Deus Ex Review

No Ma'am, this is Area 51 A

Talk about aging like a fine wine. Deus Ex is quite possibly the most archetypical Immersive Sim one can play, and is a classic for good reason. But what shocked me most was how timeless the entire experience ends up being.

First, to get it out the way, the gameplay is classic immersive sim. Stack boxes, crawl through vents, secrets and items and lockpicks and hacking and clearly tiered skill upgrades all around. If you've played any other immersive sim you know what to expect, partly because a lot of those games themselves took from Deus Ex. (Or from the games Deus Ex itself took from)

It holds up incredibly well, if kind of janky. But the real magic is that the same can be said about basically the entire story. Sure the conspiracy theory stuff is a little on the nose, but discussions of surveillance, censorship, AI language algorithms, and classism hit just as well if not more so in 2024 as they may have back in the day.

I played using the ZeroRando mode of the Deus Ex randomizer. Which adds all of the quality of life and bugfixes of said randomizer without any of the randomization. Some gameplay elements are changed but generally speaking it makes for a smoother experience, if maybe a touch easier. Highly recommend it especially as the devs were very supportive during my streams!

This is basically a short review as it comes down to me saying "everything everyone said about Deus Ex is true." But I still think it's worth saying. Oftentimes coming into these epic classic games I find myself disappointed, or not having the same nostalgia blindness that means I know to avoid the "bad parts." Deus Ex didn't really have that, it was a solid experience and I highly recommend it to fans of any modern immersive sims. Maybe wouldn't recommend it to someone who's never played one before though, not when Prey exists now with a lot more accessibility.

No Ma'am, this is Area 51-A

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