Thief™ Gold

Game is great, very immersive and mechanically impressive. Sound design and voice acting are the keystones here, as there's barely any music, most of it is droning or ambient. Thieving parts are really fun. Never played the game in my childhood, it still holds up. Navigating the levels with jumping and climbing is also great. Finished on Expert straight away! Level design is good (for the time), though some of the levels are clearly underdesigned, having just completely empty unlit rooms here and there. The general approach to design, especially normal mansions and castles, is simply to make them realistic, which has its pros and cons (they are more believable, but don't have much to explore). "Gold" levels are an exception, nice to see the developers' progress in this regard. But all the mechanics fall quite apart when combat is involved, especially the difficult enemies in the last 3 missions, which you must eliminate to meet the win conditions in "Strange Bedfellows", they love to stand together in groups of 2-3. Managing infinitely rising zombies after running out of ways to kill them while you explore some levels was also a chore, especially in the "Return to the Cathedral". The light system is nice, but is quite unreliable in terms of where it's dark, shadows on the ground can be very misleading. Mechanics of sound propagation and different floor material affecting your traversal in my opinion are what makes this game a gem. Looking forward to the Thief 2, praise the Builder!

Very fun stealth that you only get in games like dishonored. Except in that game you're a god amongst men. Here, you're just a guy who has to sneak to survive. Absolutely worth it on sale since the trilogy is only like $3

One of the best games of it's time. Easy to understand for the beginner player in RPG genre. I keep returning to play it every few years!

It's old. But it's one of the best games ever made. Just trust me on this.

Thief began my love affair with skulking and ambushing in video games. Nothing has ever quite matched the experience. Some, like Dishonored, come fairly close. Some like Styxx offer a fun twist. But then there's others like Kingdom Come which don't quite know how to make it work well or logically. Or Deus Ex where it was just too easy expecially with the overall push toward violent solutions. Thief is perfect because it gives the player full knowledge of all relevant stealtth conditions at all times. The light level is not guess work. Guards react to noise appropriately. Nothing feels random. The best part is that the game lets you really play out your inner taffer. Gathering gold is a mission objective and directly affects what equipment you get on the following one. Expert mode (the only mode to play, really) adds so much more to each level and removes the easy out of slaying random guards in your way. You never have to play with a "limit" to get the full experience....but you could always try ghosting. I wish games like this were still made.