I like Dishonored, its good.
More specifically what makes it good (to me) is that its got that immersive sim stuff going on, there's loads of ways to do stuff and get around problems and those little "aha!" moments and that's a big part of the formula that makes everything work. The head on approach is never the most ideal way to do something but you CAN do it, Dishonored gives you the ability to go for it if you think you have the tools and the parrying skills to sword fight a mob of dudes all at the same time. The real enjoyment to me comes in the ways your previous choices are rewarded repeatedly over the course of the game. You bought the high jump skill and suddenly you have so many more paths forward. You grabbed the ability to possess rats and fish and now you can use the tiny passage ways you'd never be able to as a human and just hide in plain sight from guards.
I'm going to say that the story is okay. There's a straight forward revenge premise with a conspiracy framework that's held up by the world building. There's lots of hints at a wider world that makes everything you're doing a little bit cooler with that stuff in the background. You're not just sneaking around a police station, you're sneaking around a weird religious cult headquarters that's packed to the brim with enforcers. You're not turning off the security by flipping a switch or pulling a plug, you're yanking out a huge barrel of magical whale oil. I feel like a couple characters make stupid decisions that they need to make or the story can't continue, which felt really stupid at the time but I guess that's the best way they thought to keep the game going.
The gameplay is pretty good. There's the basic stealth gameplay that you're probably thinking of: peeking around corners and choking out guards who aren't paying attention. The real meat of it comes into play when you start throwing around the powers that Dishonored sticks into the mix. Teleportation, possession, stopping time, all let you style on guards and cops patrolling around. The game throws enough in your way that you can't just magic your way past everything, but they're a real game changer. The game gives you more tools to kill people than non-lethal tools, but that's not a new problem for a game like this, and the DLC does bring more stuff for you to play with.
Speaking of the DLC, it's also pretty good, six new missions across two story DLCs that let you play as a different character dealing with a whole new problem going on alongside the main game. New enemies, new tools, and fun remixes of a couple levels you messed around in before, overall I think its worth it.
I liked Dishonored, I give it a "Maybe basing your economy and infrastructure on giant magic whales is a bad idea" out of "What if satan was just really really bored?", would recommend.
