The stealth is finicky at best, the combat is bad, the movement is bad, and theres so much inconsistent stuff it almost leads me to believe this game has hidden RNG mechanics. Sometimes enemies will hear you from the other room while you are sneaking and other times you can practically sprint up behind them without being detected. There are also traps on some missions which can only be triggered by the player even though they are just pressure plate traps. The lighting engine is also bad. This is esp a problem as one of the core game mechanics is built around the lighting system. If you are "in the light" you are much easier to be seen vs "in the dark." Problem is, sometimes very dark areas are considered "light" and lighter areas are considered "dark." There are even areas with the same level of light, in direct view of or even right next to each other, which are not treated as the same light level by the game. Do not bother with this game, just find a more modern stealth game. This genere is one of my favorites of all time. Even lots of the Assassins Creed games others didnt like I still somewhat enjoyed just because I like stealth mechanics. But Thief was so tedius, frustrating, and poorly executed that I could not enjoy it. From what Ive seen in later games they got the execution much better overall
(Quick note: This is solo experience only thus far) Even on the lowest difficulty this game is extreamly punishing. There are ceiling turrets all over the place which have perfect accuracy and will kill you/your allies with only a few shots. The TTK for these turrets is literally seconds while they tank entire mags from your main weapons. The only real way to deal with the turrets is do go to the pause menu to "hack" them ie press a button and wait ~5 seconds and that it. There are a few enemy types who have the same problem of killing you in seconds while having massive health pools. All emenies basically do very little damage and die fast or will single handedly end your run in literal seconds. There are side objectives which reqire you to explore maps. But the game harshly punishes you for every moment spent in mission. You are activly discoraged from doing the needed exploring. Its esp punishing when you take time to go exploring, get insta killed by one of the few actually dangerous enemies, then lose 10+ minutes of progress due to there being zero checkpoints. This game, from everything Ive seen and heard, is only fun with some friends. Otherwise it is a tediuos and unbalanced experience.
