I bounced off Deus Ex hard initially. But I have never been more glad that I didn't immediately give up on a game. The beginning was rough but as I started to develop my stats and arsenal, I began to see the game's greatness and I fell deeply in love with Deus Ex.

The biggest barrier for new players is that frankly it doesn't feel very good to play, even for a game from 2000. The weapons lack a feeling of impact and are inaccurate until you level up your abilities, and the stealth is crap compared to Thief 2 from the same year. But the fun is in problem solving with the endless arsenal of tools you can use, the ways you can use the environment to your advantage, and the myriad of routes to progress through the levels. Each level is extraordinarily non-linear. The sheer amount of choice you have in how you complete each level, along with the choices you make in the story and in building your character, mean that each player can have a vastly different playthrough.

Though the game is notorious for being cheesy and has produced many memes over the years, there is a captivating story and eerily prescient social commentary amongst the cheese; something its sequels failed to recapture. The dystopian atmosphere is still gripping despite the old graphics, and the soundtrack goes hard to this day.

Besides some awkward gameplay, the only other issue is that some levels are too big and become very tedious to traverse, and easy to get lost in. But this only becomes noticeable in a handful of levels.

Deus Ex will forever be a classic. If you have a reasonable tolerance for jank it's unmissable.