Wann to try it again since i played it back then to its release, and back then i liked it but was too young to really get what it wants from me.
Revision is popular and cute, but changes too much. Level design on some levels is so different that you can't recognize them, I still get lost despite playing though it at least ten times, as original levels are burned in my memory.
Although this can be changed in settings, I'd still avoid Revision unless you want to have another go at it after finishing the original.
I had no idea what I was in for, and as a 15 year old, I felt twists and surprises, and organic game reactions to things I did that blow my mind even today, and imo still haven't been matched. And leveling and skills truly mattered and were tied into the game. Inventory management and ammo was interesting, the interface was perfect. It also had a kind of intellectual curiosity (characters talking competently about surveillance state and capitalism!) in the dialog that I only ever felt in, say, Alpha Centauri and later, Disco Elysium. It's still the best PC game ever imo.
Edit: I think the most important thing about its legacy now, is that it engaged with conspiracies in a fundamentally different way, more like 90s X-Files style fascination and curiosity than anti-intellectualism of Alex Jones-style rabid misinformation. A critical nuance that gets lost when conspiracy cranks try to claim Deus Ex as theirs.
Edit 2: Respectfully, contra the article, if anything I think there's not enough hagiography surrounding Deus Ex. It's either beloved or not known, and the latter is the crime that needs rebalancing as it represents an example of what's possible in passion project game design that I think is just as important as it ever was. That matters infinitely more to me than sidecar questions of how more or less "living" it's game world was relative to its predecessor System Shock. I also think the analysis is a little bit off to criticize DX's three-choice ending as being too on-rails relative to System Shock, which is a one-stop boss battle that lasts like 15 seconds.
Now if only someone could make a game aping 'The Difference Engine' in the style of Dishonoured... the time is right for a steampunk equivalent!
Now with GMDX it's a must play.
When the game came out though the politics around conspiracy theories was very different. Deus Ex tried to cram in every conspiracy theory circulating at the time. MJ-12, the trilateral commission, Roswell...
The good guys were trying to coordinate and make sure vaccine was widely distributed, and IIRC the original friends of the main character continue to believe in the value of UNATCO (the agency you work for in the game) and treat it like a good cause that was poisoned rather than a philosophical error.
I can see the libertarian bent, but with the very heavy qualifier that it's like Noam Chomsky 90s anarcho libertarianism than the joke that is today's fascist-friendly memeified online libertarianism. I doubt Tracer Tong and Alex Jones would have much in common if they tried to have a conversation. And it does give you three choices at the end of the day, and seems to mean it, though if you squint I suspect it's most sympathetic to Tracer Tong's preferred outcome.
— Malkavian Mod