OVERALL: 4 (5)/ 10

THE GOOD:

The map is huge and there's plenty of secrets and hidden loot throughout the city. The city is the best part of the mission in my opinion! The reason why your client is being followed is actually pretty funny also.

BUGS:

!! Note I'm using Linux and Proton to play this mission, so these bugs may be caused by that. Still, these bugs affected my play session !!

They're several ledges that you can't seem to mantle over, causing potential softlocks.

* The basement where Benny's lunch is at. The player can't get out after dropping in. The hole is to small for the player to jump through, and the ledge doesn't allow you to mantle properly. Only way out is to jump and hope your model clips through.

* The smugglers hideout has a few wells that you can swim through to sneak pass the guards. Problem is once you're in the well, you're never getting out. Garret can't seem to mantle the ledges correctly and he falls right back down into the water, trapping the player indefinitely. This caused me to lose about 30 mins of progress by the way. I quick save often and back up saves only once in a while. Once I realized I was stuck, I had to reload another save.

* The bridge in the gallery where the apebeast and tree demon are guarding. If you jump off the bridge into the water below, you're screwed, there's no way back up. Even though the bridge railing is within jumping distance, Garret refuses to grab the edge and pull himself up.


THE PACING:

The mission is a bit to long. It borders on the tedious. The player will more than likely be exhausted by the time they reach the main building. I think splitting the maps up into two missions instead of just one would have helped alleviate this problem., as It also feels like it should be.


PUZZLES:

I'm gonna flat out say it F*ck these puzzles. A lot of the hints for these puzzles are either misleading or to vague to be helpful. The two examples that are the most outrageous are the entrance to the Crypt and the bookcase inside the Gallery.

1. The entrance to the crypt requires you to shoot a holy arrow into a door, sounds simple enough. Problem is there's no indication that the door is the object you're suppose to shoot. The headstone marker is the only object you seem to be able to interact with, so naturally I thought that I needed to find either a holy object in the Chapel or shoot it with a holy arrow. Neither worked, had I not been irritated and decide to rapid fire a bunch of holy arrows all over the place , I would have never hit the door.

2. Inside the Gallery you're supposed to go into the curator's room and unlock a hidden door using a book switch. The switch is very easy to miss. So again, I decide that I must have missed something after I searched that room several times and found nothing . There's several journals near the gallery that make mention of the cities power problems and that the guards can't go through the front gate because the power was off. I also just passed several areas that had generators chugging in the background. This led me to believe that I needed to turn on the power to the front gate to get it open. NOPE, just flavor text! I spent about 30 mins looking for ways to turn on the power only to give up and look for a walk-through. And then I see I missed the book switch.

ATMOSPHERE:

The cities atmosphere is actually really lively and it feels like an actual festival is taking place! I enjoyed my time sneaking through the streets and robbing the drunken folks of their worldly possessions, The Gallery, on the other hand , doesn't succeed in the atmosphere it was trying to set up. I can't put my finger on it but, the gallery just fails at being this spooky place that's cursed by the Hammer's Rattle. The area is still to clean despite the obvious murder. And the level is also to well lit. Had they removed most of the lights , added more dirt and grim to the area , and added more undead enemies to main area. I think they would have nailed. As it stands, it's just a whatever location.

All in all I really didn't enjoy my time with this one. The City section is great. But this mission drags on for way to long, the bugs can absolutely ruin your progress and several of the puzzles aren't intuitive, requiring almost precognition to figure out.

Whoa, if this is 4/10, then I really want to see you rate other big Newdark missions ^
Yeah, it’s challenging, but if anything, it’s one of the FAIREST of the challenging FMs I’ve ever played.

And while everyone’s entitled to their opinion on pacing or puzzles, rating this a 4 in terms of atmosphere is simply ridiculous from someone who’s played any Thief before. No way around it.

When I tried to play this map I soon found myself with more keys than a grand piano, about twelve locked doors, and none of my keys opened any of the doors. I had to bash everything down. I felt bad for not liking the map considering how great it looks and how amazing all the reviews were, but I was frustrated and bored by it too.

@andyln I deducted points from the atmosphere because of the bugs I encountered . Losing 30-40 mins of my life because the game wouldn't let me climb several ledges really soured my mood. And it didn't happen once either because, I assumed it was a one off. Again I use Linux's and steams proton layer to play most of my games, so that may be the reason I encountered the bugs. Still I really didn't like the Crypt or the Gallery because the hints for the puzzles (IMO) led me to believe something entirely different. The mission also drags on for a bit to long. The Black Parade (minus the first mission) and The Scarlet Cascabel have pretty long missions as well. But those missions never feel like they drag on. So there's definitely a misstep happening here. I have played quite a few FM's as well and, this one, is the first FM that really rub me the wrong way.

"Whoa, if this is 4/10, then I really want to see you rate other big Newdark missions "

It really isn't. It's worse than the other missions by the same author, but, it's still a very good mission (and, the other missions set a VERY high standard anyway).

That said, I won't and can't argue about taste. And, I won't distribute downvotes because of it either, like some other people on this site.

Imagine being so low IQ that you cant get a Mission to run on Gnu/Linux without Bugs and them blaming the Mission. Complaining about the "puzzles" sounds like a skill issue. Giving the Mission a 1/10 for Story when there is so much world building etc is also crazy.
Almost Feels like a paid actor lmao

I suspect RakuNana might not have the new mantle on. You indeed cannot get out of Benny's hideout without it, and I think the same might be true of the wells and the canal thing.

And there's really no need for that rudeness.

You're right, I went a bit too hard and apologize for that. But to be fair, there is also no need for their attribution bias. Not being able to configure the most basic things and then blaming the mission and rating it bad because of that just harms the creator and the perception of the mission. Other points they try to make are contradictory.

@Decarabium I don't think it's "Low IQ" to express your honest experience with any given medium. These were my honest thoughts of the mission. And no I don't think giving criticism albeit harsh or otherwise is discouraging to a creator, this is how people grow. I never attacked nor insulted them either. I love the authors other mission "The Scarlet Cascabel" every problem I had with "Morbid Curiosity" was either addressed or fixed, glitches not withstanding. So it's obvious that even they realized some of the same problems I did. I'm new to the site and wasn't aware that I could rate the mission without using the widgets on the bottom, I'll remove them if possible, since it's not really accurate.

@thebigh Does "new mantle" not install with the Tfix? It's been awhile since I fiddled around with the files so, I can't remember if that's an option or not. I got it to work , so I didn't want to mess with it anymore after that!

It does install with it, but, you have to activate it in the cam_ext.cfg file. See here: https://www.google.com/search?q=thief+new+dark+how+to+activate+new+mantle&oq=thief+new+dark+how+to+activate+new+mantle

I had MASSIVE issues in nicked's Behind Closed Doors mission before I activated newmantle. I couldn't climb anything, really.

@chakkman Thank you! I appreciate the help! I'll dig through the files and see if I can get it to work properly. Godspeed!

edited: Thanks buddy! Tested it in this mission and that fixed the problem! I can mantle like normal now, just like god intended! Thank you again!