A proper Deus Ex game. With some annoying little things.
However, the game managed to win me over. At first the game felt like it was giving me an illusion of freedom without actually giving it. But after the world opens up a bit and side missions become available, it starts to feel like a proper Deus Ex game again.
There is a heavy philosophical backstory that I just love. Adam Jensen has a brilliant voice that is very reminiscent to JC Denton. The gameplay is almost perfectly replicated from Deus Ex, with the addition of a third person cover system. Some people don't really like it, but I just adore it. It gives a much better view of your surroundings without having me constantly pan the camera around. The feeling of immersion is nearly perfect.
Then to the bad parts. While they managed to replicate the feel of deus ex, there are a lot of things that annoy me. This may be just the fanboy in me raving about though.
1.The Augmentations.
Although there are a lot more augs that you can get, I still have to question their choice to allow the player to get every augment. The first game always forced you to choose between two possible augments whenever you found a aug canister. This greatly increased your a sense of identity by crafting a character to your own suiting. Now though, every character will end up the same and especially once you have gotten every Aug you want, you have to use the remaining points on augments that you don't even need. This seriously annoyed me later in the game and I stopped giving a damn about the points. Speaking of points, it's also way too fast to upgrade your augments. I preferred to the system, where you actually need to explore the world in order to find them. Now you just do something and they will eventually all unlock on their own.
2. No melee weapons
This seriously bugged me. How can I be a stealthy ninja without a sword that I can stab people with. Sure, there are takedown moves, but I can't really smash boxes with it or use it on a boss. There was no reason to not have melee weapons.
3. The battery system
Ugh. Not only they remove melee weapons, but they also make takedown moves use battery power. It wouldn't have bugged me if the battery system would have been good, but it's god awful. Batteries do charge, but only the battery that is partly drained. A fully drained battery does not charge. And of course, takedowns drain a complete battery. As do almost everything. Only the first battery is always charging, so for the entire duration of the game, you will be on 1 battery. There are chocolate bars that refill batteries, but once you use a takedown move or punch through a wall that energy is gone. And if you are like me that has to explore every nook and cranny, you will be serial punching through every wall you come across. Resulting in a zero energy.
4. No swimming
I don't know why some people hated the swimming in Deus Ex, but I sure loved it. I even took the Aqualung aug multiple times instead of gas resistance - just for fun. Not this time as there is no swimming in Human Revolution. Actually there is no water of any kind (besides the knee deep filth of sewers), making the world feel a lot more boring.
5. Hacking
At first, hacking felt really nice. Making it a small minigame, but once you get further and further, you get tired of it and worse yet, the RNG occasionally makes it infuriating. Nothing is worse than having a low chance of being detected no matter how high your hacking is. You may be in highest hacking level, hacking a level one lock and still get detected. Not that it matters that much, but there are bonus loot that you can get from hacking that usually requires not getting detected. In fact, if there weren't any bonuses, there wouldn't be anything to get mad about as you can easily unlock the device even if you do get detected.
Those are the things that I hated in Human Revolution. Some also nag about the forced boss battles, but I don't really mind them. They have a sort of Metal Gear Solid -esque feeling about them, which is awesome. After the first boss, I learned to always keep with me an additional heavier weapon, just for situations where stealth wasn't an option.
Well that's my opinion on Deus Ex Human Revolution. You can hardly call this a review; more like a nag. But even though 90% of the text in this post is about the negative aspects of the game, I still love it. Just because they managed to make it feel like a proper Deus Ex game.