This review is a bit overdue for myself as I have played this game many times of the years but I thought now would be a good time to review this.

To start of with I don't mind the directors cut version of the game. Yes the missing link DLC is shoved into the game near the end and feels a bit disjointed, but I quite like the change of pace. You are thrust into a situation where you're back to square one and you need to get to the 'big boss' and move on to the next chapter. Some people did not like that you lost all your augs and praxis kits and yes, it does mess the pace of the story up a bit but for myself I enjoyed that it broke up the game and it allowed me to spend more time playing this amazing game.

Now, on to the main review:

So this game has quite an interesting start. It is a reboot of the classic franchise as the previous game did not live up to the hype of the first so a new studio came in and began work on a prequel/reboot. This game has an entirely different atmosphere and them to the old games. While the first two had nanotech and a dark bluish theme, this game went for a more renaissance theme with gold and as it is set before the first two games has mechanical augmentation. Its focus is still on international conspiracies and has plenty of parts making you question people and their motives, but it has updated visuals and different gameplay design fit for a game of that generation. For myself this game was fantastic. The first time I played this it blew me away. How the characters felt a part of the world and how I felt I was going on a great adventure to find out what the hell is going on. Starting off in Detroit, you work for Saris industries as their head of security and terrorists attack so you go and find out what is happening and then you are seemingly killed, but are saved by augmentations. You start to investigate the attack and why it happened and as you dig deeper you start to uncover more of the plot. You visit Hengsha and Singapore, and Montreal and all these areas look great. As I never played the previous games this was my first experience of the Deus Ex world and it was absolutely amazing. After this I went back and played the previous games to see how they held up.

As this is a review for Human Revolution I won't go into specifics but I absolutely enjoyed the first game and thought the gameplay and story was great whereas I felt the second one fell flat as many others have. After playing the first one I still enjoyed Deus ex: Human Revolution, but realised some of its flaws. For one, there is a lot less weapons and equipment to play with, although to me I think they did this for the sake of tightening up gameplay so it wasn't a big mess. Another thing was the boss fights; you could only kill them, there was no other ways such as kill switches from the first or letting them live, you could only kill them. I will say this did bug me a bit when I first played. As I loved playing stealth I was a bit sad I couldn't defeat them in a pacifist way but got over it after experiencing the rest of the game. The directors cut did improve this a bit by allowing you to kill them without you killing them yourself if that makes sense. You could have turrets kill them for you without you shooting them yourself basically. Another thing was that there was only two hubs which you visited twice with set pieces changed up a bit. While in the first game you had many hubs you only had two in this one. Once again I don't mind that there is only two as I feel that these hubs are more rich in detail and quests that the many hubs of the first game.

Overall although the gameplay of the first Deus ex is probably better than Human Revolution, I enjoyed Human Revolution a bit more than Deus ex. That might be because it was my first experience of the franchise, but I also think it is because I absolutely love the aesthetic. Some people didn't like the gold filter as they thought it looked like urine. I thought it added to the atmosphere but of course it is subjective for everyone. The real meat and potatoes of this game though was the quests. You had the main quest but you could rush through it and miss a lot of the great gameplay, and also some side quest actions can come back later in the game. The hubs held side quests that allowed you to get some extra awards. These didn't add to the story per say, but just padded the game with some extra content for you to enjoy. The main quest for my was very fun and enjoyable to play through, and you also had many options in the quests for example. The story had you follow along a plot of mercenaries and big corporations fighting for control with a threat lurking in the background, and just enticed me the entire way through.

This review is getting quite long so ill summarise in a short paragraph. Although I didn't do a deep dive into the games mechanics and characters, I feel I couldn't do this game justice so I instead described from a surface level to let people who read this discover this game for themselves. For myself this game is an amazing game that deserves to be played by everyone and that it is one of the best games made in a while.

This directors cut does change some stuff not a lot of people like such as adding in the missing link into the story, but they also removed the gold filter which I didn't particularly like so I rate the original 9/10 and directors cut 7/10.