Thief Hector was part of a crew hired to steal a mysterious blade, but the heist went terribly wrong. The team was forced to split up and disappear, leaving Hector with a much more immediate concern. Finding something to eat. A nearby house seems like the perfect place to start, and it also serves as a great introduction to the game's mechanics.
You begin with only Hector, but before long you gain two more characters, each bringing their own unique abilities. The entire game is controlled with the mouse. You click on a character to make them active, then left click on a walkable area to move them or on an object to interact with it. One feature I really appreciated is the outline system that highlights anything important. White outlines mark barrels and chests you can loot, although stolen items are optional and don't have any real gameplay purpose. Red outlines indicate enemies.
Enemies are the biggest obstacle between you and your objective, and you'll either have to avoid them or quietly eliminate them. Since stealth is the heart of the game, enemies don't have superhuman senses. They can't magically hear or see you from across the map. Instead, they rely on a visible green cone of vision that you can display by right clicking on them. Their view usually sweeps from side to side to cover more ground, but unless they're actively patrolling, it's generally safe to sneak up behind them or approach from the sides.
Only one enemy's field of vision can be displayed at a time, but there's a clever way to check multiple guards at once. By holding the right mouse button, you can place a marker on the ground. Any enemy whose vision reaches that point will be connected to it with a red line, making it easy to see whether an area is truly safe.
The key is to observe enemy patterns and move through their blind spots. Fortunately, the guards aren't especially bright. Even if you kill the partner they regularly chat with after finishing a patrol, they'll only look around for a few seconds before returning to their normal routine. Civilians are also present, and they'll call for help if they spot you, but the game doesn't punish you for killing them either.
Standing inside an enemy's field of vision isn't an instant failure. When the indicator turns yellow, you still have a brief moment to escape unnoticed. If it turns red, however, the enemy will chase you down and quickly kill you. Although your characters can eliminate enemies, direct combat isn't an option because they're slower than the guards. Instead, success comes from careful planning and smart use of each character's abilities. Most tools have unlimited uses, with only a short cooldown now and then, giving you plenty of freedom to tackle situations however you like, except in a few moments where specific character skills are required.
Hector can quietly stab enemies and throw rocks to create distractions. Later, you rescue a blacksmith from jail who can unlock doors, although doing so takes a few seconds, making good timing important. He's also the only character who can't kill anyone. The third companion is a bowwoman who can disguise herself to avoid being spotted by enemies. She can eliminate targets from a distance, although her arrows are limited. On the other hand, she can't carry dead bodies. These restrictions are fairly minor, though, because the game gives you plenty of creative ways to solve problems. A single bottle can lure an entire garrison into an ambush, one solder at a time, while the bowwoman's whistle becomes even more effective when she's disguised.
The campaign consists of 12 stages connected by a story told through letters and mission cutscenes. They can all be skipped, which is nice if you're replaying a level. The difficulty progresses naturally, starting with small areas before gradually opening into much larger environments. Some missions even take place inside buildings with multiple floors, and moving between them simply requires bringing your whole team to the exit point.
Every stage is enjoyable and includes three optional objectives, each rewarding an achievement. They provide a good reason to replay missions through the stage select menu, although most of them aren't particularly difficult. Some are just for fun, such as stealing a valuable item or collecting every piece of loot, while others add an extra challenge by asking you to avoid killing anyone or triggering any alarms.
What really makes the game so enjoyable is its generous quick save and quick load system. It encourages experimentation instead of punishing mistakes, allowing you to test different approaches without worrying about replaying an entire mission because of one small error. It also makes earning every achievement surprisingly manageable, and I often managed to complete them all during my first playthrough of a stage.
