Overall really great stealth/adventure experience with an incredible and singular atmosphere. But with some minor flaws on level direction.
Playing as Garret, a cynical man, but a master in the art of thievery, you will sneak and blend into the shadow to rob the wealthiest for... yourself.
[h1]Ambience/Settings[/h1]
Probably one of the best thing in the game, it's the ambience and settings around it. The world is set into a dark industrial medieval city called The City mixed with some mysticism aspect later on. The audio environment is excellent and giving an overall unstelling and daunting vibe. A mix of industrial, dark fantasy, and monastery vibe.
In addition of that, each mission has a very stylish cinematic briefing with great music and excellent voice acting (Garret voice actor is amazing)
The ambience is really singular and I've never seen another game with the atmosphere, really good on that side!
[h1]Stealth[/h1]
What would be a game about thievery without stealth! The game put a huge emphasis on lighting and sounds. And it make you feel like a... thief, always trying to stick in the shadows, listening to guard footsteps to localize them, watch your own steps too and avoiding making too much noises depending on the floor you walk on etc.
And with a good amount of tool at your disposal to remove light with water arrow, moss arrow to turn the floor into a quiet and smooth material etc.
I also like the lockpicking system, it's different from other game, but it's cool and kinda similar to how it works in real.
It's fun to time the guard pathing, stun and hide the bodies, remove all light to be in complete shadows, pickpocketing their keys, find available routes to take for your objectives...
[h1]Levels[/h1]
The game is made of several levels, with 3 different difficulty, with a preparation phase that explain your main objective and stuff you wanna buy for your mission.
Difficulty integration is original, instead of having the classic stats modifier stuff, each difficulty on each map will give you more objectives to do that will change the approach of the missions.
And it's where the flaws happen, the levels can be hit or miss for some. The levels swap between stealth/thievery mission and crypt looting, Tomb Raider-esque missions. So for those who want a fully stealth game, it can be frustrating.
For my personal experience, I loved the tomb raiding mission, they have a really great atmosphere and give a bit of fresh air. But the last missions have a strange "offensive/combat" direction, and that's strange for game built around sneaking, and the melee fightning is probably the worst part of the game (it's not bad either but meh), so those missions seems to be counter-intuitive in their design.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Despite the mission inconsistency, it's a really geat game with excellent atmosphere and a great stealth system that I would recommend to at least try it! it's an old game with some rough edges, but with a amazing atmosphere and creativity. it's also a game that had a huge impact on video game history (like almost any games from Looking Glass).
On a side note: As usual for almost any old games, it can be a pain in the ass to make it playable on modern hardware. From what I heard the GOG version works better, but for Steam version I used roguepatcher (with modern keybinding included) and it works flawlessly after the patch. GOG is planing to add it into their reservation program soon if you prefer to wait and avoid patching stuff (and a remastered version from Nightdive is coming this year)
