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!
