First of all, I knew this is going to be Thief Gold's "swansong" or something to that tune, so I expected just the same, went in with almost no NewDark enhancements, all stock T1 resources. All the levels definitely did look very well, much better than the original TG of course.

Now, despite TDP being my favourite out of all Thief games, it has its faults to me, big faults. These being the Undead levels, and the Undead Labirynthian levels. Despite the atmosphere these level have, they are not at all as nice and comfy to play. Which is all that matters in a game really, how you play them. Map that doesn't tell you jack sh*t, figuring out which part of the level you are right now in, and how did you even get here, and enemies that just give completely zero motivation to use stealth to avoid them, Undeads. It's a combination that always made me straight up wish for these levels to end, or to just skip to the part with actual humans/civilization.

And I felt, that The Black Parade is definitely heavy on this front, too heavy for my tastes unfortunately. Granted, there was no "The Lost City" level of dipsh*tness, not at all, but things were not too good. I felt like the levels that I liked, even loved in The Black Parade, were always the shorter ones/not many enough, compared to the undead/tomb ones. Balance was not achieved. And that's why I rated gameplay as 7/10 only. It's just not exactly a Campaign made for me. But then you could say about the same for Thief Gold, from about halfway through till the end, when it gets worse and worse with each mission (yeah, Cathedral was dreadful to me, but there are worse missions). Mission 6 should have been split into two separate missions though, most definitely. I felt happy that it's just this one small little place, and I'm off to discover what happens next to Hume. And then... it's a whole other thing. Felt like some boring chore was thrown right in my face at that very moment.

Atmosphere, humour, little things in the levels - they are all gucci and great. Audio cues, flickering lights, lighting. All that stuff - it's all good.

Story-wise I thought the readables and overall lore of the campaign was absolutely brilliant, with many things alluding to other Fan Missions or the original Thief Gold game. Main Story of Hume was... interesting, very Thief-like, although pretty predictable in the end. You knew what was gonna happen eventually, and from the "statue" onwards, it was all straightforward. Well, except the very end, that I did not expect to end how it ended. Plus for that.

Overall my rating is 8/10, as it is a very good homage to Thief Gold, but the balance between undead/tombs and human/city fell a bit too much on my much-disliked side of the former, for which I'm saddened, but I understand that I might not be in the majority with this opinion - peeps apparently even "liked" The Lost City, in non-zero numbers, which is to me unfathomable! But hey, that's how it goes sometimes.