[Gaming] Poe Reviews Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Mankind Divided is the much awaited sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the rebooted franchise of the greatest game ever made, Deus Ex. And for all accounts it's pretty good, so if you liked Human Revolution, you'll probably like this.


But I won't be playing it. And since I haven't played the game and am now doing a review of it, I'm pretty sure I now qualify as a professional game reviewer.


I won't be playing it because of the egregious amount of microtransactions available in a single player game. The game tries to tempt you into paying real money to get things in game such as extra credits, upgrade kits, health packs and crafting materials. And while I've had people tell me that none of these purchases are required, it strikes me as a huge conflict of interest in game design, where a developer might be tempted to be a little stingy with health packs in hopes of getting you to drop some cash to get through a challenging part.

What's worse, if you preordered the game (which you should never do) to get the preorder bonus weapons, credits and upgrades, they are utilized through the microtransaction system and are SINGLE USE ONLY. So fuck you if you want to play the game a second time with your preorder bonuses.


This is the sort of practice I find incredibly distasteful, and has turned me off of a game I was otherwise excited for. SquareEnix even went so far as to hide the existence of this from reviewers, with the market removed and microtransactions mentioned no where in the review build that was sent out to reviewers.
 
Well as someone who HAS dumped about 30+ hours into it, the people you talked to were absolutely correct.

Not only did I not realize that these "single player mincrotransactions" were a thing until I read your post, I can assure you I did not need them, and I played on the highest difficulty level available when you play the first time (Give me Deus Ex). I have completed all side missions and I'm on the last main story mission.

I'm sitting on 30+ stim packs (health regen), 15+ biocells (craftable with easily found materials littered everywhere) and have so many augs at this point I sat on 5 praxis points for a while because I didn't really know what else I wanted.

I played a stealth/non-lethal playstyle and have had exactly 0 issues with items, credits, aug points, ammo, or weapon availability.

Also health, much like your bio enegery, regens over time when not in combat/in use and t here are aug upgrades to make it regen even faster/have a larger pool much like the first game.
 
Are the bosses fun? Like in Human Revolution the boss fights were kinda meh, and I hear they corrected that in the directors cut but I haven't had a chance to play that one yet. Like I heard you could beat bosses through more than just shootin' them in the directors cut and I'd hope that things like that would become the norm now.
 
Are the bosses fun? Like in Human Revolution the boss fights were kinda meh, and I hear they corrected that in the directors cut but I haven't had a chance to play that one yet. Like I heard you could beat bosses through more than just shootin' them in the directors cut and I'd hope that things like that would become the norm now.
There aren't really any "bosses". Boss encounters seem to be in the form of "conversation fights" using the CAISE system (assuming you have the social aug, which, why on earth would you not get that the first chance you get?").

No, I haven't encountered any actual boss "fights".
 

Dave

Staff member
Last time using stealth was great until you got to the first boss who basically nullified everything about your build and was nearly impossible to defeat. That was fun.
 
Last time using stealth was great until you got to the first boss who basically nullified everything about your build and was nearly impossible to defeat. That was fun.
That's because the publisher (square) didn't think there were enough big spectacle boss fights in the game, and so hired a completely separate studio to make some and plug them into the game. So if they feel disjointed and out of place, it's because they are.
 
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