Twenty-five years after its release, the original Deus Ex is still beloved by PC players and RPG fans, and for good reason. Although not the first immersive sim RPG to release in that era, it was probably the best, and paved the way for the genre in later games like Bioshock, Dishonored, and future Deus Ex installments. Warren Spector was the director of Deus Ex and recently paid tribute to the game, and the team he worked with at Ion Storm that made it happen.

What makes Deus Ex special is its world, story, but especially its replayability. The game’s systems allow the player to re-experience the story with completely different abilities and overall gameplay based on the choices you make in your character build, and in the world. A lot of games talk about giving the player agency and choice, but Deus Ex really does it. There’s never one way to do anything and it was completely ahead of its time when it released in 2000. Everything about the game’s design is based around that idea. It’s a sci-fi dystopia ravaged by government corruption and a pandemic, but strangely, it’s still one you want to revisit.

Deus Ex is still very playable on PC today through Steam and GOG, but it requires some tinkering to get it to run natively. Your best bet might be to buy and download the Game of the Year Edition and then install the free Deus Ex: Revision community fan mod on Steam that overhauls the whole game with new visuals, quality-of-life features, and a re-recorded soundtrack based on the original score. Or, if you’re more of a console player, Sony is releasing the PlayStation 2 version called Deus Ex: The Conspiracy on the PlayStation store.

So here’s to another 25 years of Deus Ex, and although it’s been a few years since the last installment with Mankind Divided in 2016, fingers crossed we get another sequel soon so the series can continue to innovate the RPG genre.