Deus Ex Elements that make the game

[The Great ThunThun*]

Deus Ex is a CRPG. But it is not the RPG mechanics that shines in it. It is the attention to storytelling, area design and theme. You can kill a lot of characters out of turn and that affects the story. There are a lot of cases of denied cliches, like saving or refusing to save Paul, which results in viable outcomes. The non-linear area design (NOT non-linear storytelling) makes exploration really enjoyable. The writing has depth and creates personalities out of the background characters whom you never even meet.

Deus Ex is a CRPG where the CRPG part is not as important.

There are many other games out there which are great games despite bad mechanics.

I can count a few more instances: Darklands, where the game has a fantastic setting and attention to details of the setting proving a world where you can feel like a real party of adventurers. PST/ MoTB have their great writing and atmosphere creation. VMTB has entertaining authentic-feel characters and atmosphere. Dark Messiah has its immersive melee combat. Alpha Protocol has its crazy dossiers which allow you to talk to people with your superpower of reading comprehension.


Do you agree? if yes, what more examples you can think of? If you disagree then why?

 

[Darth Roxor]

tits and ass

 

[Tavernking]

Skyrim does everything even if it doesn't do everything well

Baldo's gate took advantage of a primitive gaming audience that was starved for RPG experiences, if it was made today nobody would play it

Divinity original sin series has excellent combat, story is just the cherry on the top

There are so many reasons why games can become successful/classics. Hell, goat simulator become a hit just because it was stupid and funny.

 

[what am i doing]

Great story, setting, art direction, music/sound, and guns aside, EYE: Divine Cybermancy really nailed the "kill endless waves of enemies" gameplay premise. You never run out of shit to kill or ammo to kill it with and that's a huge part of the fun. There are a lot of games where I find myself wishing combat had gone on longer, more enemies to fight and so on, and EYE is not one of them thanks to enemies continuing to spawn. I don't think EYE would have been nearly as enjoyable if there was a fixed number of enemies that could spawn each mission and after you killed them you were just walking around to objectives; there are occasions of downtime like that on some maps (cm_sheep comes to mind) and they're easily the worst parts of the game since you have nothing to shoot.

Of course, this depends heavily on the combat being fun in the first place, which fortunately, EYE's is.

 

[Master]

Deus ex doesnt have bad rpg mechanics, why do you think it did? Its a rare FPS RPG done right. Finding upgrade canisters was half the fun, it even made sense given the cyberpunk setting.
Bloodlines otoh...