Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is not an exciting-sounding sequel. It's one of those video games that feels like an expected followup, and it has probably fallen behind in the industry's "buzz" and "hype" quotients as a result.

Just like the last entry, 2011's DX: Human Revolution, this game puts you in the shoes of the same cybernetically enhanced anti-hero, offers the same "play how you want" system, and even replicates a lot of the last game's powers, controls, and aesthetic. You'd be forgiven for glancing at a snippet of gameplay and wondering which game is which.

Don't be fooled. While DX:MD has its issues with visual polish and hews a little too close to its source material, this is a rare case of a big-budget, super-huge sequel that builds upon its old foundation with deep, high-quality content in seemingly every aspect. Action, stealth, characters, dialogue, plot, and urban exploration come together in a tightly built world, and the results will delight anybody who loves a good first-person adventure game.

Even better, that's only half of what's being offered here. DX:MD ships with an additional mode: the surprisingly meaty "Breach" quest.

Czech yourself before you wreck yourself























Let's start with the core gameplay and our favorite mechanically augmented super-agent, Adam Jensen.

Game Details Developer: Eidos Montreal

Publisher: Square Enix

Platform: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Windows PC (tested), Xbox One

ESRB Rating: M for Mature

Release Date: August 23, 2016

Price: $60 / £40

Links: Steam

Eidos Montreal: Square Enix: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Windows PC (tested), Xbox OneM for MatureAugust 23, 2016$60 / £40

The year is 2029, and Earth's biggest nations are overloaded with people who have installed mechanical enhancements on themselves—new arms, new legs, tweaks to their torsos, that sort of thing. Toward the end of the DX:HR, a switch was flipped by a scientist who'd regretted developing such technology, causing all of the world's "augs" (meaning, people who'd augmented themselves) to go crazy and attack innocent people. Two years later, the world's untouched meatbags ain't takin' too kindly to the world's robo-sapiens. Everyone's worried that such a freak-out could happen again.

But the game takes its time setting this story up. First, it plops players into a tutorial mission in Dubai, in which Jensen takes the lead in an Interpol task-force mission to break up an arms dealer's distribution network. It's a jarring start. We're given no context as to why he joined this squad or how he got to this point from his work as the security head for an augmentation company last time around. It's the kind of opening sequence that could turn off any diehard Deus Ex fan, as it combines zero plot payoff with boring stealth-or-combat path choices.

Thankfully, this sequence ends with a mysterious what-the-heck twist that sets the game into motion—one in which Jensen serves two allegiances. On one hand, we come to learn that he has joined this Interpol task force with a desire to stop violence and figure out whether augmented forces are working to terrorize the world—all while staying in touch with his former employer, David Sarif. On the other, he is also working covertly for The Juggernaut, a collective of underground soldiers and hackers trying to make sense of the Deus Ex world's "Illuminati" of rich and powerful people running most business and political movements. Juggernaut worked to get him the job, but Jensen has reasons to believe in what he does for Interpol.

These allegiances eventually force Jensen to make hard choices, but this isn't a diverging-path kind of game. Jensen sticks to his Interpol work while feeding scoops to his underground comrades. Most of his adventuring and exploration takes place in the large, bustling city of Prague, which serves as the game's primary hub and home for many of its missions. Typically, you'll walk through the city while following one mission, then run into a cop, a citizen, or an event that sparks a possible side quest.

For the most part, this structure—a major hub city connecting many of the game's missions—plays out in very smooth fashion. Missions feed into each other in organic ways, and giant structures and sneak-around sequences have been built into zones that might otherwise look pedestrian. Eidos Montreal really rewards players who treat this game as a "play how you want" adventure, as well. Want to sloppily pick up and drop boxes in order to reach a high-up point at the top of a building? There's probably a secret vent entrance up there. Does bribing a crooked cop seem like too easy a solution to a blocked path? There's a whole quest on the other side of town that'll take care of that problem in very satisfying fashion. Oh, and that huge data-security center just sitting in the middle of town? You can wait for a quest to find a reason to sneak through and collect its biggest secrets, or you can just beef up your guns and your tech and go crazy in there whenever you want.

Jensen returns with pretty much every power boost he had last time—really, the "tech-tree" menu will bring out a lot of deja vu—so you're still able to give yourself boosts, like landing from great heights, increasing your health, or equipping a scanner you can use to see things through walls like baddies and interactive elements. Each of these has to be toggled with experience points, and you start out with nearly a dozen to pick from. It's not maxed out, but it's not starting from zero, either.

The big difference in DX:MD is the addition of some jacked-up powers that Jensen learns were somehow hidden in him all along. Whilst figuring out how the heck someone stealth-installed that tech into his body, he learns to take advantage of its juice in the meantime... at a cost. If you turn on any of the experimental bonuses—like the ability to turn electric elements off from a distance or shoot friggin' lasers from your hands—you'll have to permanently deactivate some other element of your suit. Whatever you deactivate will truly never come back, forcing a killer tradeoff that fuels the "oh, gosh, what am I going to upgrade" anxiety that people simultaneously love and hate about Deus Ex.

Movement, combat, activating powers, and the game's other active systems work mostly like last time. You're always keeping tabs on whether opposing forces, like crooked cops or angry bodyguards, have noticed you in a given sequence, and you can apply a mix of crawl-walking, hidden paths, and limited-use augmented powers to remain hidden. Your best powers drain your "energy" bar, which will always auto-refill to a small amount—enough that you don't have to constantly use items to keep it juiced, but not enough that you can burn through a ton of your energy whenever you please. I liked the balance this power-management system struck, and I am happy to report you no longer have to chow down on candy bars and other items to keep your stamina high enough (like you obnoxiously had to do in DX:HR).