Robinson's Requiem is kind of deceptive in my opinion. It has elements of action and survival, but it's really more of a free-roaming adventure game. A lot of problems in the game require specific solutions, such as the dinosaur in the swamp. Some of the solutions are found in the manual, such as what types of medicine to take when under the effects of a specific illness, while most are trial and error. It doesn't help that the game has awkward controls, which is probably my biggest complaint.
However, before I bought the RR collection, I read up as much as I could and also watched a few gameplay videos. The survival sim aspect interested me, and I wasn't turned off by the adventure game style puzzles or primitive graphics. I also read a good walkthrough for the game which helped me to figure out what to do in certain situations. I believe Deus is much the same, but I haven't played it very much, where as I've beaten Robinson's Requiem.
Even with all of its problems, I really liked the game. I admit I was very mad when I had to restart the game twice because of stupid mistakes, such as running out of matches or killing the wrong person at the wrong time, but I still enjoyed it. In fact, if you know what to do, the game only lasts around 5 hours.
I haven't tried the built in arcade mode yet, but it might fix a lot of the problems people have with the game.