Thief: Deadly Shadows

love that game and whole Thief saga but 3rd and 4rth are very good

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows was built for both console and PC. So, like most games built that way back then.. the PC port got the short end of the stick.

The game levels are very small in order to fit in console limits. The old "make you do something during the loading scene" gimmick is there, where you're forced to shimmy past tightly stacked boxes, or try to pry open windows.. and all it's there to do is waste your time while things are loading. Just insulting stuff that PC gamers scoff at.

There's a town hub that missions branch off from. You restock your supplies there, but you'll quickly get bored running back-n-forth across it (just like in the Thief reboot).

They moved to the Unreal (?) engine for Thief 3, so it's no longer using Looking Glass Studio's Dark Engine. To do this, they made some sacrifices.. biggest being no rope arrows. Die hard thief fans were a bit upset by that move. Instead, you get a pair of climbing claws which are basically just used to unlock new mission areas (equipment-gating) or open up an alternate path around an enemy or so. Nothing major. (The Thief 1 & 2 modding community created whole levels around rope arrows. The Thief 3 climbing claws didn't get that same amount of love.)

The change in game engine just means things are "different" feeling. Like, knocking enemies out with your blackjack has them sort of jump and slump over instead of just falling over more naturally they way they did in the Dark Engine. It's just little things that take you out of the moment like that.

The plot is all over the place, too... and you'll be all over the place as well chasing it around. It's like they tried to mash-up the nature magics from Thief 1 with the technocracy of Thief 2, but couldn't decide where to go with it all.. so just gave up halfway through and ended with a cookie cutter "kill the foozle" plot.

If you're a Thief fan, you'll get it and play it anyways. But, if Thief 1 & 2 are compariable to coke, then Thief 3 is like diet coke. And the Thief reboot is New Coke (that tastes like Pepsi and ticked off Coke fans).