Okay, after a long time, I got to finally fully play the two bigger Mankind Divided DLC, the conclusion I got was they are the best levels on Mankind Divided but the base design of Human Revolution and Mankind divided with all its compromises with popamole still hurt the game. So dont expect massive changes in gameplay.
The first one, involves a heist on the Palisade data bank, the DLC is divided on three stages, the streets of Prague, the bank and the place where the servers holding the data are. The Prague section is just more of the Prague gameplay on the original Mankind Divided, going fucking around, exploring places and strangely enough, this area is the best area of the DLC in terms of play space despite being the first one you explore.
The second area, the bank, the bank has 5 levels, with each level getting smaller until reaching the fifth floor. There is a change here, the bank area isnt exactly linear but they are very unimaginative in terms of level design and very, very straightfoward, It doesnt reach the level design crazyness that the Atrium of Talos 1 or Dishonored 1 DLC get, nowhere close , you just sort of go up, sneaking around some corridors until reaching the fifth floor on a very predictable stealth gameplay. There is a clear ramp up on difficulty from the previous area but I have to say, that despite the game hyping the security on the bank, nothing in there made me sweat and I ghosted the whole thing with ease, in the end, this part felt like any other Deus Ex Mankind Divided level.
The last part, it is more challenging with the nature of the challenge changing to automated security but the designers were so unconfident of the skills of the players that they just placed a giant security room right next to the entrance of the room where you can just shut down pretty much all security making the whole area pointless. You kinda place your security station nearby your most protected area not just at the entrance with no security close. There is a final section taht is just some popamole jumping section with some basic puzzles and that is the end.
The first DLC just ends on an anticlimatic way where you just make some lame ass discoveries for a certain character, the end, there was no story climax, gameplay challenge progression, and nothing you didnt see on Mankind Divided a thousand times, it was a very meh experience. Yes, it was better in terms of level design than something like Golum city on the original game but the lack of some climatic confrontation with interesting story developments really made everything looking meh.
A criminal past, the second DLC is much, much better and a massive improvement in terms of level design from the base game. I always thought the level design of both Human Revolution and Mankind Divided very mediocre (exception of Prague and hub exploration that is indeed fun), it isnt the case here and it is the first level on Mankind Divided that gets DeepOcean's seal of approval in terms of level design. You have to escape a prison and it is a huge prison divided on three different buildings with open areas between. It is here, where, finally the Mankind Divided level design team left their crutch of trying to shoehorn the player into a direction by making the whole level flow on that direction even when that didnt make sense that they did with Golum city for example.
They guide you through objectives as usual but the whole place looks like a real building that could exist instead of a stealth gamey arena like pretty much most levels on Human Revolution and Mankind Divided felt. They also made something really interesting, you can access the whole building after a certain point and as the mission progress, there are changes on the mission with whole areas changing. It isnt all day where you get levels on prisons and it was very interesting as the prison changes with the events unfolding on the DLC. I mean, usually, most designers when they design a story change, they do it on the end of the level where you play 90% of the level with no changes on the level itself but here, changes on story also affect gameplay areas.
This is the best content the team of Mankind Divided did, however, it is not without its flaws, the game implies a certain decision you do on the beginning will have a major impact on the events but it is an illusion of choice, it only affects your interactions with a certain character later and as usual, the final confrontation is also really, really lacking. If they made the begining decision more impactful and had a more interesting final confrontation, the DLC would really, really with no flaws (besides the semi popamolified Deus Ex Mankind gameplay but I didnt have hopes of they changing that on a DLC).