Deus Ex: Invisible War
Playtime: 17.9 Hours
Finished this game on the Steam Deck, playing on normal difficulty and getting JC's ending, as if I would ever even consider any of the others. Played as female Denton because that was the default in the character creator, and I couldn't change it for some reason - I think that changes a few minor events in the game. Ended up speccing a little bit into everything, but for the most part I used melee and heavy weapons. Also tried to do all the sidequests in each area before continuing, so I've probably missed almost nothing of note in this game. There's no real NG+ and I have no motivation to try for any of the other endings, so for all intents and purposes, this game is done.
Also, some notes on performance: I have never been able to get this work on a Windows PC - I think I've tried it on 3 different builds now, and it has always consistently crashed in the first area. Even on Steam Deck, it still took some time and effort to get it running properly, and the performance still isn't perfect - with some occasional frame drops. One major concern is that I encountered a bug in a couple of places where there was some horrible screeching/hissing sound out of the speakers at max volume, regardless of the Deck's hardware volume setting. This was only fixed each time by closing and restarting the game. I don't know if this is a bug with the Deck or the game, but it hasn't happened with anything else that I've played on it.
Lastly, a note about the classification of this game. I have some serious reservations considering this an immersive sim due to the extremely limited scale of self-determination in playstyle and character build, in favor of a more streamlined shooter experience. However, since the other Deus Ex games fit well into the category (and since DXIW does make at least a very bare attempt) I'm putting it in the category anyway to retain consistency for when I add those entries later.
Overall, I think this is a solid game but a bad entry into the Deus Ex series. I had a lot of fun, even if there were a ton of shortcomings; it didn't really feel like a proper Deus Ex game with lots of augmentations, and it's hard to actively use or care about them when it's so clunky to handle with console controls (and the Steam Deck already has significantly better controls than an actual console controller).
Weapons were fun; I feel like I got some great use out of a large variety of weapons - the Dragon's Tooth, Toxin Blade, Baton, Boltcaster, Mag Rail, Sniper, and Rocket Launcher all had their uses in pretty much each level, and I never felt like there was a one-size-fits-all weapon. In a way, it's hard to overstate the feeling that it was completely worth having a large arsenal at hand at all times, both for combat and for utility purposes. I'm not quite sure how to feel about universal ammo on the other hand - I felt like it makes it way too easy to just snipe or mag rail everything, or worse - spam the rocket launcher everywhere.
On augmentations again - having only 5 slots with 3 options each is kind of weird. Even stranger is that the game throws so many aug canisters at you that it feels like it expects you to be switching out your augs all the time - but it's really easy to cement in one playstyle (because active augs are really unwieldy, and E cells are actually pretty tough to find lategame). A ton of them also never use energy, so they feel more like skills and less like actual augs a la DX1/3. A number of slots also have augs that I feel like are pretty much lock-ins: hacking, strength enhancement, even ES discharge (for alarm beams). The only true choices were silent/speed legs, and regen/vision enhance - but between those, vision enhancement was clearly better since it allowed for mag rail cheese on the armored templars.
Enemies were generally dumb as a rock. They kept getting stuck on geometry, which made the game really easy, especially when spamming the rocket launcher or mag rail. Melee was also very effective until mid-late game, where it suddenly became useless with the exploding templars and the farting Illuminati commandoes. The static charge augment (or whatever it was called) pretty much rendered any security barrier and a lot of cameras/bots useless against Denton.
The world design had really cool ideas - the concept of upper/lower Seattle was really cool, and the Egyptian Arcology was a great idea, although you can't really see it from out in the Medina, even though there is an elevator straight up to it... Germany was kind of boring though, and Antarctica was somewhat hit-or-miss. Ending on Liberty Island was fairly nostalgic, though there were significant level design changes and scenery changes (entire level encased in ice) so it didn't hit quite as hard as it could've. At the end of the day, however, I thought the level design was quite nice - only after console limitations are taken into account. Levels and areas are way too small to feel real, compared to the original DX - but there were still a lot of interesting paths and methods of reaching and achieving goals, which I commend. As a result, going through the levels and exploring doesn't feel linear or boring, but after one playthrough of the game I pretty much know exactly where everything is and wouldn't be interested in treading those same grounds again.
Character and story-wise, the game was quite a mess. I don't understand why the game gives you the option of joining the Templars right after you spend like 3-4 sublevels killing nothing but Templars; where is the motivation for that? The Omar/Renegade ending is also interesting, but you only see the Omar a few times in the game, and always only in the context of traders/shops, which is quite disappointing - they don't seem to have much of an ideological platform. Trying to incorporate all of the endings of DX1 really didn't work - they could have instead had JC choose Helios, with the Illuminati and Templar factions taking over the Illuminati and Dark Age endings respectively, furthering the ideologies of the original while presenting DXIW's own ideas. The Order/WTO war was also quite stupid, with it being an extremely hamfisted attempt at showing that a greater power was playing both sides against each other. The Pequod vs. Queequeg coffee war had the same impact as a sidequest chain.
Some closing comments: if this wasn't a DX game, I probably wouldn't have played it. Ironically enough though, I think this game would have been received much better if it was not a Deus Ex title (and reworked the story to avoid the jank they pushed), maybe even a 'classic' console title. As it stands, I had a surprisingly great experience in my playthrough, but due to the lack of proper augmentation diversity, railroaded strategies for killing lategame enemies (mag rail/rockets -> armored templar, sniper -> commando), and small levels that aren't really worth exploring twice, there is effectively no chance that I play this game again.
