Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition

our world is like deus ex but without cool ass agents with augmentations and trenchcoats

Day of Sex. Pretty cool until hong kong when I got softlocked because I made a story-essential NPC angry by walking into the wrong room and I lost all of my campaign progress. Definitely a sign of stable game design.

I already have hundreds of hours on the retail version of this game when it came out on pc a long time ago and it is to this day my favorite out of all the deus ex.

This is more of a neutral review overall, but considering my feelings while playing it, I guess leaning more toward negative.

This game has a lot going for it, but I can't really recommend it for modern systems. I think I just got into it too late. The game does have a good story and characters with a few player choices. The inventory is a bit annoying but manageable and the variety of ways you can complete levels is really great since it advocates a really customiseable playstyle. The system of either hacking into systems or exploration being rewarded by finding notes and passwords to manually enter for systems/ATMs was really fun and I also really liked the ability to add manual notes on images and in the log which I find so useful and have hardly ever seen.

The problem is, the game is just too dark even at max brightness. The screenshots on the store page look much better than the actual game on my PC. I think the resources of the old engine don't scale well with modern displays. It was too hard on my eyes and gave me a headache when playing from straining. There are in game ways like light augments to see better, but even those in some areas don't help much and using them constantly drains the battery too much so it either runs out or you can't use any other augments. Especially in the first half of the game where repair bots seem scarce or not present.

If you are still interested in trying it, it might be a much more enjoyable experience if the brightness could somehow be improved. There are apparently some mods for that but I found out about this too late, so maybe the idea helps someone else sufffering through the darkness

Normal disclaimer about old rpgs: Save often and in different slots. This is a game with bugs that block progressing in the game, break your legs and get stuck and so on. Some of the progress blocking bugs you can get around with cheats.

Given its age and tendency for first person games to not age well, it's still surprisingly good. Sure, the combat is janky, but that's like saying water is wet, all first person RPGs have terrible clunky combat. Augmentations are fun and enable new venues for solving issues, just jump your puzzles away. Environments are varied, interesting and not too big, though I swear these felt humongous as a child. Story is where it's at. Biggest gripe I have with the story is the pacing, they could have maybe taken a bit more time for the player to feel like a part of the first organization. The veil is lifted pretty much during the first mission making the whole switch rather comical.

Please ignore time played. I have completed this multiple times, trying out everything I could think of in it. It's just that none of them were via Steam. It did not take much manual fixing to get it running smoothly
Pros: genuinely incredible how much freedom you have here(some areas you can access only if you can do certain things, a lot of places throughout this there are multiple ways to get there, each of them requiring a different skill and how much time you spend swimming, making your way through gas, etc depends a lot on skills, items and the like), stealth(with line of sight, and also audio, and you can throw objects to make distractions. You can kill, knockout sometimes simply avoid enemies, and you'll want to keep an eye out for patrolling ones), combat(after a while this can be played somewhat like a tactical FPS), and a lot of the time you can even choose who, when, and where to fight when it comes to specific characters(and there are a lot of really engaging ones). This encourages multiple playthroughs, and you can actually get different endings, and it is genuinely up to the player to decide which one they think is the good ending if there even is one. The augmentation system is incredible; it means that over the course of this, aided by the skills, you are always getting access to new abilities, and each time you get a new augmentation you have to make a permanent choice between two uses of it, that greatly affect how you play, for example there's one that can make you run faster or silently, another that can make you invisible to humans or machines, and so on. Compelling exploration of philosophy. The graphics are good to great. They took great efforts to make this very easy for players to tailor it to our individual approach; as an example, there are weapon slots at the bottom and you can put anything you want in there, not only weapons, also healing items and the like. Solid enemy variety and many of them require different tactics. The music and writing create an amazing atmosphere, very oppressive, dystopian, cyberpunk near future, a world of a lot of moral grays that have you questioning what action to take to improve it. It doesn't throw you in the deep end, you are given guidance early on, and at the start it is nowhere near as complex as it gets later. Inventory management strikes a balance between being rewarding and not needing constant micromanagement(and this is very much one of those where you can choose to carry a ton of tiny things that take up one slot each, or a few really big ones that take up multiple and may even have an awkward shape). Definitely the best of the first three of this series(I haven't played the 4th as I type this), if you liked one or both of the others but thought they were too streamlined, this is for you. Modifying weapons with silencers and laser sights pays off. All of the four throwables... explosive, gas, EMP and "scramble"(trick a robot to switch what side it's fighting for, in either direction)... can be attached to any surface and thus behave as a proximity mine. The AI is good, and you will have to out-think and -maneuver your opponents(with that said, it is inferior to that of Half-Life; when you face groups, they don't employ tactics at as high quality as that).
Cons: while the following is true of every single deep RPG I have ever played, yes, this too has choices that you may end up regretting and it does not allow you to respec, so you may choose for example an augmentation that on paper sounds phenomenal and then find that it is not as useful as you hoped, especially if you refuse to save scum and test, look it up or ask someone who's already played it, and I agree that those should not be required. There are times where the wrong dialog option will cause you to fail, which by itself I don't think is necessarily bad, however, some of them will have your character fall to the ground dead for some reason, which is just kind of awkward - I don't know if they maybe couldn't have you reach a fail state without triggering that. There is a non zero number of conversation cutscenes in this, at least two, where if you simply go through the conversation in the normal way, by the very end of it your character will have been spotted by an enemy and you will be shot when the cutscene ends; a fix I've found for this is to simply save so frequently that when you find yourself in one of those conversations, you can load a save that you made before you started the conversation, go through it normally once, and then simply skip through it so that the enemy has not gone all the way through its patrol route and spotted you by the end; obviously this can break immersion, something the game otherwise works very hard to achieve. Just a tiny bit more streamlining would have been appreciated because there definitely are a lot of different keyboard shortcuts to keep track of.
It's also worth keeping in mind that while it's not really fair to judge this harshly on account of it, since it was quite impressive for the time, there are things that we have grown accustomed to since it that are not present here, such as shooting from cover and focus aim.
Strongly recommended
I bought this on sale so that I could leave this review in the hopes that it would help people decide whether or not they want this game

Easily one of the best games I have ever played.
A stellar narrative paired with incredibly engaging game play.
This game is a piece of artistry that the developers and writers clearly really wanted to make.
Download kentie's launcher and enjoy this classic you won't regret it.

One of the best games ever made. it is 25 years old now so a graphics mod might be of use but the game is still amazing.

My lungs suddenly collapsed when I was sneaking in the port of the statue of liberty because I was smoking every tobacco laced cigarette in the vicinity

Download kentie's launcher and change the renderer to OpenGL. It'll fix the game being too dark.

First playthrough review time.

This game gives you a lot of freedom in how you play. You can make your own choices, and these choices affect how the game goes. You can pick your path and see how your actions change things in a way that offers a meaningful and rewarding experience.

As you play, you’ll face different situations where you can decide how to handle them. Whether it's using tools, finding solutions, or utilizing your skills, you can choose the best approach for you. You can try different strategies and figure out how to overcome challenges. I also noticed that your choices influence the ending, which was one of the game’s best features for its time. There's a lot to explore, and it also has plenty of side quests to discover. I didn’t take many screenshots because F12 is used to toggle the light in the game, and it's also the screenshot key for Steam, and I couldn’t find a way to change the in-game keybinding.

Overall, the game is engaging and provides a rewarding experience. With many upgrades, weapons, tools, and challenges, it keeps you interested the whole time. The ability to make decisions and see the results makes the game engaging and interesting. If you like games where you can create your path, this one will grab your attention.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144316078

"YESTERDAY WE OBEYED KINGS AND BENT OUR NECKS BEFORE EMPERORS. BUT TODAY WE KNEEL ONLY TO TRUTH..."

A game that ends with phrases like these deserves a congratulations. Deus Ex's story is filled with philosophy and really challenges the player and makes them think about not only the story itself, but the parallelisms it has with reality.

Truly one of the best games of all time.

"God was a dream of good goverment".

For the love of the Almighty GEP Gun, just buy it already, and if you already bought it before, buy it again and spread it around like the Gospel. Truly, I say to you, it is the New Testament of our time.

Deus Ex review

Now this is a game of games. An action rpg-with deep choices that affect the story and also the type of character you play as. I know some people are put off by the older graphics which is a shame. This game offers a fun adventure and varying objectives in missions that you can beat in a plenty of ways, depending on how you've built your character.

There are some down-sides too... age of the graphics is starting to show, some of the voice acting is merely passable (though I never found it to be an issue myself), stealth mechanics just don't work... but despite all of that this is an adventure every gamer should embark on at least once.

This game is a classic for a reason! While the gameplay and graphics might be a bit dated, with the controls being a bit inefficient by today's standards, the gameplay is still fun, with many options on how you can approach missions and combat sequences, fun weapons to use, good inventory management, and a story and atmosphere that remains excellent to this day!

The only true problem I encountered was that this version of the game may not be as hardware compatible as expected with 2020s computers; at least for me, the game ran twice as fast as expected, so I had to do minor tweaks to the engine to make it work. Thankfully, this is easy to fix (or find on the web), but they should consider an updated re-release. I also encountered odd texture glitches, but these aren't that noticeable... again, updated re-release would help...

Otherwise, EASY recommend

A good clunky and janky game. It's one the first game that turned me into a PC gamer and also one of the best game of all time. The amount of freedom, content, and choice you make is astounding. It's a shame it has a weak ending, not surprising for PC game in this era to have a strong story/gameplay and a weak ending.

Here's some of the greatest line in this game:
- Oh my God! J.C! A bomb!
- A bomb?

- What a shame...
- He was a good man.... *lip smacked* What a rotten way to die

A little overrated, but it does deserve all the credit for inventing the shooter rpg genre / 'immersive sims'.
I'm definitely gonna play it again with improvement mods.

this was initially a negative review, in which i was not happy with how hard it is to get into the game 25 years later...

but i have finally got into it, i took the time to understand how deus ex works, and how it worked back then. and oh boy what a great game. this game is huge, you can do so much stuff, you can sneak your way through the game by so many different ways! although it's separated by missions/chapters, you are still so free.

the story is amazing too, very good plot that unfolds beautifully.

so i 100% recommend you deus ex, if you're not afraid of older graphics and mechanics. the only piece of advice i give you is to take the time to understand the gameplay. this is not a classic shooter, it has its own clanky mechanics, but once you get used to them, it's very good.

disclaimer though : i feel the necessity to say that i've played with the revision mod, which makes the whole game look and feel better, it gives a different, better feeling, especially to people like me who have played human revolution and mankind divided before GOTY. but both versions are good.

Deus EX is the only game where I can chug 10 malt liquors, 10 orange sodas, 10 packs of future Cheetos, smoke 10 packs of cigarettes, and run into an active hostage situation. My name is Pussyslayer6900, hold on, I've got to drop something. Heh heh.

One of the best games of all time (obviously), works fantastic on the steam deck. The Lay D Denton project is an amazing fan mod that completely changes the main game too!

accidentally walked into the women's bathroom and got chastised for it 10/10 am embarassed

Deus Ex was a game far ahead of its time upon release. Fully voiced cast of characters, multiple avenues to complete objectives, and they created a world where there is value in exploration. Whether it be obtaining useful weapons and powerups or maybe your exploration leads you to a datapad with a door/safe code for some sweet loot. The game can be played multiple times, each time you find something new or do something different which triggers a new element within the story or gameplay that may even alter the ending of the game.
No fluff, no bs, this game ticks all the boxes on what makes a good RPG. Graphics are outdated but that doesnt take away from the games excellent story and engaging gameplay.
10/10 first installment, and by far my favorite amongst the series.

Speak about "not aging well".
A great game in its' time but, feels more like a walking simulator nowadays.

Bought the game after watching the hbomb video on Human Revolution. I'm not an fps person at all but this game is still incredibly fun. It's a great combo of action and strategy. It's a bit overwhelming to get used to the controls but once you get it down, it's amazing.

My only gripe is that I wish I didn't have to download a separate mod to make the game playable. Without Kentie's mod, the game is unbelievably dark and near impossible to play. However, that's a small bump to an otherwise incredibly enjoyable and immersive game.

I've been playing this since it came out in 2000. I know it says I only played 13 minutes here on Steam, but I usually play it straight vanilla from my original GOTY CD-ROM that I bought new at release, so the play time on here really doesn't do it justice. Its one of the few games that just simply never gets old. You tend to get bored by a lot of modern titles these days. You know, play it once or twice, then never play it again. Deus Ex is not one of those. It's got the modding factor, the development kit where you can create your own games for it, new skins, weapons, levels, convos, ect. I've even been active in the modding community for it as well. I was lead tester and a voice actor for 7 characters for Terminus Machina from Silver Spook Games which is one of the full conversions for this game, as well as one of the beta testers for Bjork who developed Deus Ex: Revision back in 2013. So its given me opportunities in that regard also. Its got the nostalgia factor as well. You can play it over and over again and it just brings a smile to your face. You can constantly upscale and redo the graphics, port them to newer versions of Unreal. It even runs flawlessly on Linux like I mainly use now. Or you can run it on OG Windows 98 like I also do, or any other version of Windows and it never gives any errors. Its absolutely Timeless...

A classic you can't go wrong with. Still an amazing game.
Great to see, that this is easy playable with steam.

"The year is 2052 and the world is a dangerous and chaotic place. Terrorists operate openly - killing thousands; drugs, disease and pollution kill even more. The world's economies are close to collapse and the gap between the insanely wealthy and the desperately poor grows ever wider."

We are well on track then.

Very dated, but also very innovative and VERY cheap on sale. Story is prescient but also poorly written, it's fun though in a campy way. If the world seems interesting to you and you can tolerate old PC FPS games and RPGs, would recommend

The game tricks you into making you think that it's actually a working non buggy and functional game, but to experience that you actually need to figure out how the hell the Controlls work. What 99% of buttons even do or mean and how the hell to remap every single one of the buttons on your Keyboard to then test em out over hours to try to getting the game even remotely to work. It's a timeless masterpiece.

Unbelievable good .. especially for a game that was released 25 years ago ...

I'm thoroughly enjoying my play-through of this game. It's my first time playing any Deus Ex game, after being recommended it by my brother. It has such a nice charm to it, and a fun story. Plenty of great dialogue and Easter eggs. For a 25 year old game, it has held up very well. I recommend downloading the community mod that allows you to play with a modern resolution. My only knock would be that every environment is incredibly dark (even with max brightness), which can be hard for my eyes.

I got the game on spring sale for 89 cents, and it was worth every penny. At that price, you don't have much to lose trying it out. Would recommend to anyone looking for a retro, fun, story-driven experience.

You've got ten seconds to download it before I add you to the list of NSF casualties

Absolutely phenomenal game!

Other than an OK gun combat I have little to no complaints. The handcrafted levels are definitely the best part about the game, there is so much to explore, loot, interact with and discover. The variety of ways you can deal with the mission objectives combined with level design and exploration really feels like you are forging your own path.

The melee, non lethal and explosives combat is really good and fun to play with. I didn't bother with guns most of the time because melee always get the job done easily and only later in the game when you have put points and gotten the upgrades are the guns kinda good.

The story itself is nothing groundbreaking but the way it's presented through good voice acting, dialogues, atmosphere, sound design, world building, art style and the genuine sense of adventure and mystery makes it really captivating and fun experience.

Overall really impressed by this game. The game respects and rewards the time and attention that you give. Its not perfect and some aspects are definitely dated (like the enemy ai, gun combat and stereotypical voice acting for non american characters lmao) but its still a remarkable game overall even today (coming from a new player). The game can feel sprawling and intimidating at times but its that much more fun when you finally explore and conquer the level.

9.0/10
best level: Hong Kong

absolutely peak for it's time. the gameplay is definitely dated and it's very easy to get lost and confused, but it makes up for it with the amazing story and atmosphere. the voice acting is really good too, but some of the accents are borderline racist, generally just a problem with side NPC's though, everyone else is great, especially my boy JC. i personally never used a guide and was able to finish it with minimal issues and had most of my tools/ammo capped out (i mainly used the energy sword, one tapped gunther lmao)

btw, get the GEP gun at the start of the game, trust me, it's too good

Easily one of, if not, the best immersive sim I've ever played.
100% worth the effort to get it running.

By the way, Denton, stay out of the ladies restroom. That kind of activity embarasses the Agency more than it does you.

You can get yelled at for going in the ladies' room this is the best game ever

I can see why this is considered a gaming classic. A bit arcane at times (had to download the game to a flash drive to make saves) but worth pushing through to play.

Relavent topics and gameplay that has aged well.

I'm a guy who was born after 2000, so this game is older than I am, I've been going out of my way to play older games, partly out of curiosity and partly out of respect for the art. Deus Ex so far has been one of the easiest to acclimate too.

So for starters, the Gameplay and Graphics are older, (though for a quarter century old game actually still very good) but the level design itself is incredible, The maps were large and interesting but well designed enough that I rarely got lost. The combat was something that didn't quite gel with me, but I think that's on me not the game. I played on medium and it wasn't particularly hard, but both you and the enemies were just a few shots away from death until late game when you get upgraded Augs. This made me feel like a badass spy who cleared a room with one magazine of my pistol, or a jackass who was mowed down while trying to reload a gun I wasn't trained in behind cover. I think the only part of combat I actually disliked was how every boss in the game was laid out in just a few seconds (Shout out Gunther who I killed in two hits with a nanomachine lightsaber without him hitting me once.) Also movement was a bit of a pain but thats just Unreal 1 for you.


The characters were interesting even if the voice acting was inadvertently actually fucking hillarious, and the plot was super interesting to see as we are now almost closer to the in game date than the it's release. The Cyberpunk worries of the late 90's are a lot different than ours, the idea of the UN being a world controlling super power is absurd today but a real conspiracy back then. The Soundtrack is phenomenal, each city you go to, each sewer you crawl through having a rich distinct atmosphere that captures the genre near perfectly.

Game also ran exceptionally well with little problems with crashes, glitches, and issues with tabbing in and out. (I'm running Windows 10 so no promises for anything more advanced.)

I recommend it. As if you are someone reading this review their is a good chance you are around my age and are curious about one of the most famous games of all time. The jank was easy to push past and the story was interesting and fun, and i'll probably play the game again in 3-4 years.

Tldr?
Final rating is a 7.5/10. Gameplay holds up fairly well, gunplay being the only true detractor. While the story does most of the heavy lifting, following JC's never ending night is well worth doing if you have interest in the classic.

P.s pro tip lock picks are for chumps, take the GEP gun from Paul.

Took me a couple tries to get in to, but I strongly recommend giving it a try, it lives up to the hype

I played Deus Ex for the first time in 2025. No nostalgia googles, no fond childhood memories, and I had to install 3rd party software (Kentie's Mod ftw) just so I could see without using my robot eye-ball flashlights and draining my robo-juice. And yet. This is the first game where I finished the game and started a new game right after.

Goddamn this is a good game.

Play with kentie's launcher along with an updated renderer of your choice. The only 2 things you need for a modern vanilla experience. Try not to limit fps through the launcher, either use nvidia control panel or download RTSS (I guess this counts as 3 things) like I did and limit FPS at 120-200 depending on the refresh rate of your monitor.


One of the best games of all time, full stop. Its 1 dollar please buy it.

Classic story-based RPG. Better depth than the modern Deus Ex games.

Thanks, but no, First of all, I ended up installing a separate mod - kenties mod, so the game could work in full screen 2K mod. Thats fine. But the game itself is poorly preserved till nowadays; most of the time it was "where the hell should I go".
Map is A PICTURE FROM SATELLITE (seriously?). Alright, I took my chances and decided to go through it completely. HOWEVER, got stuck in Hong Kong pretty badly with Versalife, Dragon Tooth and overall instructions via goals that are vague as well. Console commands (thanks to GOD mode and LEGEND commands) made no interest for me to continue on with this game.

Those types of games are definitely a historical piece of exploration; back in 2000 I completely realized why it was so successful, but they require REMAKE. But please, do not waste your time on this and just move on.

Still feels very, very good to play. Fantastic level design, intricate and plausible levels, not just a random geometry. Game makes you use all of your tools and augmentations until the very end, which is great. Resources are pretty scarce so you always have to choose what to use and what to keep. Great soundtrack, good story. Overall, it is a game that just compels you to play, Warren Spector and Co knew their stuff very well, it is a classic for a reason.

Like I always do for these sorts of games, my first playthrough is 'non-lethal stealth'... and I had A LOT of fun doing it.

Of course, at the end it got a little tedious avoiding a certain endgame enemy, but I succeeded.

My next playthrough won't make Paul happy, but it promises to be just as fun.

Defintely recommend for FPS fans. Game has nice large maps to explore and I enjoy playing it.

Some games were a smash hit at the time of release, but are very clunky and thus not very playable today. Some games age well and become timeless classic. But this game is very clunky and yet it STILL manages to be one of the best games to date just because of how incredibly good it is.

There is so much stuff to do that you could make an updated graphics version and pass it as a next-gen title in 2025.

Deus Ex HR and MD were essentially dialed-down versions of this game's ideas and they still stand out among their contemporaries.

Such a great game. I would they would remaster it for today's gamer.