Glad you enjoyed it. It's a fantastic mission.

It gets you in the mood for all the goodies to come. Like, one of the best mission of the Thief series, the Bonehoard... *speaks with a deep evil voice*

BTW, downvoting someone for his opinion is the most stupid and immature thing there is. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

It's a lovely campaign. If anything, I'd criticize that some of the design/architecture shows that it's a rather old mission, and that some of the missions are a bit average. All in all, it was a lot of fun though, and a really "round" experience.

If you like a pirate setting (like me), this is definitely an essential mission/campgin.

Shame you didn't enjoy it as much as I did.

"The Violent End of Duncan Malveine contains some novel elements: a randomized objective/clues, a collecting aspect, and guards that can switch between bow/sword at will. Of these three, the last one was probably the one that I liked the most, even though it's the most understated aspect of the mission. Why is that?"

Probably because either - people K.O. everything there is, or they ghost. In neither case, people will even make acquaintance with the guards' weapons.

BTW, I think you're ...

PunkRubberRiley, the Tom Cruise of ThiefGuild and Steam forum posters.

You are the Katy Perry of ThiefGuild and Steam forum commenters.

Malazar's Inscrutable Tower is one of the best FMs there is, in my opinion.

While I liked Catacombs of Knoss, the mission gets a bit crazy with difficulty in the second half of the second mission (just like in Legacy of Knoss). Starts of rather easy in the first mission, and gets to very hard in parts in the second mission. A bit inconsistent in terms of difficulty.

There is exactly a single mission with a (understandable) no K.O. objective in Thief 2, and that is the Masks mission.

Think about it: When you rob people of everything they have, no one cares about some knocked out guards. When you kill everyone, on the other hand, that is a big problem, as no employer or fence wants to have a bloodbath on his hands, which obviously attracts a lot of negative attention.

Ghosting objective are either VERY rare cases where they make sense (I really can't...

Yeah, that was my point, and, why I think the best missions, and best games let you play the way you want.

And, if I recall this mission correctly (it's been a while), it doesn't really force you to any specific play style. Otherwise I wouldn't have liked it, I guess. ;)

@marbleman: That is just not true. I can't count the amount of times people who like to ghost told people who knockout guards that they're doing it wrong, and the skilled way to play is ghosting.

Even FM authors: Why implement useless non-KO objectives? It makes no sense at all.

Let the player decide how he plays. That's the big plus with most immersive sims. No need to decapitate that, by forcing a certain play style onto the player.

That said, I don't really understand the discussi...

This mission is absolutely insane. Insane in terms of quality. Shows again that PukeyBrunster and Tannar belong in the top 3 of FM authors, after their near perfect The Scarlet Cascabel. I would even say that The Scarlet Cascabel is the best fan mission I ever played, and, this is of similar quality, albeit very different in terms of setting, of course. Although this is a "seasonal" fun mission, it's very thoroughly thought out, and coherent in itself.

Best mission in Thief II. Period.

One of the absolute best indeed.

That's the thing with making the missions much harder than the original missions were.

I'm pretty positive it's exactly what the level designers wanted it to be. 😉

One of my least favorite missions of the original campaign as well. This, and The Sword. I just don't like them. The architecture of Constantine's mansion, lots of noisy surfaces, hard enemies, which are placed almost unfairly in some places, and the fact that it's not a typical loot mission. Not my cup of tea.

Not that I really dislike any of the mission of the original campaign, but, this is surely the one I least like. 4/10 or 5/10, probably.