weren't as jam packed with stuff. Most of the places in HR were major places you go to for either main or side missions, in Prague, a lot of the places don't have much meaning aside from exploring them. And yeah, you just upgrade Jensen the same. I also find that I've already upgraded him to the extent I need to do everything I want in the game, when in HR, I remember having to think a bit more about it. I like Prague well enough, same as I did Hengsha and Detroit, but exploring them isn't really my favorite parts of the game, especially when it comes to backtracking through areas to do side missions.

@mirado: Yeah, pretty much. It's just about how much you want to play another Human Revolution with a few differences here and there, and depending on your opinion, some better and some worse parts to it. That said, the game played on console feels a bit better, at least to me, because with the controller, with HR, it was a toggle R3 to aim down sights. I don't really mind that, but I do much prefer LT/L2 hold. It controls like a better game here, even if only slightly. It's really just a lot of very small additions, like now being able to move cover to cover the way you do.

@stonyman65: Again, 'raspy' Batman voice is the real voice of the voice actor. Doesn't mean it's better for it, but still. I think they wanted his voice because it's similar to JC Denton's to some extent. Also, I care about Invisible War, I really liked it, and to me, it's a dour ending. It's kind of sad to see where it goes, but I was just thinking that they could add in a game where Jensen is still alive and old by the time Deus Ex occurs, and some stuff is added in that the player never knew as it's from his perspective.

It's slightly-improved Human Revolution and I'm totally okay with that. I sneak around everywhere, hacking stuff, shooting fools in the head with the stun gun and finding random vents. The story has been something of a non-starter for me, but I don't think any Deus Ex game has ever actually had a good story. I'm very interested in seeing how this will measure up to Dishonored 2 when that comes out.

@pompouspizza: yea, so far my biggest complaint is that it's mostly in one area. To me a big part of Deus EX has always been about globetrotting

As someone who thought Deus Ex was the best game ever for years on end, this game just didn't do anything for me. It's just super bland. The core gameplay is still "find the grate", the hacking mini-game is just a dice roll (hell, the remote mini-game is better, and that's still pretty bad), the upgrade system (both weapons and augs) is very insignificant, the inventory is well... inventory tetris.... In many ways it feels like it's 16 years since the original came out and they haven't figured out any way to improve on anything.

If anything it feels like what they've done is just used the shell of Deus Ex and then tried to make it stand out through its story. But the writing isn't especially great, and the overall theme is really heavy-handed. Also, Jensen just sucks. He looks like an asshole (hell, even compared to the other npcs in the game he looks like "cool guy from the future") and he has no interesting or fun personality. I guess you could argue that he's a blank slate to stand in for the player, but in a game where you're faced with making dialogue choices having all of them being different versions of "the straight man" ends up being boring. Most of your choices end up being "how do you want this story to continue?", not "how do you want to roleplay your Jensen?".

I guess in many ways I feel the similarly to how a lot of people think this seems more like an expansion. And if I remember correctly I was already disappointed in Human Revolution being too much of a re-make.

Mankind Divided is a very good game but I can't help feel disappointed its barley a step up from Human Revolution. MD feels very claustrophobic within a few hours you get access to 2/3 Prague which is most of the game and after a dozen hours I've opened all the doors and hacked all the computers, after that it felt like I was speed running the game all the side quests were part done or finished before I even started.

I spent 4 hours playing it and didn't even start the main mission yet.

I am disappointed that it's running kinda so-so considering it doesn't look spectacular apart from a few nice effects.

Apart from that it's very much one of those "one more thing.." kinda games that drag the play sessions out for hours. I was going back and forth between pad and keyboard for a while but finally settled on the keyboard and mouse combo since hacking and other things just feel faster.

So, I just beat it (actually, I just saw the mid-credits cutscene as I type). Yeah, the story and the fact you don't go to as many interesting places was disappointing. The game doesn't make as huge an impression as HR did, but I still thought it was great. The story had some cool moments, and I liked the new characters, and liked that older characters were brought back, but it, like the story, doesn't go far enough, where I would have liked to see more of it. I felt the story went on too slowly, as if the purpose was to keep some for a sequel, and maybe another: the first act of a trilogy. I checked, and I did all the side missions, and I thought they were a bit better than what HR had, though it seemed like there were less of them. Aside from controls, tweaks/additions to the mechanics here and there, and the way you can go about the environments which was a little more vertical, felt darn near exactly like HR. I didn't get into much shooting action, as I played all stealthy, so I don't know how much better the shooting is. I mainly played stealthily because I had the feeling it'd hinder some story moment, which I didn't think about when I went through HR, and that's probably not the case here either. While I am not necessarily disappointed in it overall, I will be disappointed if it takes another five years for a sequel. The game was great, though yeah, disappointing in some key aspects. Cool setting, and fine story, just not enough of it. Everything else was great I think; equal to or better than HR. I played Human Revolution through a few times, but I don't know if I'll do that with this game unfortunately.

I'm really enjoying everything about it. It's absolutely my kind of game.

That said, I'm 30 hours in so from what I've heard, I must be nearing the end?

If so, I really hope that there's more to come in the DLC, or that this game is the middle part of a trilogy and we can expect another game in this story arc?

Combat feels real gross to me, so rather than roll with it when I fuck up like in most stealth games, I've felt more inclined to reload the last save and try again. I was attempting to do a nonlethal run, but that's fucked now. I knocked some guy out in a mission while streaming, and when I rewatched the footage I noticed that somehow that killed him. Earlier today it happened again, it seems to be connected with ragdolling, sometimes the NPCs will just fly into the air after a takedown, and the impact seems to kill them.

I just finished the ARC mission and returned to the main hub, so I might not be in far enough to render a judgment on the story and its characters, but so far I just find the world and everyone in it to be much less interesting than in Human Revolution. Debating with characters is still a lot of fun, though.

I've had my share of technical issues too. HUD elements getting fucked up, tutorial messages sticking around on the screen even after loading into new areas (the latest patch seems to have fixed this), there was a short period where the game would straight up not launch, load times are hot garbage, and my framerate is really inconsistent despite being on a 980 with the right drivers and MSAA off. It's not Arkham Knight levels of bad, not by a long shot, but it's still disappointing to see how poor the PC port of this game is.

10/10, game of the year.

I'm having fun, kind of. There are a ton of things about this game that I don't like, but the world is still cool as hell, the dialogue and in-world text is engaging to me, and I like Jensen. I dislike most of how the gameplay feels, though. The stealth feels rough and shooting seems barely serviceable. More than that, though, I'm having a lot of trouble looking passed all the bobblehead animations in this game; a lot of the character animations are just plain bad.

I'm enjoying it, right now I'm in the Aug ghetto. As long as I remember to F, un-F, I can skittle right along. Like @rvone says, the world is cool, which is what drew me into HR also. I'm sort of sorry I killed that one bad guy right in the beginning, because I do not hold to Pacifism as an achievement. Still to this point except once, it has been non-lethal, which is the approach that goes back to Deus Ex with me.

Everything seems to flow nicely, I like the character as I play him, and as I mentioned in another post, there is a little humor here and there, with say so far the "Machine god" and a mission of sorts right out of the fallout games. And I am not even thinking of the giant cockroaches. I have discovered it's important to listen to people. I know from that I even missed another opportunity in another side mission (got lazy.)

Yes, this game seems incremental, but it is connected. I do expect there will be a third game.....

So far i can't seem to get into it, the gameplay feels old (not in a good way), the dialog isn't all that great so far, and the weird faces and out of sync lips don't help much. Took me an hour just now to do the first yellow mission in the city (Put the bug in the computer) I don't have any hacking skills so i had to run around until i found a level 1 computer with the door code. So far nothing is grabbing me like the first game, none of the gameplay feels any smoother than that and it's been 5 years now. Also feels kinda crazy that i'm hacking computers in front of dudes and nobody is seeing me jump through vents unless they are highlighted red lol. Jensen's complete lack of interest kinda makes things feel less interesting too, he's kinda like alright i guess i'll do this thing cause i got these robot arms. I may just do a ultra violent combat run instead of my typical no kill stealth stuff.