I finally found the time to finish my playthrough. In short, it's a truly excellent mod.
To get the obvious out of the way, Deus Ex has never looked this good. The improvements made to the levels are pretty much seamless, and it's a shame that there aren't any decent HD character models available to put them on a par with the environments. Obviously the characters in DX never looked particularly good, but now they stick out a little bit more. Still, this is pretty much a textbook example on how you should do a graphics mod, staying faithful to the style of the original and only making improvements where necessary.
As for the gameplay changes, the improved AI and gunplay are what I appreciate the most. The AI alone would probably make this the best DX mod out there, the changes are that good and important. The downside is that it kind of makes you more aware of the few bullshit things that DX had, like enemies being able to instantly pinpoint your location after getting shot — the vanilla AI was so lacking in many areas that you were willing to let most of that stuff slide, but since GMDX's enemies are so much smarter, it does piss you off a little when you hit someone with a sniper rifle from a hundred yards away, and a second later the same guy takes you out with a headshot. Oh well, you can't have everything.
The changes to the skill system and the augs are for the most part really good, as well as many of the more subtle improvements like your health having a bigger impact on your abilities. I'm a bit on the fence about some of the changes (the stamina system is a bit superfluous to me, whereas Energy Transference just feels slightly out of place), but overall there's not a lot to complain about. I mostly picked augs that I've rarely used (I didn't pick Regeneration or Cloak, for instance), and I found the vast majority of them useful, especially Environmental Resistance. One thing that could've been scrapped entirely is the hunger system, which is not a bad idea per se, but it's a bit of a bummer that you can't even pop a vial of zyme or have a drink with the triad leaders because you happened to eat some soy food three hours earlier. I don't think it adds anything to the game in its current state.
The Hardcore Mode is a nice addition that made this playthrough a bit different from all the ones that came before it. It does change the nature of the game a bit, as the save system heavily encourages you to use specific routes, but it does provide a unique challenge and most of the time works reasonably well. There were some places where I felt the save points were a bit too far apart (in Paris, for example, you might spend quite a while cleaning out the greasel basement and running back and forth through the building only to be shot the moment you climb up to the street, and you might have to do it several times before figuring out where the next save point is), whereas in other levels you can abuse the autosaves as much as you want to, but those kinds of things are to be expected in a game that was never designed for such a system and has so much variety when it comes to level layouts.
For a while I thought greasels were total assholes, but I was wrong. They're actually pretty likeable creatures compared to grays who are just gigantic dicks in every possible way.
To get the obvious out of the way, Deus Ex has never looked this good. The improvements made to the levels are pretty much seamless, and it's a shame that there aren't any decent HD character models available to put them on a par with the environments. Obviously the characters in DX never looked particularly good, but now they stick out a little bit more. Still, this is pretty much a textbook example on how you should do a graphics mod, staying faithful to the style of the original and only making improvements where necessary.
As for the gameplay changes, the improved AI and gunplay are what I appreciate the most. The AI alone would probably make this the best DX mod out there, the changes are that good and important. The downside is that it kind of makes you more aware of the few bullshit things that DX had, like enemies being able to instantly pinpoint your location after getting shot — the vanilla AI was so lacking in many areas that you were willing to let most of that stuff slide, but since GMDX's enemies are so much smarter, it does piss you off a little when you hit someone with a sniper rifle from a hundred yards away, and a second later the same guy takes you out with a headshot. Oh well, you can't have everything.
The changes to the skill system and the augs are for the most part really good, as well as many of the more subtle improvements like your health having a bigger impact on your abilities. I'm a bit on the fence about some of the changes (the stamina system is a bit superfluous to me, whereas Energy Transference just feels slightly out of place), but overall there's not a lot to complain about. I mostly picked augs that I've rarely used (I didn't pick Regeneration or Cloak, for instance), and I found the vast majority of them useful, especially Environmental Resistance. One thing that could've been scrapped entirely is the hunger system, which is not a bad idea per se, but it's a bit of a bummer that you can't even pop a vial of zyme or have a drink with the triad leaders because you happened to eat some soy food three hours earlier. I don't think it adds anything to the game in its current state.
The Hardcore Mode is a nice addition that made this playthrough a bit different from all the ones that came before it. It does change the nature of the game a bit, as the save system heavily encourages you to use specific routes, but it does provide a unique challenge and most of the time works reasonably well. There were some places where I felt the save points were a bit too far apart (in Paris, for example, you might spend quite a while cleaning out the greasel basement and running back and forth through the building only to be shot the moment you climb up to the street, and you might have to do it several times before figuring out where the next save point is), whereas in other levels you can abuse the autosaves as much as you want to, but those kinds of things are to be expected in a game that was never designed for such a system and has so much variety when it comes to level layouts.
For a while I thought greasels were total assholes, but I was wrong. They're actually pretty likeable creatures compared to grays who are just gigantic dicks in every possible way.
