Having played Human Revolution, I went into this with pretty low expectations, but it really exceeded them.

First of all, most of my criticisms of HR had to do with how much it streamlined and dumbed down Deus Ex, both in terms of the gameplay and the story. Either of which don't really apply much to this though, since this is a mobile spin-off game that you don't really expect to be complex or even good. But for what it is, it's actually pretty amazing.

Obviously, if I rated this as a PC game, it would've been like a 2 at most. If I rated it as a mainline Deus Ex game, would've been even lower. But as a mobile game? Easily one of the best I've played. It has pretty big and open maps that you can freely traverse and explore, most challenges can be tackled in several ways, full-on voice acting, dialogue trees, leveling system, weapon improvements, pretty decent stealth and combat for a mobile game. If this came out in the early 2000s, this could've passed for a full-blown PC release. It would've still been a terrible Deus Ex game, but if it was called something else, I'm sure it would've gotten decent ratings. Hell, if it came out on PS Vita in 2013, I would've played the hell out of it (if only it was a bit longer).

Now, obviously, the story here is pretty generic and boring. Having learned from HR, I kinda skipped most of the dialogue and didn't read any of the materials. Maybe that's why it took me only 2.3 hours to beat it. But tbf I didn't explore it as much as I would've if I was playing it on PS Vita (or mobile with button attachments, I don't play 3D games with touch screen). You kinda just don't wanna spend too much time playing a mobile game on PC.

And also, this game is as yellow as HR, which sucks. But the quality of the graphics for a mobile game is pretty astonishing. Although, I suspect it got a facelift for the PC port. Still, I imagine it was mostly just sharper textures and some lighting, so I can still tell it looked great on mobile. And the music is really nice.

Playing it on PC is also kinda cheating. Enemies have pretty generous hit-boxes and can't properly hide in cover. Which would be okay on mobile or even on console, where it's difficult to aim. But playing with a mouse makes you a god. You can walk into any building and murder everyone. It does get tougher towards the end of the game because the enemies get more bullet-spongy, and that's kinda where the microtransaction bullshit becomes prominent.

I removed a whole star for the microtransactions here. If you don't invest real money into this game, you're missing out on at least 80% of weapons/items/upgrades. It is possible to beat the game without them, but it gets really tough at the end, and that's playing it on PC. I have no idea how people beat it on mobile phones. But if I had to pay money just to beat a game, it wouldn't even feel rewarding.

This kinda leaves this review in a weird territory. Because I'm rating this as a mobile game, but I don't know if you can even beat it on mobile without microtransactions. The fucked up thing is that the game actually costs money. So if you're buying it on PC, you're basically overpaying, because you're getting a mobile game that's about 3 hours long with half the content locked behind a paywall. Pretty bad deal, if you ask me.

P.S. One funny thing I noticed was in the beginning one of the Russian guards was whistling an actual Russian song. I don't remember what the song is called or where it's from (might've been a soundtrack to some Soviet movie), but it definitely is a real song that had existed before this game's creation.