I liked Purah's previous FMs "Calendra's Cistern" and "Autumn in Lampfire Hills". However, I just can't seem to enjoy myself In Calendra's Legacy.
The campaign starts fairly strong with "A Meeting With Basso".
Here you are given free reign to explore the town of Lampfire Hill, It is quite fun and It's a gorgeous mission as well.
One notable effect is the lighting flashes that can light the player up and change where shadows are cast in certain areas.
I'm not very fond of the forced ghosting, especially when forced even on lower difficulties.
Even so, Calendra's Legacy comes to a strong first mission.
My biggest gripe with the campaign is the second mission however.
The set up for "Midnight in Murkbell" is that Garrett has to deliver an artifact to a Hammerite cardinal.
Things become complicated once Garret learns that the Cardinal has other business to attend to.
Thus, he can't wait any longer than ten minutes, or the deal is off.
A timed mission doesn't necessarily have to be bad, but only having ten minutes to navigate a labyrinthine city would be basically impossible on a first playthrough.
To help the player the optimal route is marked on your map. This turns the mission into a game of "follow the compass", and you don't have time to explore anything on your way there.
Besides being a strange design choice, it doesn't even make sense within the story.
Once you learn why the cardinal has hired Garret to deliver the artifact, you realize it makes no sense for him to reject the deal, no matter how long it would take.
Once the artifact has been delivered, Garret returns to his rented room, there he has a chat with Mercedes.
Now Garret has to steal the Artifact back from the cardinal, there is a twist however!
(SPOILERS) The whole town gets overrun by hordes of the undead! Seems like a fun twist on the mission, but this soon turned to frustration.
Trying to navigate around this winding town, while completing my objectives without any weapons and very limited amount of resources to find, makes this part of the mission progress at a snail's pace.
To add insult to injury the ending cutscene assumes that the player did the mission in a certain order.
The last mission isn't as frustrating as "Midnight in Murkbell", but it's a huge dip in quality, both design and story wise.
"A Winter's Eve" starts with Garret arriving at a rough neighborhood in Dayport.
The local Hammerite Order try to keep order, but to no avail.
Thieves have overrun the neighborhood and left it a ghost town.
The mission is set up into two sections:
The first is to help Mercedes get into a factory.
After helping her you have to kill a man named "Gaston The Red" the leader of the "Deepshine Thieves Guild".
Garrett does this due to a previous grudge against this person.
This mission has plenty of issues,it's strangely linear, there's only really three or four buildings here to explore.
What is present here is devoid of the detailed architecture of the previous missions.
I also got frustrated at the lack of shadows reliably hide in.
The campaing ends pretty abruptly as well.
Story wise, I'm not a fan of the sex obsessed narrative.
Now, I have no problem with sex appeal or even having some boobs here and there for good measure.
Calendra's Legacy however portrays things in a really juvenile way with various pin-up paintings strewn around, scrolls talk about sex and seductions and Mercedes falls pretty squarely into the femme fatale trope.
It would be fine if it was done with some self aware cheesyness, but the overall tone of the story is meant to be serious.
With all this horny stuff everywhere I have a hard time buying that this is even in the same universe as LGS' Thief games.
I don't like to to be negative against a classic. I'd have loved to enjoy this one like I did with Calendra's Cistern.
Perhaps others see something in it that i do not.
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star 4 / 10
It seems like CL evokes different feelings: I like MiM because of its challenge and because of "undead event" - which itself significantly changes gameplay conditions. The last mission while not being as good (in fact, it is quite empty and feels disjointed from the main storyline), but still has lots of stuff with the Gaston's hideout and with THAT compartment.
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The fact that Garrett has no original lines and relies on spliced together ones from the main games in the third mission, whereas he was fully voice acted in the rest of the campaign further makes it feel separate from the other two.
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I found It to be a major let down compared to CC. I play ghost only, so I should have been right at home...
The first part was...ok, I'm not a fan of puzzles though really. The second part was the worst for me though. It felt more like a maze than a city. Canals with few ways of mantling out of, dead-ends everywhere, far too confusing of a layout.
The museum was the easiest part for me actually. I got the vault done and dusted pretty quick. The marble everywhere was just annoying though. It felt more like my time was being wasted, rather than time well spent (in the end).
I guess It would have been ground-breaking back in 2002.
thumb_up thumb_down Votes: -1
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