The Doldrums of Deus Ex

I would say that there are really two games in Mankind Divided: A city-sized cyberpunk Skyrim with apartments to break into, e-books to read, and trinkets to collect; and a conspiracy thriller story that's unfortunately and inertly squeezed between the stage-setting of Human Revolution and an inevitable threequel.

The story of DXMD isn't bad, really, but neither is it good. It's mostly insubstantial. If Deus Ex was a series of novels, this game's plot would account for three or four middle chapters of one book. While there's a terrific amount of world-building to serve the exploration and self-discovery elements of the game, in the critical path there just isn't much going on.

It's especially unfortunate that the path through the game's main story occasionally gets in the way of the fun, sandboxy parts -- passing certain points in the game might make an NPC inaccessible, or permanently cancel a sidequest. These "extra" parts of DXMD are far more enriching and surprising than the main quest, so it's a shame when they get hamstrung like this.

The gulf between the main- and side-missions in DXMD builds a sense of "journey more important than destination," and it's true that even in the main story, how you get there is way more interesting than what's there when you get it. Not only because, even more so than DXHR, this version has what seems like a gajillion different ways to complete every objective -- but also because the gameplay, simple as it can sometimes be, is genuinely pretty good. Personally, I didn't get much out of the shooting game, but I had great fun sneaking between cover points, pathfinding through air vents, and stealthily taking out guards one by one.

And I'm not ashamed to admit that I save-scummed the hell out of it, reloading a save when I was discovered or when a hacking terminal defeated me. The irritating hacking-game RNG aside, I extracted the most enjoyment out of this game by perfecting my non-lethal route through the map.

(I even got the Pacifist achievement for not killing anyone. Although there were a few people who I essentially killed by hacking security robots to turn on them; apparently the game didn't count me for those deaths.)

Even though it tells an awkward non-story that barely even cliffhangers for the next game, even though the pacing of story events can fuck up the "fun" parts, and even though it has some frustrating technical quirks like the inventory one I posted previously -- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has a lot of fun in it, if you're into exploring finely-detailed game worlds and scouring over their lore. About 40 hours worth, of that stuff.

Better than: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, because the non-combat path actually works all the way through.
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, simply because Prague (dense as it is) can't match the amount of stuff Bethesda made.
Much as I love the idea of AUGMENTED BANK HEIST: The fact that the "System Rift" DLC resets your hard-specced talents - much like Missing Link, I guess - is an instant turn-off.