Deus Ex Mankind Divided System Rift DLC follows Adam Jensen once again, as he is contacted by former Sarif employee and co-worker Frank Pritchard. Frank tells Jensen that he is “vetting” a company in Prague and his local accomplice has gone missing. We find out Adam owes Frank because Frank helped Adam get out of Alaska, which is backstory for the main Mankind Divided campaign. Adam heads to a non-Aug bar in a new part of town (new hub) and finds the man who has bailed on what is less “vetting” and more “robbing” of a branch of Palisade Bank called “Blade 1.”
The entirety of the DLC takes place in this little hub world and inside the Blade. This sounds small, but The Blade is massive. At least six floors filled with rooms, guards, hidden items, and a ton to explore if you try to do it all. I assume someone could fly through the DLC content in a few hours, but you’d likely miss a lot of the exploration. The thing about the content, it’s tougher than the main game. It makes you use all of your abilities to get through the rooms and past the guards, alarms, infrared sensors, cameras, robots, laser grids and more. You start out with no skills, but with a bunch of PRAXIS points to upgrade a few items as you see fit. Be sure to use these wisely, you’ll for sure want hacking and wall-vision, maybe even more.
As you work through the facility you find out how good you really are at Deus Ex’s gameplay. Thankfully the saving system is good enough that you can save any time, and reload if you get spotted. Or, you can shoot your way out of 300 people and robots. The gameplay doesn’t really change from the main game, there’s just more sneaking. If you enjoyed that in Mankind Divided, you’ll like it here. You can still run and gun, but it is much, much harder.
Overall System Rift is a fun little stealth side-package DLC for Mankind Divided. The plot does set up a few questions for the next DLC or game in the series, and it does a solid job of trying to tie the Breach mode into the story itself. The gameplay tests the skills you should have honed while playing through the main campaign, and isn’t overly frustrating or insanely hard. It’s just right. If you’re still into Deus Ex right now, pick it up. It’s worth your time.