History YMMV / DeusEx

** If you don't kill Maggie Chow, [[spoiler:she shows up for a confrontation when you sabotage the Gray Death machines, wielding her own Dragon]]. The buildup to the fight and its set dressing is cool as all heck, anticipating a lightsaber duel... but like every other enemy, the player's Dragon is a OneHitKill against them. And landing that blow is easy, since that boss is armed only with melee and a decently competent player knows how to swing early to hit first.

** After the game's release, RealLife has had many events disturbingly similar to parts of the game's backstory, such as the NYC skybox having no Twin Towers (memory issues), a "Grid zoning" law was passed, and upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court, that allows the government to seal off sections of cities, etc.

*** On that note, seeing Paris under martial law and Jock commenting on "what a great city it used to be", is more depressing after the city was the victim of numerous horrible terrorist attacks since 2015.

** The {{Big Bad}}s are wealthy megalomaniacs posing as philanthropists to push their agenda. Something similar can be said about Creator/JimmySavile. A popular kid's show host who handed large amounts of money to children and mental hospitals and regularly visited them… and turned out to be a mass pedophile and rapist after his death.

** With COVID-19, a rampant plague that affects the poor while the wealthy are criticized for living it up in isolated communities while the rest die, overloaded medical facilities, and the numerous conspiracy theories about China and the US spreading it strike closer to home.
** On a related note, the distribution of the Covid Vaccine was awfully similar to how Ambrosia was distributed. A limited production forced many countries to enforce strict priority lists based on age and professions while many fearing that poorer nations would be left behind.

** The Series-P agents, also known as the MenInBlack are more dangerous than your average {{Mook}} due to their killswitches [[TakingYouWithMe causing them to explode upon death]], making them extremely dangerous in close quarters combat.

* CompleteMonster: [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Bob Page]] is a former member of the Council of Five -- the ruling body of TheIlluminati -- and a protégé of the leader Morgan Everett. Consumed with a lust for power, Page abandoned the Illuminati to strike out on his own. He invented [[TheVirus a nanovirus via robots]] to kill as many people as possible and shows [[YouHaveFailedMe a willingness to have any failures eliminated]]. Page would even use nuclear weapons to get his way, in his plan to throw the world into chaos to pave the way for him as a messiah and a world leader. His ultimate goal was to merge with the AI Helios and [[AGodAmI become a God]], declaring "Let it spill over into the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them."

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: ''Deus Ex'' can be somewhat infamous with this trope, as its rather lenient with handing out extremely good options to the player and rarely makes the alternatives worthwhile.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: At the very beginning of the game, Paul offers you three weapons before you head into Liberty Island. The first is a silent mini crossbow with tranquilizer darts, the second is a sniper rifle, and the third is a rocket launcher called the GEP gun. Any veteran player will take the GEP gun for a variety of reasons- not only can it be used as a devastating crowd control and anti-robot weapon, but the explosive radius of its rockets can blow open doors, making it an effective tool for navigating the world. The sniper rifle is okay, but can be found in Liberty Island quite easily, and the mini-crossbow is a pretty awful stealth weapon. Even if you're running a stealth-pacifist playthrough, sneak attacks with melee weapons are easier and more consistent to use, and the GEP gun can actually assist with nonlethal playthroughs by allowing you to blow open walls and take down robots more easily.

** Creator/WarrenSpector has said that he wouldn't make ''Deus Ex'' again today, because the conspiracy theories that inspired the story of the game have inspired people to high profile acts of violence and political terrorism ''in real life'' since then. To make something similar again, the game would need to have a much, much more delicate touch to not look like it was endorsing those theories as anything more than an entertaining fiction.

* ScrappyMechanic:
** Aiming in general; to even consider hitting someone at range with any weapon, you have to stand still and keep your crosshair focused on them as the reticle narrows in. Firing before you're fully honed in will likely make you miss horribly or simply skim your target. Even having that weapon type's skill mastered still has a slight randomized spread every shot which probably ''will'' make you load that quicksave repeatedly until you finally get that headshot with a tranquilizer dart on a non-lethal run. Naturally, melee weapons don't suffer this, but then getting close to an alert enemy can get you killed real quick anyway.
** The melee mechanics can be off too. Sometimes, what appears to be a successful strike to an enemy's back that should be an instant KO or kill, depending on the type of the weapon, will only succeed in pissing them off, and having them quickly turn around and send a round into your face. Using the melee augs, and/or increasing melee skill can help avoid this, though.
** Looting items off of corpses can feel incredibly clumsy, especially with modern RPG standards and the game's more detailed InventoryManagementPuzzle. While finding ammo for the guns they need, players can expect their inventories to constantly be filled up with useless junk they don't need; combat knives are the prime offender, especially if they are going to be toting around the OneHitKill Dragon. Oh, and if the player wants to move a corpse, they have to pocket its junk before they can do so, adding on to this clumsy system.

* SlowPacedBeginning: While the UNATCO plotline at the start of the game isn't bad by any means, the game doesn't really get going until JC leaves the organization, something that happens several hours into the game. In gameplay terms, the first level is known for being a boring, small, and painfully easy slog that can be finished in under ten minutes if you know what you're doing. It isn't until around the point where you reach Hell's Kitchen that things escalate and expand, allowing the player to tackle numerous objectives however they desire.
* ValuesResonance: The game's themes became more relevant in a post-9/11 world, as public and government fear over terrorism had caused society to gradually become more authoritarian, along with the scandal revealed in 2013 regarding the NSA wiretapping American citizens without warrant, which is not all that different from the game's atmosphere of mass-surveillance and intrusive policing.

** Bob Page bears quite a similar appearance to Elon Musk.

* DemonicSpiders: The Spider Bots have erratic movement patterns and bio-electric energy draining attacks, making them hard to kill and annoying to fight, and they're really fast too. The Greasels are very tough against anything short of explosives and have poisonous attacks that make JC dizzy.

** The basic stealth pistol is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to break the game. With just the advanced pistol skill (the cheapest weapon skill to upgrade) plus an accuracy mod from Liberty Island you have a 100% accurate gun capable of silently taking out any basic enemy with a single headshot, which fires quickly enough to stun-lock an MJ12 Commando to death if you get the drop on them.

** In line with the above, the increasing prominence in the United States of right-wing organizations like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, and their participation in the January 6th 2021 attack on Washington D.C., makes the depiction of the NSF as [[spoiler:a relatively heroic organization]] feel very different than it did in 2000.

* {{Narm}}: Some of the voice acting veers into this, particularly JC's. May overlap with NarmCharm.
-->"[[MemeticMutation What a shame. He was a good man. What a rotten way to die. I wish there was something more I could say.]]"

-->"Mistah J.C. Denton. In da fresh."

* TheScrappy: Louis Pan, the obnoxious KnowNothingKnowItAll brat you encounter in Hong Kong is universally despised by players. He's annoying as all get out and his only dialogue amounts to annoyingly shouting at JC to go away and threatening to blow your cover. Fortunately, unlike most scrappies in video games [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekVI_UoEYRc you can shut the brat up]].
* ScrappyMechanic: Aiming in general; to even consider hitting someone at range with any weapon, you have to stand still and keep your crosshair focused on them as the reticle narrows in. Firing before you're fully honed in will likely make you miss horribly or simply skim your target. Even having that weapon type's skill mastered still has a slight randomized spread every shot which probably ''will'' make you load that quicksave repeatedly until you finally get that headshot with a tranquilizer dart on a non-lethal run. Naturally, melee weapons don't suffer this, but then getting close to an alert enemy can get you killed real quick anyway.

** Leo Gold leaves a long lasting impact on the game despite only appearing early in the game.

* BrokenBase: Is the game best enjoyed with mods or as it is? Also which mod would players prefer, ''GMDX'', ''Shifted'', or ''Revision''?

* RetroactiveRecognition: While the majority of the game's voice actors stayed in obscurity or [[OneBookAuthor never worked again]], one member of the cast went on to a long and successful career: Creator/KharyPayton, who voices [=JoJo=] the pimp and the conspiracy theorist bartender. This was his first voiceover job of note.

** The third available Augmentation Canister contains two choices: Run Silent and Enhanced Movement. Of the two, Run Silent is barely ever obtained because Enhanced Movement completely outclasses it in every area. With Enhanced Movement, you can crouchwalk to move as fast as your normal movement while remaining silent, essentially giving it the function of Run Silent. Outside of being useful for combat, Enhanced Movement is also helpful for getting around the world on any playthrough. Leveling it up also allows the player to take new routes in the world, such as jumping out of Maggie Chow's apartment, whereas Run Silent barely affects stealth at all.
** Microfibral Muscle versus Combat Strength would normally be a tough choice... if the game didn't gracious hand over the Dragon Tooth sword, far and away the best melee weapon in the game, ''for free'' as a mainline story pickup. Considering that the Dragon Tooth mulches every organic enemy in one or two hits and Trained Melee gives a competitive bonus to melee damage, why would you bother wasting precious augmentation canisters on upgrading it? Even worse, Microfibral Muscle is very useful throughout the game for platforming and can be used for pretty much every playstyle, whereas Combat Strength is exclusively meant for melee. The only possible place where a player would want Combat Strength is if they were doing a stealth pacifist run, so they can dramatically increase the power of the Baton and knock out people in a single hit regardless of their health.