Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Rent it first"

Might lack old school classic Deus Ex 1's abundant, and deep much, much expansive and varied game design ( just like most old school classics are) but this game in its own right, is outstandingly well made solid stealth and cover shooting as in splinter cell, great level design enabling multiple play routes as hitman 4? and great story and quest design/ background story as in the vampire masquerade : bloodline

My 2 gripes on this game is sort of short ( It took roughly 40 hours doing everything I could in 1 playthrough, but kinda lack replayablity a bit, may be they could put more restrictions on upgradable play style (assault, stealth, hack, social ) in 1 playthough thus giving it replayability.

and wish they didn't cut out 3 city hubs (montreal, india, upper henshai) and giving much abundant contents, and I say this as this game's gameplay is really good one. and hopefully they release those in expansion pack with more great side quests.

good :
1. intricate, realistic, philosophical storyline;
No more simplistic clear good vs evil just like real world.
it makes the cyberpunk world of DE with governments, corporations, private organisation's individual interest working with or against each other in very complicated manner.

All these are very believable as there isn't clear friend and foe in real world. Yesterdays' ally becomes today's foe only because of individual interest.
U.S. was major ally of iraq supporting weapon and military service back in iran, iraq war


2. realistic, hard combat;
smooth cover system, realistic weapon recoil, handling
i.e. combat is hard and realistic
Enemies realistically.. catch even the small sound and movement of careless player in the vincinity, thus having slighltly better A.I. than splinter cell which had decent enough A.I. system.


3. Various approaches to the mission
Hacking, stealth, assault, social


4. great level design,
Very hard thing to find in recent games ( i.e. bioware's RPGs )

Bad
1. graphic
Although it utilizes DX11, tesselation, SSAO, DOF...though its environment and some NPCs have low res texture
Though it's very atmospheric, and enough to get immersed, from anyone's point of view, DEHR's graphic just can't simply go head to head with crysis 2 or any games with good graphic engine (i.e. alice madness returns/ batman AA) utilizing the benefit of unreal 3 engine.

2. taking out 3 city hubs and sidequests
I am saying this as quests in this game was really good and took about 40 hours to do everything in game in 1 playthrough and still wish there was more. Hopefully SE releases those as expansion not chopped up DLCs.