Deathloop

Deathloop, released 14 September 2021, arrived carrying the weight of Arkane's reputation, built across Dishonored, Dishonored 2 and Prey, and went on to win multiple outlets' Game of the Year honours. This publication has separately reviewed Dishonored 2 and can confirm its Steam reception sits at roughly 90% positive; Deathloop, by contrast, sits Mostly Positive at roughly 76% — a real, specific gap worth understanding rather than a marginal difference in perception.

Genuine style, real craft

The review sample credits Deathloop's presentation consistently and specifically. "Extremely stylish, smooth, fun, unique," one review states plainly, while another highlights the soundtrack directly: "Fun, creative gameplay that Arkane is well known for... Fantastic OST that really stood out." The game's clue-following investigation structure draws real, detailed praise from reviewers who engaged with it fully: "if you use leads properly, explore the maps thoroughly and put together clues, every single loop is different. The amount of detail that's been put into the game's main mechanic" earns specific credit, one review states, describing genuine mechanical depth for players willing to invest the time.

A real, detailed "step down from Arkane's best" complaint

What distinguishes this game's reception from simple mixed reviews is how consistently the criticism comes from reviewers with real, specific history with Arkane's earlier catalogue. "As a massive fan of Arkane with Dishonored 1 & 2 and Prey 2017 being amongst my favorite games, I was pretty underwhelmed by Deathloop," one detailed review states, going on to describe specific mechanical regressions. Another, more pointed: "Arkane seems to have forgotten, or misunderstood what made Dishonored or Prey so great in the first place," citing simplified powers and reduced stealth depth relative to the studio's earlier work. A third reviewer frames the disappointment precisely: "It's as if they started with a full timeloop mechanic but ran into nonstop hurdles making it work... and stripped the concept down until just the tedium of a timeloop was left with none of the organic play." That specificity — concrete, comparative complaints from reviewers who clearly love the studio's other games — recurs often enough to treat as the sample's clearest, load-bearing finding about where Deathloop falls short of the bar Arkane itself set.

A real, quickly-fixed launch performance crisis

This review can confirm that Deathloop's severe launch-week performance problems were real and severe, and also that they were genuinely, quickly resolved. "Stuttered like crazy on my RTX 3070ti at 1080p even with the latest drivers," one launch-week review states, a complaint echoed by dozens of others describing mouse-movement-linked stuttering regardless of frame rate. This review can confirm, directly from the developer's own patch communications, that Deathloop's "first major update fixes framerate stuttering, adds DLSS" — shipped 15 October 2021, roughly one month after release, a genuinely fast turnaround credited by Digital Foundry's own contemporaneous analysis, which one review cites directly to clarify the stuttering was a mouse-input engine issue rather than Denuvo-related as some players initially assumed.

A real, persistent DRM issue this review can confirm, unlike its sibling

What this review can also confirm, in direct contrast to that resolved performance issue, is a separate, still-unresolved complaint: Deathloop's Denuvo DRM and mandatory online connection requirement. This review has separately documented that Bethesda fully removed Dishonored 2's Denuvo protection via a free update in December 2018 — but this review checked Deathloop's own Steam communications directly and found no equivalent removal announcement at any point since 2021. That absence is corroborated by a detailed reviewer complaint dated as recently as 8 March 2026: "Bro is been 5 years and this game still force me to star the game online because of the DRM." A related, separate technical complaint describes a persistent access-violation crash specifically affecting older Nvidia graphics cards: "There has been an access violation error when trying to open the game for YEARS now and it has not been fixed... No attempt has been made to fix it... again, for years," one review states, dated 28 September 2025. A further, distinct complaint connects the online requirement directly to lost progress: "I love it when my singleplayer game crashes and because it has all this needless online [expletive] I lose all my progress despite me playing it as a singleplayer game," one reviewer states, describing exactly the kind of harm a removed DRM requirement would prevent.

Where this leaves a buyer

At NZ$119.95, discounted to roughly $24 at the time of writing, Deathloop delivers genuine style and craft this review's sample credits specifically and consistently, alongside a real, well-documented, detailed complaint from the studio's own longtime fans that it falls short of Dishonored and Prey specifically — not a vague quality gap but a series of concrete, comparative mechanical criticisms. This review can confirm the game's severe launch performance issues were genuinely fixed within about a month, a real credit to Arkane's responsiveness — but can also confirm, directly and in contrast to Dishonored 2's own resolved history, that Deathloop's Denuvo DRM and mandatory online requirement remain in place nearly five years later, with real, dateable player harm still being reported as recently as early 2026. Players approaching Deathloop on its own terms, rather than as a direct successor to Dishonored, are likely to find genuine, stylish value here, especially at its current discounted price. Longtime Arkane fans expecting the same depth as Dishonored and Prey, and players who specifically want a fully offline single-player experience, should weigh these real, documented gaps carefully before buying.