In terms of ambition, this level is a 10. It tries so many things and comes close to pulling most of them off. But there are mistakes made and many issues with the game engine that starts to fall apart the more ambitious you get.

I'll start by saying this is a must-play mission, but it's one you might want to follow a walkthrough with so you don't lock yourself into a restart hours into it.

It's probably considered a medium-sized mission, but it feels very large until you understand the map. The objectives are a bit of a nightmare. Even getting the correct items and being in the right place still yields confusion.

There is an in-game store which allows you to return as often as you like, using the loot you found to buy more equipment. What is exceptionally nice about this is that the author didn't put in a loot requirement, so you can immediately spend your new trophies on water arrows or flash bombs!

NPCs will let you in doors, trigger dumb waiters, relight torches, turn on lights, etc. It's clever, intriguing, and a little frustrating, but all in all, is a great mission.

While it's a 10 in ambition, there were still problems:

There is an overuse of guards with lit lanterns roaming around. The engine bug is that after knocking out a guard with a lantern, those lanterns can pop back up in the level, fully lighting you and your surroundings, even though the lantern guard is 3 rooms back.

A couple of guards fought a spider, but then stayed permanently alert, which caused problems as they were in a major plot-advancing area.

There are the typical missing room brushes, misaligned terrain brushes, and items not flush against the brush, so they disappear into the void. There are wall textures that are set to the sky, areas where you can mantle to the void. The scale is off in a few locations where small buildings look like they were made for 15-foot-tall guards.

A pretty significant and jarring issue is the use of mid-mission cut scenes. The game freaks out a bit when they start, and the first time it happened, I thought I had crashed and reloaded the mission. It was only because I had a fair amount of patience that I realized a cutscene was loading after I retried it. Another time when a cutscene played, it didn't put my character back where it belonged, and I was locked out of the mission. Had I not saved right before, I would have lost some progress. Finally, after the first cutscene, it left a model of Garrett standing in the hall of the mission. He had no mass, so you could walk right through him, but it was clearly a bug of some sort and a little weird.

While I was reading the forums looking for clues, it became apparent that there is a mission-ending bug if you don't put out a fire at the right time. This is one of a few reasons why I suggest following a walkthrough, even on your first time playing.

There are parts of the mission that look good, but other parts are lacking, and some are even in need of some work, as the brushes used aren't aligned, or the textures don't fit, or the shape is too square, etc. This is the least of all issues, as Thief has always been a blocky game, but here would be some easy points had this been cleaned up a bit.

I went from wanting to quit the mission, to loving it... and back again ;) I finished on loving it and also know that some of the issues found are not the author's fault. But took some points away for the things that could have been avoided. It's still a great mission worthy of a patient play-through.