So, I haven't played Mission 4 yet but I can offer up a more detailed impression of missions 1 and 2 now. 3 is obviously just a mildly interactive (drink; pick up money; that's two entire interactions!) cutscene, so no review needed there.
Mission 1:
- It's pretty tiny, but there's a lot to do for its size. What it lacks in the X and Y axis, it makes up for in the Z. Nice vertical exploration without rope arrows, which isn't seen often these days as most rooftop missions make copious use of the rope. Here, every location is accessible through jumping and climbing. There are even multiple ways to access the rooftop roads, which is cool. Some good exploration there.
- That dancing drunk guy. He was fun! :D
- I liked the dropoff point map you get from one of the thieves in your apartment. While I found half of these loot items before getting the map, it adds a cool little treasure hunt element to the mission about halfway through.
- Varied mission objectives that encourage exploration. The "get 10 items of food" objective was pretty cool, and while I originally thought you had to get ALL food items, after watching Fen's LP I realized that's not true, there are more than 10 food items to find. I thought it was just 10 because I only found 10. This goal makes you scrounge every location in search of one more apple, but the food isn't hidden so well that you'd become frustrated searching for it.
- Contrary to that, the "get your stash" goal has one huge issue: it's your own fucking stash so you should know where the switch is. But you don't. There's not a single hint about its location, you essentially have to blindly search your own apartment for a switch whose location your character should know. I blindly frobbed around for several minutes before asking for the switch's location over on TTLG. This creates an unnecessary divide between player knowledge and character knowledge and breaks the immersion.
- Apparently there's a bug that gets the Hammer priest stuck at the top floor window, where his desk is. It made it appear like the right way to access that window was from the outside, but there's no way to reach it from there. Instead, you have to go through the Hammer priest's apartment and access a part of the rooftop area through that window. A slight change in his patrol route that would prevent him from getting stuck might help.
- Some of the jumps are unfair. That one window above the pub is horribly difficult to get into (it took me 3 tries; it took Fen even more tries in his LP and for a moment even made him wonder if you can get inside at all) and it's just as difficult to get out of without falling down and potentially dying. I didn't have any problems with other windows (the Hammer priest's window was fine for me, for example, but some others found it to be hard to get into), but I really hated the jump across from the roof area accessed through the Hammer's upper floor window over to the tower with the patrolling archer. I had to try jumping from the slanted roof to the tower's battlements about 10 times before I managed. Ugh.
- Final rating of this mission would be about a 7/10. If some of the most annoying aspects were fixed (less ridiculous jumps, more hints on the location of YOUR OWN FUCKING secret switch) I'd rate it a 7.5.
Mission 2:
- Initially, I wasn't too keen on it because I'm not too keen on swamps and even less keen on caves. It really grew on me over the two-and-three-quarters hours I played it, though, and I'd rate it a good 8/10 or maybe even an 8.5 (note: 9 and 10 are reserved for my absolute top favorite missions so an 8 means it's pretty high up there).
- The atmosphere here is amazing... or should I say the atmospheres, because there is so much variation in the locales and every place has a slightly different feel to it. The swamp is dark and oppressive, the temple ruins are very Lost City-ish, the moth hive is one of the creepiest "organic" places I've ever seen in a Thief FM thanks to the textures and the unfamiliar custom enemies.
- The custom enemies. They're a mixed bag, but overall I have to say that I'm impressed. Putting the snakes into murky waters where you have no chance of spotting them is nasty and even unfair, but it's effective at creating a certain paranoia in the player. Luckily, they don't do enough damage to discourage exploration of the murky waters. Then there's the creepy new bugbeasts (which are apparently female moths, as one readable says) and the moths which give the hive such a creepy and tense atmosphere. Seriously, when I first spotted these moths I was out of my element because they're an entirely new enemy type. They might function similarly to other enemy types in mechanics (they shoot webs like red spiders, and some of them - you can detect them by the glimmering trail they have around them - hurt you when you get too close, like the aforementioned snakes) but they look so very different to anything seen before. When you're as intimately familiar with the engine as I am, seeing a new enemy type like that hits you unprepared because it's something you did not expect, and pushing something entirely unexpected on a veteran of Thief FMs is really a great feat. Even the scariest custom creatures of other FMs used existing AI meshes and animations as a base, but these moths are new. On the other hand, I found the venomous moths to be incredibly annoying as I explored the hive before getting the poison resistance potion, and getting out was a pain in the ass. The optional quest that gets you the poison resistance potion is pretty great as it helps make this hive much, much easier. So, overall I liked the moths, they're probably the most unique enemy I've seen in a FM yet. These animated lamps that are, as you later find out, the lost souls of Hammerite brothers, are rather annoying. They have a glow of light around them, they will follow you if they see you and running away is the only option since you can't kill them, and they kill you if you get too close - and unlike the moths it's an instakill rather than just heavy damage. But hey, at least thanks to their glow you can spot them easily and avoid them, so they were okay. Then there are the new eye-plants, which are a grade A troll job when you first come across them. "Oh it's an eye plant, haha cute. Ok I'll just walk past it cause these things are harmless and... FFFFFFUUUUUUUUU" They're not a big problem once you know that they're dangerous, as they die to a single broadhead when they're not aware of you, but BOI, that is some top quality trolling there.
Okay, so overall I liked the new custom enemies. They're mildly annoying but they make up for it with their unique traits and sheer coolness factor. But... the moving fly swarms. THE MOVING GODDAMN FLY SWARMS. Fuck them. I said it before and I'll say it again, I'll be fucking grateful if nobody ever uses them in an FM again in the next 100 fucking years because holy shit fuck these things they're horrible. Not easy to spot in the dark, will follow you around when they're aware of you, and are almost impossible to get rid of; yes, you can disperse them with a water arrow but you have to hit the ground or wall right next to them which is almost impossible since they're constantly moving, and arrows just pass through them if you aim at them directly. Fuck these fly swarms I hate them.
- The exploration and the huge amount of sidequests. There was so much to do and so much to find. The jar of bugs you can collect, the crystal ball in the witch's hut which makes you wonder what you see through it, the small lake with a chest at the bottom, the crayman that isn't actually a crayman who drops an awesome item which allows for fun shenangians, the ruined temple with its many different things to do, the pagan village with its sidequests, the moth hive, the three books you can sell to the Hammerite... so much to do, so much to do. You never run out of things to do. I spent almost 3 hours on this mission, and it's not just because of its sheer size, it's because there's just so much to do, and the majority of it is optional.
- Having mentioned all the sidequests, there is one negative aspect about them that might be a rather major issue depending on whether you find one thing or don't find it. The pagan village has a huge amount of sidequests available for you, and one of these rewards you with so much gold, it's almost necessary to do it for achieving the loot goal. But... if you go to the village before rescuing the imprisoned pagan in Nilbog, it's hostile to you and you have no clue about there being a way to make it not hostile. So you go in, knock out everyone, and lose some of the most rewarding sidequests in this mission. One sidequest - the one that has you rescue a pagan girl from the moth hive - rewards you with so much loot, it's almost essential for people who have finished all the main goals but are struggling to make the loot goal. And, of course, the girl only spawns when you get the quest, if you explore the moth hive before getting that quest you won't find her there, which initially led me to believe there was a SECOND moth nest somewhere. Oh, and there is another sidequest that has you blow up that very same moth nest. The place where you put the bomb is right next to the place where the unconscious girl spawns. I don't know if you can even do that quest if you bomb the hive before talking to the girl's father. So: one of the best loot rewards in the mission depends on finding the right things in the correct order. First: find the prisoner and free him; second: talk to the girl's father to get the quest; third: now the girl spawns and you can rescue her. I loved the sidequests you can get in the village, but the fact that you can lock yourself out of all of them by missing the prisoner in Nilbog kinda sucks. Some players might lock themselves out of some cool content without even knowing that it was there.
- One smaller issue with one of the pagan village quests: when you have to "eliminate" all enemies in the temple, it doesn't explicitly state that you have to kill them. I consider blackjacked eliminated enough. Maybe re-phrase it so it's more clear - otherwise you're sitting around with a bunch of knocked out craymen and wonder why the objective doesn't tick off.
- I loved the craymen-related bonus objective. I discovered it by accident when I well on one of the eggs. Hah!
- I really appreciated the textures used in the ruined temple. I just have a hardon for ancient Mesopotamia. I might steal those textures for one of my own FMs one day. I can even tell which archaeological object each one is from. Me being a Mesopotamia fanboy doesn't have anything to do with the quality of this FM, though, and the mere fact that you're using these textures is neither good nor bad from an objective point of view, but still... I like these textures.
- That bug jar. Whoa. When you thought you've already seen everything this mission has to offer, and then this weird shit happens. Great stuff! That was probably the eeriest place in the entire mission.
- The crayman mask. It's so much fun cause it's so exploitable. Knock out a cray. All the other crays go crazy and chase you. Put on the mask. They immediately stop chasing you. Take it off again. They immediately become alert and go back to chasing you. Put it on again. They stop chasing you and walk their patrol routes as if nothing happened. THIS IS SO MUCH FUN
- While I loved the content in the village and really liked doing all the sidequests, I thought there was a little bit too much dialogue and the conversations took way too long. Meeting that pagan shaman and having her give you her quest? WOW that was a long conversation! The voice acting is top notch for a fan mission, and I appreciate the fact that you can talk to people and get sidequests from them, but some of these conversations are just a tad too long and filled with exposition. "Go do this. [insert 2 minutes of detailed explanation why you should do it and the entire backstory behind it]". Ehh. I feel these conversations would've benefitted from some cutting.
- On the other hand, the writing was solid and I liked how you were thrown into this unfamiliar place, discovered new locations bit by bit, and found out new details about them through both conversations and readables. You find a place and wonder wtf it is and through conversations and readables you find out bit by bit what the history behind each place is. That was well done. There is also some good environmental storytelling that supports the story, like a dead pagan warrior lying next to the lava pools at the temple entrance, which supports the story the pagan shaman tells you. This is good, and there are many examples of this throughout the mission.
- The caves were confusing as fuck to navigate but as Unkillable Cat already mentioned above, using the map and your compass is a huge help in finding your way. It took me a very long time to find the tomb... but I did find it once I consulted my map and my compass. That's really well done and I wouldn't mind of more FMs tried to do this - combining a relatively confusing layout with a relatively vague map but making it work anyway because the map is surprisingly accurate and you can use your compass to find the right way.
So yeah, overall it was a very enjoyable mission that did a lot of things right, but also did quite a few things wrong. It's definitely a huge achievement of dromeding, and I haven't even looked into it with Dromed yet. The new custom enemies, the sidequests (and the scripts involved), it's all excellent work that coaxes more from the old dark engine than anyone would have expected. This mission has the potential to become one of the great classics due to its atmosphere and the huge amount of things that you can do.
I'm really looking forward to playing the fourth mission once I get home from work.
