rivendor on 14/12/2023 at 20:20
If i can get a good hour two free, i should be able to finish the last mission of The Black Parade. I've loved every minute of it.
Its definitely not what i was expecting, but feels more Thief 1 than thief 2, 2x, or most fan missions - Which I love.
So how would you rank these missions? which were your favorites, which ones did you enjoy the least? I didn't dislike any mission, I loved them all but this is my ranking.
* Mission 7 - The Long Shadow Falls
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Super fun heist, I loved having to hide the bodies for goals[/INDENT]
* Missoin 6 - Kept Away from View
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I love keeper missions, always a favorite of mine. Only issue I had with the mission was that I didn't have to follow the keeper at all to complete the mission, i thought it was gonna end if i lost him. But this may have been intentional since i think a lot of people don't like the "tracking/following" missions[/INDENT]
* Mission 2 - Where Old Faces Fade
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Thought this was going to be a simple basic mansion heist mission, it was lots of fun[/INDENT]
* Mission 5 - The Brand
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I hate zombies, but love haunted houses, this mission surprised me.[/INDENT]
* Mission 9 - Arcane Sanctum
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Loved the concept of getting in without stealing anything. But found the top of the tower really quickly (maybe accidentally) and it didn't feel like challenge at all. But loved robbing this place blind on the way out. I did feel like they could have done something more with the mages, puzzles, or something. [/INDENT]
* Mission 8 - Jaws of Darkness
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I hate zombies and creepy things. But love the tomb raider-esq missions. this was fun, with lots of surprising creepy things. that loot goal though - rough. [/INDENT]
* Mission 1 - Return to the City
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Great starter mission, i wish it was twice the size. Loved the feeling of the streets, definitely felt the influence of the design of maps like Ascend the dim valley and into the odd[/INDENT]
* Mission 4 - Death's Dominion
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Did i mention i hate zombies? There was nothing wrong with this mission. its only down here because i hate zombies. But I feel like this type of mission peaked with Catacombs of Knoss[/INDENT]
* Mission 3 - In the Lion's Den
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I love hammerites, and this mission was fun. but i found nothing surprising about it. it was pretty standard thief missions[/INDENT]
In Progress:
* Mission 10 - The Black Parade
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So far so good....[/INDENT]
How would you taffers rank them?
EDIT: Rank them here - i guess i only get 50 free participants
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View the Results(
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edit2: better poll
Vortex85 on 14/12/2023 at 20:43
10/10 missions:
7 - A perfect thief experience, loved the mansion architecture and a good mix of objectives. Was a fun to play.
9 - Awesomely architected castle(s) to rob, expert loot goal was tough but forced me to explore everything and I enjoyed the hunt and the sights and experience
8 - Really great horror experience, while a bit linear and forced path, the challenges were fun and it was full of surprises
2 - Really cool/bizarre mansion to Rob, like the Sword on steroids.
9/10 missions:
6 - Loved the city and I enjoyed the keeper place - really cool, although I felt the Keeper section was very one note for it's size... so I felt that area started to drag a bit because of the number of rooms in it. I think I would have preferred more places to loot in the city and a smaller Keeper section.
1 - Really cool city mission, fun to traverse and rob different buildings.
4 - Tombs aren't the worst but definitely one of my least favorite parts of thief. These had a lot of cool parts though and the thief section at the end was a fun treat.
5 - Old haunted city ruins are definitely not my favorite so that was a bit of a pain to get through and explore. I did enjoy the haunted house section though.
8/10:
3 - Normally I like hammerite areas and cathedrals. This one was nice but I think it was way too oversized with a lot of areas didn't have much to do in them. When I was traversing all the surrounding hummerite building to the cathedral I was wondering what the point of all of that was as there wasn't even much loot there and no real objectives in them. A solid mission, but not as fun as the others due to it being too big for it's own good.
7/10:
10 - I wanted to love this for the architecture but I flew through it. I wish there was loot or something to force exploration in this area. I just went straight to the top and finished in 20 minutes. Wasted potential, IMO.
Note, above was based on 1 playthrough only on Expert difficulty.
Also, I have seen a couple users comment about a difficult loot goal on mission 8? Fortunately, I did not have a problem with loot goal on expert on this one. Guess I got lucky! :D
Azaran on 14/12/2023 at 21:14
Any way to turn this into a poll? It will be a lot easier to get an overall idea
RippedPhreak on 14/12/2023 at 22:19
Excellent: 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9
Good: 1, 5
Average or just annoying: 2, 10 (This is mainly because I got stuck in loops of searching around for things over and over and OVER)
vfig on 14/12/2023 at 23:11
polls suck. a false illusion of meaning by adding numbers. give us your actual thoughts instead, its far more interesting.
mine:
9 - a superb piece of architecture, well integrated thematically, and a solid intro that gets the story moving instead of the usual player-beats-around-the-bush-collecting-loot-and-procrastinating-objectives trap that thief gameplay often falls into. i actually think (on expert at least) the initial reach the archmage objective shouldve required ghosting (well, no level 3 player awareness). the outer city didnt demand attention away from the story and character goals; the festival window dressing was nice.
7 - im surprised this hits no 2 for me, but it was a good mansion crawl with a fun gimmick at the start. i wouldve like a bit more floor variation though; constant tile tactics got tedious. biggest disappointment was the periscopes werent actually manned by a few ais in the security room that i could ko—the 5 minute limit on turning them off was pretty irrelevant, and they felt way too magical/mechanist just having an off switch. still had a great time overall
8 - also surprised this one is so high. the spider parts made me feel ill (thanks, arachnophobia) but i cant deny they were really well done. and the forest and highwayman camp a great foreboding intro. the middle section with the four elemental keys was the weakest: first it was unnecessarily linear (why have a hub and four keys if i have to get them in order?), and it felt kinda disconnected, each area having a new gimmick enemy in a mission already too full of new gimmick enemies. still, the ending of climbing back out and the sudden relief of daylight was so good, it pushes the mission much higher emotionally for me than all the rest.
4 - a great catacombs with a whole lot to see and explore, fun traps to evade, and lots to see. loved the skeleton guy on his skeleton horse. the dreckboun pit at the end was nice for lore, but shifted the tone of the mission distractingly, and made it a mite too long.
5 - the abandoned bits of the old quarter were beautiful desolation. the haunted mansion was nice to explore, but neither victorian architecture nor haunted mansions are much to my taste. but the mission gets an extra bump for giving the campaigns story momentum. i wish the “get past the barricade” objective had been a bit more challenging.
10 - not a lot to do besides avoid monsters and mages, but i do like a good otherworld. oppressive terrain and architecture, weird giant tick monsters, and giving the bad guy a good kick up the behind. the mission wouldnt stand alone half so well, but it is a solid cap to the campaign. that i got accidentally lost for a long while hurt my experience, but doesnt hurt the recollection.
1 - really nice small bit of city, but with plenty to see and do. good thief touristing.
2 - wouldve loved this better if it had just been the mansion with a smaller secret pagan area. the underground bits just went on far too long and were confusing to navigate—which might have worked except there was no payoff for it, either in gameplay or narrative. just glad to have finally got the vase and could get back to looting the vault
6 - a follow objective that is entirely optional was a bizarre start. feels wrong to subjugate the characters story needs and momentum to the players kleptomaniac urges, which have already had plenty of attention in the campaign with plenty more to come. the keeper facility was... yet another keeper facility. no interesting objectives in there, though the restricted library held a very fun surprise.
3 - its a hammerite cathedral, with nothing at all to note about it. i dont even remember why the chalice was supposed to be important. also felt weird that i had finished all the objectives and never even set foot in three of the outbuildings. felt strangely superfluous.
Lord Taffer on 10/1/2024 at 18:33
I finished The Black Parade campaign yesterday and here's some of my thoughts. I liked all missions in this campaign but some of them stood out more than others. For me missions 2,4,7 very the strongest ones. I think these three missions have a lot of nostalgia and it's nicely combined with all the new stuff, making them to stand out slightly from others.
Masterpiece: 2,4,7
Excellent: 3,6,8,9,10
Very Good: 1,5
Mission 2: If I had to mention only one mission as my favourite, I think it would be Where Old Faces Fade. It's got the feeling of The Sword but it's much more complex and there are very unique areas and architecture. I'd say its gameplay is maybe a bit weaker than what it is in missions 4 and 7, but the right kind of a tension mixed with The Sword style weirdness is what makes the difference for me. Also, there's still that nostalgic feeling exploring the garden like interiors than what could be felt the first time inside Constantine's mansion!
Mission 4: I've always loved Down In The Bonehoard and Death's Dominion wasn't a disappointment! Reading the map and trying to figure out my way around in this underground complex was a nice but a fair challenge. Nice details could be seen all around, e.g. thieves who came here earlier and marked the rooms if they were dangerous or not, Noirequier Extension and Albrecth Extension were top notch areas! Also, the gambling area was unexpected but welcomed change.
Mission 7: For me The Long Shadow Falls felt the most complete and flawless package of all missions in this campaign. It's layout isn't as complex as e.g. in mission 2 or 4 but the gameplay and the story are at its best! The tension in this mission is excellent and there are lovely details: captain and his dog, the rain sound filtering through windows, periscopes scanning in the corridors and the halberdiers. And, of course the chance to pay back DeWall is quite rewarding!
Overall, what a journey this was - thanks to the authors!!
I played on hard difficulty and now it's time to take a little break from The Black Parade and play some other FMs and then make a comeback and try expert difficulty.
JonathanPoindexter on 10/1/2024 at 20:52
Way too many missions are close in quality so I can't really put one over the other. I can rate them individually however.
1 - 9/10 - Great mission. Lots of verticality. Lots of buildings to loot and paths to explore. Some surprises as well, one of which kinda shook me. They didn't waste time letting us know that this Thief is gonna be much spookier than the ones we're used to.
2 - 9/10 - Another homerun. I had a lot of fun finding ways into the mansion and once I was in I had a lot of fun exploring the mansion. Very tense as well. I did get lost a bit trying to find the second key but that was more of my fault, 'cause I found the place relatively quick but had a brainfart and didn't bother to check the dead guy on the wall cause I was expecting a fresh corpse not a skeleton.
3 - 8/10 - My least favorite of the bunch. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, in fact it's a very well designed level - it was just missing something that I can't quite figure out. I think it might be the lack of a huge "starting" area similar to the ones in the other missions. Those really helped the pacing and kept the missions fresh. If this was in the original Thief, or really any of the mainline Thief games, I'd give it a 10/10 but by this expansion's standards, it's just a well-made mission and nothing more. I have seen a few claim that it was their favorite so it might just be me.
4 - 10/10 - I'll level with you guys: my favorite Thief game is Thief II, mainly because it focuses on thieving and largely abandons the horror elements of Thief Gold. But The Black Parade has actually made me have an appreciation for the Thief brand of horror, so much so that two of the four contenders for my favorite mission are both horror. Death's Dominion was not only well-designed, it enrichened my view of the world of Thief. We know that the supernatural and the mundane merge in this world, we've seen that in the earlier games, but the fact that you can seamlessly go from a city borough to a haunted tomb to an illegal gambling den and then back at that borough all in a single night really sells the idea that these people are living on the edge. And the freaking Noirequier segment was straight out of a horror game. Scared the shit out of me the first time.
5 - 10/10 - Same as Death's Dominion really. Great starting hub, very tense mission area. Hearing the whistles from the guard in the lookout getting farther and farther as you head into the bowels of the sealed quarter was a great, unscripted way to build tension. And let's not even talk about the house itself. I could barely muster the courage to enter that thing. Once the necromancer reveal happens, the tension does lighten up a bit which is a good call as by that point you will have gotten your money's worth of freaky stuff.
6 - 9/10 - Great mission. I was confused a bit because I thought I HAD to tail the keeper, just like in Assassins, but the game allows you to do your own thing and explore which is great. Loved the Keeper sentries going invisible whenever they're suspicious of you. Even though you can see a bit of their silhouettes, they actually did get me a few times when I let my guard down. The map itself, just like Halleford's mansion, was a bit too mazy but it didn't really bother me that much. The Gamall section was cool as hell but it also does turn into a game of Qwop since almost every floor is littered with tiles. Hearing her stop walking after you've made a bad move was pretty tense, though.
7 - 10/10 - Incredible mission. Didn't know how to feel about the whole carrying a dead Hammerite on my back thing but once you figure out what you have to do, it's fairly simple and doesn't take too much of the mission's runtime. I loved the non-linear design of this map. You could probably finish it in half the normal runtime if you are clinical, not even the speedrun type of clinical just knowing where to go and in what order. And finding the lore drops and figuring out DeWall's motivation was a nice touch as well. It sorta clued me in that maybe this game was not gonna have a happy ending.
8 - 8/10 - This might actually be the worst level in this game in terms of design. I didn't like Trial of Iron because it felt a bit bland in comparison to the others - this one has the opposite problem; it has some very linear level design but gets by on pure showmanship alone. You start out strong with the forest, the camp with the dead people in it, the weeping angel-type enemies and the spiders, including the big one. Then all that tension goes away as you start doing the elemental trials a la Mage Towers. And then the level remembers what it was doing at the start so it circles back to being a horror level. Only problem is that now I'm loaded up on enough firepower to topple the baron so I didn't really bother to circumvent the enemies protecting Abubtiar's tablets, not even the spider with the statues attached to it. On top of being linear it's just weirdly paced. That said, the presentation was a huge, massive plus for me and that's what elevates it from a 7/10 to an 8 in my opinion. You fight enemies here that you didn't think were a thing that could be done on Thief's engine. It's incredible
o - 10/10 - They really went all in on this level. Everything about it is a 10/10. The presentation, the design, the pacing. There is loot and lore drops at the top of the towers, but just going up there and looking at the twilight sky was a reward on it's own. Again I can't show enough appreciation for how much the guys over at Feuillade Industries have pushed the envelope on this project.
10 - 8/10 - I actually enjoyed it, might be my favorite final mission in Thief which is, if I'm being frank, quite a low bar to clear. I've seen people complain about things on this level that I didn't have much of an issue with, like the key thing. Some people thought you had to collect more than one key to get into Azaran's ritual chamber, which I can definitely see why. I didn't really sweat that the first time and thought I'd just deal with it once it comes up, so it wasn't an issue for me. The environment design was a bit too repetitive at times but it wasn't as bad, and it makes up for it by being mercifully short, which is what I needed after 9 long missions. You can't skate through it like Maw of Chaos but also you don't have to do DIY stuff like in Sabotage at Soulforge. It strikes a good balance, i think.
xavfin on 26/3/2024 at 10:37
Just finished the campaign on expert, I cannot possibly rate them mission by mission but here are my overall thoughts.
The campaign as a whole was really good. Not excellent but really good. Every mission was expertly created,
but for me the level design was too complicated. I prefer much more tightly designed layouts,
here I was almost constantly wondering where should I go next and where have I already been.
I guess I like more gamey levels instead of more realistic ones what comes to architecture:D
I managed to get most of the loot (about 75-85%) in the first few levels but after that I
lost the interest in searching as I didnt have a need for money at all.
I liked the levels without supernatural creatures the best as I'm not a big fan of the undead.
The development team has done excellent work and the whole campaign is beautiful.
I give this 8 out of 10.