Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Review

After my Human Revolution review, it's time to take a close look at the most recent title to the Deus Ex franchise, Mankind Divided. Mankind Divided came with promises to bring solutions to everything we complained about Human Revolution. While some of my criticisms were surely addressed such as finally being able to pass boss battles in a full pacifist way, some others were even worse than Human Revolution such as the AI.

Overall Mankind Divided was a pretty forgettable mediocre stealth game whose reputation was even worsened by Square Enix's attitude and Breach mode I will expand upon towards the end of my post.

What I liked:

Limited number of different story arcs: If you played Human Revolution you'll know that the campaign is quite linear and the different endings are literally you pushing 4 different buttons at the end of the game no matter how you played before. Mankind Divided gives you different endings based on your choices and your gameplay. Which main quest you did (and thus got locked out another one) can make a difference. What you did in mission 2 can affect something in mission 7 and so on. Your choices can even affect whether the next area will have an alarm or not.

Full pacifist option: If you are a pacifist, there are no boss battles. Well, there are but not the boss battles we got used to in other games. Most are through heated debates, you picking the right dialogues at the right time through CASIE, computer assisted social intelligence enhancer, augmentation (or use a guide...)

Remote hacking: Oh how much I loved remote hacking. I picked this up towards the end of the campaign and I felt like an idiot for delaying it for so long. I got stuck behind a running fan and the button to deactivate it was on the other side, no problem just hack the fan to make it stop rotating for 10 seconds and enter... Of course it can be used to hack all sorts of things from cameras to drones but sadly it doesn't work on laptops or locked doors. I'm actually glad it doesn't, otherwise it'd have been broken :P

Creative ways to approach missions: Yes Human Revolution also had this, yes many other stealth games also have this but Mankind Divided has definitely increased the ways even more. For a stealthy approach, depending on your augmentation there can be 5-6 different ways or even more to progress to your objective.

Setting: You can realise from the title of the game that there is extreme segregation between augmented and non-augmented people. This is reflected really well in Prague. There are 2 different security checks for metro stations. Metros are separated too, if you take the metro that is reserved for non-augmented people you will have to go through a security check and hear a mouthful from the police about how you should stick to your own. Travelling between metro stations brings up a loading screen that is like a cutscene. If you enter a train that is for non-augmented people you'll see them looking at you and shaking their heads whereas if you enter your own reserved train you'll see augmented people.

What I didn't like:

AI is still stupid: I enter a security room, remote hack the button to activate blinders on windows to freely move inside the room without being seen, the guard who directly looks at the window doesn't bat an eye. When patrolling enemies get coser they tend to have little chats. When you take one of them out; the one who is still patrolling talks to himself and doesn't get alarmed. In a heavily secured area, after his patrol a guard mumbles to himself something like "all security is still active" even when you actually deactivated all cameras and lasers (within the guard's vision).

Crashes during cutscenes: In my first playthrough I got 3 crashes during cutscenes. There is a known game breaking crash during a metro cutscene. Fortunately this didn't happen to me, my crashes weren't as persistent as people on Steam says. But they are there.

Glitches: These usually happen if you use steam overlay a lot or go back to windows to check on something while the game is running. Jensen can get stuck in sprint mode. For example when I used Steam overlay while I was in a heavily guarded area, I was crouching. After closing the overlay to keep playing, as soon as I pressed W I started sprinting and thus alarmed everyone in the room. I pressed C to crouch again and as soon as I press W, I sprinted. Opening Steam overlay again or reloading a save fixes it but it's still annoying.

Prague, Prague, and again... Prague: Yep, throughout the entire game you are stuck in Prague. The game starts in Dubai but once you're in Prague you're there for good. Don't expect to change cities every 3-4 missions like it was in Human Revolution.

Endless loading: I assume you will be doing all side missions once you get the game, so prepare for tons of loading screens. Prague has 4 locations you need to use the metro to travel to. Every time you use the metro you will have to wait for loading screen. There will be lots of going back and forth.

Fps drops after travelling on subway: This didn't always happen to me but when it did it was almost unplayable for about 3-4 minutes. After loading scene ends and Jensen leaves the metro, fps may drop to 1-2... I generally restarted the game at this point to speed it up. I am not sure if the fps drops are due to me going to windows a lot (to check a guide for tablet collector achievement) or the game itself but still, it's worth mentioning.

Removed missions: Square Enix's greed is unending. Some missions in base game have been removed just to be released as DLC content.

Breach Mode

Breach mode is the arcade+shooter+stealth mode of Mankind Divided. But this definition is just sugercoating it. Essentially Breach mode is Square Enix's shameless attempt at trying to make people give more money to them.

Breach mode starts off fairly simple. You need to hack enough data and once you do go back to where you started. Once you finish the objective countdown starts and you have to return to the beginning location before timer ends. First you face normal enemies who can easily be avoided and then some cameras and turrets or drones that can easily be sneaked by. Then you start having them everywhere in upgraded versions that stealth stops becoming an option. Then there are the boss battles too.

This is when Square Enix hits you. After certain progression, you will unlock loot boxes that will give you some weapons. Obviously this is dependent on your luck. If you don't have a decent weapon by the time things get rough, either pack up or pay up! You also need credits to be able to buy ammo. Credits are more easily earned after every mission but let's say that you really got stuck in some mission and you failed a lot. Once you run out of ammo and if you don't have enough credits you will have to pay up again!

Like all of this is not bad enough, this game was made free to play on Steam as a standalone game and it's still a part of Mankind Divided! This mode is taking up a lot of data on your hard disk and also let's not forget poor achievement hunter losers like me who have to live with an incomplete game due to how ridiculous this mode and its achievements are.

Despite now being a standalone game, Breach still has to ruin Mankind Divided even more because Square Enix doesn't care about the problems that Mankind Divided has and Eidos Montreal is pressed to release constant updates and fixes to Breach mode instead of solving the problems Mankind Divided itself has. So everytime we see an update for Mankind Divided we are filled with hope but when we look at patch notes it's all about new Breach content and its additional achievements. Add them to standalone game and leave Mankind Divided alone!

Long story short, despite my criticisms in my Human Revolution review, it is by far the more superior game compared to Mankind Divided.