The reviews make it sound like a really great game. Everything I see and hear otherwise sounds awesome as well. I started playing too and loved the first two rooms. Sure, the interface is old style but we grew up with this, right? And then the bugs start. Suddenly I'm in a completely different place than I just was. In the mud somewhere. No it's not an enemy that can teleport me and that I just have to figure out how to beat. It's a glitch that's not fixable unless you install Arx Libtertatis, which still hasn't managed to produce a release that isn't flagged by Windows Defender. Sorry but not gonna risk it, even though it looks totally fine. The game is basically unplayable.
The reviews make this game seem right up my alley, so I grabbed it when it was on sale. I'm returning it now. The game's controls are not very precise. I constantly had to adjust back and forth, as cars would oversteer, Sean would turn too far or not far enough. The camera is quite jumpy when it follows these moves (it seems like you can basically only turn/walk in pre-defined amounts, i.e. not very precisely and the camera follows suit. Turns out this game was primarily made for consoles with a basically non-existent save system even though it constantly tells you that you can save at any time in the pause menu it then tells you that you will loose all progress. While there are checkpoints within the mission that wouldn't be half bad, I want to be able to save that progress at least. I don't know when I will be able to play and for how long, so if I loose progress just because I had to go do something else, that just adds to the frustration. Nag: While by itself this would be something to just work around once and forget about it, it's impossible to customize the controls. While the game allows you to choose custom keys, it simply tells you that a key is already in use and won't reassign. You have to manually find that action and assign another key temporarily to then be able to assign the key you wanted. I wanted to like the game and finally set out to actually remap all the keys today but it just got so tedious that after the other experiences with the game I decided to return it. It all adds up. Don't frustrate the gamer. Help him enjoy your game! For what it's worth, the graphics are still nice, even for being an older game, nice ambient music and voice acting create a great atmosphere but I just couldn't go on try to enjoy this because the controls and save system just won't make it fun for me.
Glad I "ignored" the reviews saying it no longer works because of ladders and lockpicking. While it's true that it can be an issue on newer systems (nothing really to do with Windows 10 it seems) this apparently has been an issue for a long time and has nothing to do with the GoG (or Steam) versions. If you google the lock picking issue it's easy to find this for example: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019302113-Thief-3-Deadly-Shadows-lockpicking-issue?product=gog Which links to a really old thread about the Sneaky Upgrade and it works perfectly. Been playing Thief DS without any issues by simply installing this before even playing for the first time, left it all on default settings. Now depending on your exact system you might need to do other things but it's all part of the linked forum post. There are even some pretty new discussions on there from 2022. As for the game itself: It's Thief! I can't fathom I hadn't seen that Thief DS was a thing. I played the original and Thief II extensively way back when, so very glad I can now play this one without a hitch and I don't even need a good system and spend lots of money like I would've back then. Works very nicely on this cheap, previous, previous gen business grade laptop that won't even be allowed to upgrade to Windows 11 w/ an Intel HD 520 integrated graphics chip.
I've played this game like 10 times now over the years. Gave the GoG version a try despite some of the critical reviews. Works flawlessly so far on Windows 10, which is why I bought the GoG version. Great SWAT game if you like this sort of game. The game itself is still great. It's a sweet spot of "good enough" graphics (can run on modern displays with large resolutions and runs on Very High on cheapo integrated graphics), configurable enough controls (no Tomb Raider or Duke Nukem mess) and replayable game play, because even if you replay the same mission right away, nothing is entirely predictable.
