A classic that's showing it's age, if only because it laid the ground works for a new genre.

Deus Ex is undeniably a project worth celebrating, it allows the player a tremendous amount of agency and rewards them for playing smart. At any given moment I felt curious enough to look around, explore the environment and try and find new ways to tackle a task.

However, I never felt encouraged to, the world is incredibly sparse and the design isn't tight, it can guide you to things but it's more a case of luck or stumbling onto something rather than it feeling like being taken on a route. I don't necessarily have a problem with this kind of design, but it can feel frustrating at some points.

I can't knock Deus Ex too hard on this, it's really the first of its kind and I'm accustomed now to games like Dishonored and even Deus Ex's modern iterations improving on this formula. For example, the game gives you a lot of lethal, non-lethal, loud or silent options to take on enemies, yet they never really feel like it makes a difference what you do to get to the end as long as you get to the end. Again, not so much a problem, I like that the options are there, but it would be nice to feel the weight of these choices in some scenarios.

Ultimately, Deus Ex holds up as a classic, one I'm sure I'll revisit many, many times.