Finished the game yesterday, Deus ex diff, non-lethal.
SPOILERS below!
Overall it was an enjoyable experience for me and I consider it a worthy successor to the original.
Worthy mainly because the devs recognized the original´s strengths well and obviously were trying very hard to retain them in DE:HR, in which they succeeded overall. Ability to deal with scenarios in various ways, support for multiple play styles, multiple paths through levels, rewarding exploration and experimentation, in general it´s all there in DE:HR.
Can´t say much about gunplay (though I´d say sound designer(s) did a very good job on weapons), but the basic, minute to minute stealth gameplay felt satisfying (I didn´t use the sticky cover system) and I think AI was good overall.
Social "battles" are a great addition.
Soundtrack is thematically fitting and certainly one of the better ones out there, though probably due to its more ambient-y nature it´s not quite as outstanding as in the first game.
A lot of attention to detail went into the two main hubs and a result are locations with good sense of place/atmosphere, in particular I really like the design of the second one (where also some people actually speak Chinese).
Gameplay contains a lot of detail-y touches as well, some of whose I discovered only quite a bit into the game, like stun guns disabling cameras for some time or enemy bodies shutting down lasers when dragged through them.
Or how about setting a turret to engage hostiles and then taking it to a boss fight?
Also, haven´t got a single crash and the amount of bugs I´ve noticed/experienced was exactly zero. Besides few stutters in hubs here and there it was a remarkably smooth experience when it comes to technical issues.
As usual, I think there´s a variety of shortcomings as well.
Character development and some of the stuff related to it has all kinds of unbalances.
Some augs are nigh useless (hacking analyze add-on, hacking: fortify, most of the stealth enhancer ones, radar upgrade which I actually found to be worse than the default as it rather botches its readability) and some seem to have very limited use (rebreather, jump/land silently).
Also, though I barely tried playing with lethal weapons, aim and recoil augs seem rather diminished by available weapon upgrades and at least on the highest difficulty player isn´t very likely to run´n´gun often anyway.
I think they did a good job with exploration augs like move heavy objects, Icarus landing or punch through walls, as well as with cloaking, disable turrets/robots, double takedown and inventory expansions. Some of these are situational, but usually very handy when the situation arises.
On the other side of the spectrum would be hacking: capture and hacking: stealth because hacking opportunities are waaaay to abundant in this game. The hacking minigame is great, but I was tired playing it over and over about half-way into the game.
Sorta case in its own category is battery system which, considering the relative scarcity of energy boosting items, I´ve found unnecessarily restrictive in the end.
Given some of the other game systems, I understand the rationale behind the implementation, but I still think they should allow players to spend some praxis points on regeneration of at least two more batteries, because as it is, having more than 3 batteries in total is pretty much useless (admittedly having more did come somewhat handy in the last level).
As a side note, though I invested points into CASIE, I´ve found conversations a lot more engaging without the use of pheromones and wouldn´t recommend using them, unless necessary.
When compared to the original, I think there´s too few skills related to weapons and, more importantly, I really miss the either/or aspect in character building present there. Making some augs exclusive with each other would pronounce the choice aspect, could increase the replay value and it could even work as a type of consequence for completing objectives in certain ways.
DE:HR is definitely lighter on RPG elements than the original was in regards to character development.
Not quite sure what to think about the experience system. On one hand it rewards exploration and more considerate general approach, on the other hand I felt like it sorta nudged me into game-y behavior (hacking instead of using a code, checking out vents for bonuses, non-lethal approach). I think I´d prefer experience points being handed only for completed objectives and exploration being rewarding via items, pieces of backstory or Praxis kits. Stuff like ghosting and smooth operator bonuses, as well lethal vs. non-lethal approach might´ve been better to be worked into (or even expanded - like objective not to take down anyone) specific quests like in the Detroit hooker one. I wouldn´t mind a quest where secondary objective would actually be to kill everyone in the way so that players who want to retain their non-lethal integrity couldn´t get it.
Anyway, the differences in exp gains are probably quite miniscule in the current system as most of the rewards do come from completing the objectives, so not that big a deal for me.
Experience points are also way too abundant so (along with the fact there´s a number of useless augs) players´ builds likely end up being very similar in the end, though personally I don´t always find this to be a dramatic problem in games as similar builds in the endgame don´t necessarily mean the characters were developed in the same sequence throughout and partially I feel about DE:HR this way too. The above mentioned either/or element would definitely help here though.
Voice acting I´ve found mostly average, occasionally subpar and Sarif´s "whine-y" mannerisms got annoying after a while.
The exception would be main protagonist whose VA I really liked. Dry and robot-y delivery fits the theme and is well in line with the first game and few of the more emotional moments I actually found rather touching, partially due to the delivery itself, partially due to the contrast it brings into character´s presentation.
Story started well, but it kinda lost its grip about half-way through and became fairly ineffective as a driving force of the progress for me.
The story itself was thematically interesting and has good flow "on paper" I think, I´d blame few presentation aspects for it to not feel very engaging till the end.
First, lack of narrative choices and consequences - putting more decision weight on player´s shoulders would help.
Second, besides the cool dialogue "battles", characters are very limited interaction-wise, feel more like quest kiosks and some of the stuff is sorta left flailing in the wind, like Malik resolution or even Jensen´s personal arc.
The game is sorta front loaded in these two regards and hints at more than it ends up being there.
Third, there´s a lot of e-mails to be read and most of them are boring. Considering how reading most of them is also tied with hacking, I think less might´ve ended up being more in this case.
I also feel the game is too humor-less for its own good, more humor, especially of dry variety would be welcome.
I did like the ending(s) (not so much the level leading to them though).
Boss fights, lol.
I rarely find boss fights to be a big deal in games and I´m probably in the minority liking how sometimes stealth builds get screwed by them.
Taking the player´s control via cutscenes is as annoying as ever, but other than that I´ve always thought playing a stealthy pacifist character shouldn´t mean a game should always cater to such and, after all, even a stealthy pacifists should be prepared for unavoidables, so I can´t say I disliked DE:HR´s boss fights in terms of mechanics. They always seemed too hectic in the beginning, but after a bit of reconnaissance I´ve always found good variety of applicable approaches (the third boss, for example, could be defeated by a single takedown with the right timing). And there´s a certain aug which makes short and straightforward work of all of´em.
They´re still rather arcade-y and the game would be better off without them, but even more of a problem in my book is how meaningless they feel. Antagonists in them have no depth and the outcome is always the same. These fights have very little resonance with the narrative and as such feel tackled on.
At last but not least, and again I´m probably in the minority on this, but I actually think the game is way too long. Basic gameplay-wise, somewhere through the Montreal mission the game depleted most of its level design/combat scenarios tricks and afterwards everything felt just more of the same and formulaic. Changes in the first hub and some other story elements there were pretty cool, the ambush was probably the most gripping combat scenario in the game, Talion A.D. side quest was good. That said, by the second half of Montreal the general feel of tiredness has slowly crept into my playthrough and, the above mentioned bright parts aside, it never let go, quite the opposite when it comes to the last few missions.
I think these things would be less notable in hindsight if the game had delivered an exciting finale, but unfortunately it quite isn´t the case here as the last mission feels rushed and isn´t very good either from story or gameplay points imo.
As I mentioned somewhere above, I like the very end though.
To be fair, the part of why I found the latter parts somewhat tiresome may be ascribed to me playing the game full-time stealthy/non-lethally.
Also, despite all these quibbles, the game does remain fairly consistent throughout and there are no dips in quality comparable to the ones in, say, Bloodlines.
Taking my notes on the story into account, basically I´d probably prefer the game to be about 1/3 shorter in playtime and have a little more reactivity instead.
As usual, negatives took more words than positives, but that´s not how these things are supposed to be weighted
.
The level design and basic/raw gameplay are this game´s main constituents and the game excels in both. Most of the above mentioned shortcomings don´t detract from the overall experience much and in the grand scheme of things all are various shades of minor.
Even though the game eventually wore thin on me, I can easily see myself still being hungry for more in the not-so-far future because games with this kind of gameplay are just so rare and, well, I´ve yet to play the game taking advantage of its
lethal arsenal
.
I don´t think DE:HR surpasses the original, but it´s definitely a game worthy of franchise´s name and as far as 2011 goes I rate it slightly above The Witcher 2.
Also, this video needs to be posted because it´s pretty awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoFe8hRy42o
