Deus Ex: Human Revolution is probably one of my favorite recent games. I've played it in various forms now at least 6 times all the way through and have gotten serious enjoyment from it every time. Mankind Divided just doesn't quite live up to this standard.
Now, there is a lot of minor improvements here. Gone are the individual stat upgrades for weapons. In their place there are a number of augs that affect all weapons, and crafting parts that can be used to upgrade various stats on any weapon. This is a welcome change, although in the big scheme of things minor. Stealth too got some welcome tweaks. The system now has specific take downs for corners and across low obstacles such as a cement barrier that automatically bring your victim out of sight, well most the time. It also a more advanced movement selections system that makes getting around in cover generally more fluid, although more on that in a bit. They have also disposed of several later game weapon, which may seem initially bad, but those weapons in HR were largely pointless outside of the boss battles so removing them allows you to concentrate on the far more abundant and useful general weapons. The aug system has also been streamlined a bit, cutting out some of the garbage and adding on some new interest augs that over all I think is a good improvement on the system.
So all that is good, but there are problems. First the more minor stuff. This game is lacking some polish. I already mentioned stealth and while it is generally better there are moment too plentiful when the system just gets in the way. This can take the form of getting stuck to walls when you want to move freely, certain areas just not giving logical options that should be available, and controls just being ignored in some places for unexplained reasons. There is also some highly suspicious sight lines in certain areas that are needlessly frustrating but those are very rare. Another minor irritation is the hacking. The hacking mini-game is an 'enhanced' version of HR's, which while WAY better than any previous Deus Ex hacking was fundamentally annoying in that it was far too random. Rather than fix that though, they made it even worse. Now often the hacking map is concealed, and several obstacles exist that automatically detect you. They did add some elements that are modestly interesting but overall the hacking game seems worse to me than in HR and mostly because they seem determined to rely on the random nature of the results rather than making it more player skill oriented.
With the minor issues out of the way, let's deal with the 4 major issues that hold this game back.
First, micro transactions. These feel so crammed in it is irritating. Worse, the way they are implemented is soooooo bad. Rather than just letting you have access to the goodies for all play throughs, you instead only can use them the once. This is both irritating, but also detracts even from their worth. Fortunately the game was clearly designed without them in mind, so don't feel any need to buy them, but just their presence taints the game.
More serious is game content. The original HR had 2 hub areas, and at least 7 other mission zones (more depending how you count). This game features a far more limited 1 hub area and 4 mission zones. While the 1 hub area I think is bigger than either of the ones in HR, it is only marginally so. And only 2 of the mission zones come off as large. The other two are rather small. I do like the final mission zone in particular as it as some unusual stuff going on it, but one can't deny that this feels like half the game HR was. There is some nice dlc missions you can get, but these aren't bundled so you have to pay extra for them.
Third is some weirdly out of place difficulty spikes. The most annoying of these is one your third visit to the hub where everything is on lock down. This makes getting around INCREDIBLY annoying. I did eventually manage to clear the streets, but it was an huge slog to do that was in my mind really unnecessary to the story. Even more odd there didn't seem to be the level of alternatives they usually give you in this section as you often were forced through heavily guarded areas where stealth was very difficult, and this is just getting around. There is also some other sections of the game that had briefer difficulty spikes that felt out of place.
The last issue is one I really didn't expect to have issues with and that is graphics. MD is several years ahead tech wise, but it doesn't really look it and in many places is actually has serious graphical issues. The most noticeable I've seen is the vendors. In your first trip to the hub, it is all okay, but on your second visit, time of day has switched to night, and now all the vendors text on screen is nearly unreadable! No matter what setting I messed with I couldn't get these to read properly and I don't know what went wrong, as it was fine on the first visit during day. It feels like they didn't really improve things.
Overall I still enjoyed the experience, but I don't feel nearly the attraction to reply I did with HR.