Deus Ex Mankind Divided: System Rift Review

In the first of two story DLC for the recent 10/10 scoring Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Jensen is contacted by Pritchard to do just a little favour. If you can call ‘breaking into the most secure data archive in Prague’ little. It’s accessed from the main menu, so in theory you could play it before you play the main game if you wanted.

Yes, Prague has an even more secure facility than the Palisade bank which you can visit in the main game. Called the Palisade Blade, it’s the massive building that you can see if you have a look behind the Interpol office building. Yes indeed, you have to visit a new part of Prague to carry out this DLC! It’s not massive, but it has plenty to see and do. And lots of ventilation shafts.

This building - yup, I'm directly opposite Interpol

Unfortunately, this part of Prague is very much a Naturals Only kind of area. You get sneered at, verbally abused and straight up not allowed into some areas -- you know, unless you sneak in. In fact, you’ll be sneaking for most of the DLC, so it’s a good thing that your Praxis points don’t carry over from the main game.

You’re given a bunch of Praxis kits and all of the augmentations are unlocked, and won’t cause overheating. However, I would recommend waiting until I know what you want, rather than spending them all as soon as you get off the metro. It entirely depends on how you plan to do your playthrough. If you’re going guns-blazing, you might not want to focus only on the stealth augs.

Just know: there are a lot of terminals to hack. Like, a lot lot. Most only have emails, a few have various codes on them for doors and safes: one code is even hidden in an email, and doesn’t pop up as a code to use. I was quite impressed with that one.

I also liked this Deus Ex mousemat

If you’re familiar with the Breach mode -- the online aspect of Mankind Divided -- then you’ll discover how exactly the Palisade lavawall was breached, allowing the mode to exist in the first place. There is also a section which sees Jensen himself jumping into an avatar, which I quite enjoyed.

The only thing I didn’t like is that you can finish it in a few hours, maybe less if you put more praxis points on the hacking augmentations. It’s certainly one of the more challenging missions in Mankind Divided, but you really could theoretically rush through blasting everything in your way. You’re given access to enough weapons to make it feasible -- but again, not easy.

In all honesty, it doesn’t bring enough new stuff to the main game -- in fact it brings nothing to it, being a standalone entity -- nor does it last long enough to be a must buy. It’s good fun, challenging and interesting, but if you didn’t like the main game there’s nothing here to change your mind.