Allow me to preface with, I did not finish the mission.

The mission feels incomplete, which is odd considering on 'The Dark Mod' forums, it gets a solid 'good' rating from roughly nine to twelve users.

I'll start with some very minor 'doesn't really change my overall opinion on their own' nitpicks. The mission does not allow you to 'harm' non-armed combatants. This means you can't knock them out, which isn't my preference, but so be it. You also start the mission with a very lean selection of tools with no shop prior, and right next to a bright lamp post (albeit, the nearest guard is far enough away they don't see you). Alone, these would be minor annoyances; together, they stick out enough that I can't really ignore them. Thief (and fan missions) encourage and reward non-linear thinking and experimentation from the player. A limited kit and a strict 'do not bonk these people' for no adequately explained reason feels to me like the creator of the fan mission has a particular way they like to play, and designed the mission to match that.

Now, onto the more relevant observations.

First and foremost, the level feels bare. There's plenty of guards, but there's an overall lack of frobbable objects that it feels like the creator only stuck to the bare minimum of things so that it was playable. The first thing that stuck out to me beyond the above was the use of 'loot-coded' objects, vases that look gold, but aren't frobbable. The first I noticed in the basement, the first right turn and down the hallway. I was annoyed by this, but figured there was other loot elsewhere. (I found two bottles of wine and a few gold objects in some glass cases in what appeared to be a hallway gallery.)

Working my way through the basement and up to the first floor, I worked my way around and through the area, until I reached a large sitting room with a giant fireplace and two gold vases far above the ground. This *screams* 'Hey, I'm valuable loot! Come up here and grab me!' Which I did, and when I reached them, they were similarly inert, and my enjoyment plummeted. A large majority of the rooms have nothing of interest. Nothing is worse in a game than going into a room and finding nothing at all, especially when there are several rooms that are like that. Most mission makers place a few coins on nightstands so there's *something*. I cannot fathom the design choices here.

Secondly, the building layout doesn't make much sense. The basement is fine, sure, and there are a few rooms that actually are sensible, like the first floor library. But then you have things like the hallway gallery, (which is serpentine in design and strikes me as designed that way simply to fill space,) as well as an absolutely cavernous room with couches and a statue in the middle which I'm generously calling a conservatory or a solar(?) but similarly has Nothing Of Interest, so why does it exist? The only thing I can really say about the design of the building is that the rooms that are pretty are visually striking, but everything is so barren of meaningful interaction that it just Kind Of Exists.

Thirdly, the mission starts off with the bog standard 'I'm robbing a rich family and they have this trinket I want'. A cliche, but one we live with because usually when a mission is the start of a series of missions, there's something that justifies the mission, usually some twist or some detail that makes it worthwhile. I consider these the introductory chapters similar to a book, where it's slow and quiet, but helps set the plot. They're usually fun enough, so I rarely complain, especially since they're kind of necessary for a series. But they rely on being fun and they rely on being at least interesting enough to get its foot in the door. And in other series, there's usually some sort of interactible objects that foreshadow future events. This mission fails to be fun, and fails to set up anything interesting.

I also double checked with the aforementioned forum on the off-chance that my copy of the mission simply bugged out and screwed up the frobbables, but as other users mentioned, the level is simply sparse of anything lootable, and devoid of anything interesting. The mission needs a serious overhaul before I can consider it anywhere near 'good'.