Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Personalized experiences
Through the amount of customization in the game, unlocking and upgrading ones abilities allows for a personalized experience in how the game plays. One person's build may be completely different from the next persons, meaning each ones experience has been different.
Pro Tons of ways to customize your playstyle
Unlocking and upgrading abilities gives you a great chance to tailor how you approach missions and explorations. There are certain perks that lean more toward stealth, like an invisibility cloak, and others that are more lethal-oriented, like a flashy area of effect ability that lets you take out surrounding enemies all at once. And there are other skills that give you a leg up in exploring levels, like boosting the amount of fall damage you can take to prevent death and reach secret locations. One player's build may be completely different from someone else's, adding replay value to experiment with unlocks.
Pro You can take a lethal or pacifist approach to missions
You have total freedom in how you approach missions, mainly with whether you want to take the silent approach or go in guns blazing. Going with weapons such as stun guns, picking non-lethal knock-outs, and sneaking around through vents and hidden passageways makes up the pacifist methods. The more violent ways of playing include using deadly guns and abilities, killing enemies when you take them down, and generally running head-first into each mission. You don't have to stick with one or the other; if the situation calls for it, you can change things up as needed, keeping things interesting as you go along.
Pro Allows for choice and consequences
Each mission is branching depending on how the player has chosen to solve it. Depending on what the outcome is of each missions means there may be consequences for one's action or rewards. This means on each mission the player can choose to make ethical or non ethical choices that will effect the outcome of the game.
Cons
Con You must be lethal during boss fights, even on a pacifist run
It's really disappointing that the game doesn't let you take a purely pacifist approach. You can sneak around all you want while making sure to only perform silent takedowns, but the moment you step into a boss room, all of that role-playing goes out the window. You have to kill the boss, no questions asked. It would have been nice to have the option to outmaneuver them instead and lead them into non-lethal traps. Thankfully, the devs addressed this issue in the sequel, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but you still have to deal with it here.
Con Needs more polish
The framerate is not the best in the game, there will be slow down in places. The design of some NPCs also tends to look less than stellar compared to the main characters, which shows a lack of care in the design. Overall this adds up to a less than stellar experience, which may pull some people out of the immersion of the title.