<Username> on 10/1/2023 at 20:41

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Rather conflicted about this one. Overall, a good mission with many things to like, but there were some key decisions made during creation which made my playthrough rather tedious.

I normally play on the highest difficulty level. Due to the limit on the number of NPCs you are allowed to blackjack, I opted for the easiest difficulty on my first playthrough. I might replay the mission on the highest difficulty to form a better basis for my opinion on Knife to the Heart.

Stats:
* Easy difficulty
* 64 minutes (felt longer)
* 81% loot
* 0 hints needed
Elements I liked:
* The concept for the mission is sound and something I have not seen done quite like this before. You explore castle grounds with several buildings. After you complete the main objective, two factions inside the castle grounds start fighting each other.
* There are several optional objectives. It is your decision if you want to try to complete them.
* The challenge level felt right, and I needed no hints to complete the mission on the easiest difficulty.
* Depending on the difficulty level, you must find up to three special loot items. You can find notes in the mission on what the special loot items are, along with hints on where to find them.
* Like in the previous three missions in the Cabal series, the cutscenes are great.
* Different areas of the castle grounds feature different ambient music.
* You can find A LOT of arrows and other useful items in this mission.
* I don't recall seeing the model of the cannon in the original game or in previous T3 fan missions. It looks nice.
* The model of the castle in the administration building is neat.
* The note about the moat creature is pretty funny.
* I appreciated the details in rooms like the power room and the furnace room below the Baron’s estate.
* The courier grabs the letter and carries it in his hand.
* I love how you immediately hear unholy screams from the crypt in the chapel after you read the note on the wall that is *definitely* not haunted.
* You can turn handles on the walls of some rooms to turn off gas-powered lights on the ceiling.
Elements that could be improved:
* The mission is too big for its own good. Many areas and rooms feel rather empty. The outside areas are large and there is not much to do in them. The rooms in the interiors sometimes are just rectangular boxes with no architectural details. The Baron’s estate is lined with boring corridors and doors to rooms that often contain nothing of note. In some, there are just a few standard objects like a bed, an empty shelf, an empty chest, and a light source. Searching them was a tedious exercise. Getting rid of some of the many superfluous areas and rooms would have improved the mission in my opinion.
* Similarly, there are too many locked chests in sleeping quarters. Picking them all got tedious.
* Books also follow the "more is better" approach. There are too many books. Some of them I felt were not worth reading because they contained no interesting lore and no clues. Reducing the number of books and keeping the ones with the most engaging journals would have improved the mission.
* I am not a fan of the limits on all difficulty levels on the number of times you are allowed to be spotted, can blackjack, or outright kill the NPCs in this mission. It turned out to be not so bad in the mission itself, because you can easily sneak around most NPCs, but for the first hour of real game time I felt rather annoyed by this.
Bugs:
* The courier is a bit broken: He kept walking in circles between the room on second floor where he starts and the landing of the first floor. Sometimes he got confused and kept walking into a wall. He even managed to get spooked by open doors he himself had opened just moments earlier. I tried quicksaving and reloading multiple times. It did not work. He finally continued his path from the first-floor landing after I moved ahead of him and closed the door to the staircase behind him. Then he just stopped a few steps east of the Baron's throne. Nothing could get him moving again. So, I reloaded a couple more times and then he managed to get beyond the throne. After he passed this point, he made it to his destination without further issues.
* If you knock out the Black Guard with the torch in the castle courtyard, he does not drop the torch.
* The woman in an outside area next to a set of wooden tables and two sitting men is cleaning the air, not the tables.
* One of the guards in the area where the Keeper books are burned patrolled right through the fire and died.
* You can lean into safes and chests, bypassing the need to unlock them. This is a common issue in T3 missions.

llock19490 on 4/2/2024 at 13:09

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I said it for the first one and I'll say it again, THANKYOU! these have been so much fun.