I haven't played Thief in a very long time, but recently returned to the series and replayed everything and figured I'd give the fan missions a try. Wow, have these come a long way...I remember playing FMs back in the day and thinking the talent and passion people showed was incredible back then, but some of the FMs released now are truly extraordinary.

Enter The Black Parade, which by all accounts is a real triumph. I think it perfectly captures the atmosphere of the original game in gameplay and presentation, including the cutscenes which were jaw-droppingly well done. The levels are expansive past anything I would ever have expected possible for the old Thief games, and the free-form flow of many of the levels means there's a great degree of varying approaches one can take to them. And the attention to detail with in-game texts, including personal letters and newspapers that are often completely irrelevant to the task at hand really helps add a feeling of life to the city and its inhabitants.

I do have a couple of quibbles, which is why I rated it a 9 instead of a straight 10. The voice acting is overwhelmingly very well done, with loads of humorous side conversations and other snippets of dialogue. The main character though I found grating. Also, while I appreciated the expansiveness of many of the levels there were certain sections that felt illogical in their layouts...like the exterior was formed first, and the interiors were carved out to use the space but without much thought to whether it would have made sense for it to look that way in the first place. Thief has always had some odd architecture resulting in strange room shapes/uses, but there were many times in this that made be consciously note a layout made no sense. Along with this, the reliance on Thief's horrible jumping/mantling system meant I save scummed a LOT; it's just unavoidable for these levels with such sheer verticality. The last level also, while another example of ambitious level design, was a bit of a letdown...one I flew threw, and it didn't really feel like playing Thief.

Great review. Black Parade is an amazing achievement, but it's not perfect. I'd say: try more fan missions, there are popular missions that far exceed Black Parade's levels in terms of ambition and scope.

If you look out for missions made by authors Nicked, Skacky, Melan, Schlock, DirkBogan, DrK, Firemage, Random_Taffer, and some other notable ones, you won't regret it.