I remember being pretty okay with having the same level being used twice in a row, back during my first playthrough. However, when playing on Expert, you spend a lot more time in this mission. This means that returning to it becomes much more grating.

This time, I realized that there is no reason to actually have this mission. It's clearly meant to pad out the campaign, which wasn't needed. The campaign of Thief II is amazing. This just brings it down a notch. Finding secrets is fun. Being forced to find secrets, not so much. Mapping out levels is something I love doing. Being forced to? Meh. The fact that you have to do it all again in the next mission just makes it more egregious.

To add insult to injury, there's some broken stuff here. The ghosting objective doesn't really work. I have had this mission fail without even being seen. I've also been seen and not have the mission fail (thank god, because I quicksaved right before it). Accessing the secret passages is sometimes annoying, thanks to the big hitboxes of the doors.

I genuinely regret not skipping this mission, for this will likely make Masks feel boring and repetitive. At least the library section is pretty awesome (they could have just put that sequence in Masks, though).