Rose Garden is not necessarily a good culprit here, I would say it's just as tightly packed as it gets for the amount of gameplay on offer. The coup is that it FEELS that way (ie big) at first by design choices. But yes, the prime notorious examples for unnecessarily big just for the sake of it are many and numerous. Looking at you, Feast of Pilgrims.

7.8 is actually pretty high for an older mission, older stuff is typically underappreciated here and goodies can still be found even in the 6-7ish range (while with most recent ones it's tendentially the other way round, or the law of current bias)

This is subjective but yes, AFAIR (spoilers galore) the woman in BF is the girl from EV, and EV explicitly takes place by in-game information as a side story right after L'Arsene, and both the stories (fleetingly) connect in EV in that we also meet L'Arsene there, so all take place in the same universe (in the above order on the timeline).

It can actually be counted as part of the (loose) L'Arsene series (L'Arsene, Emilie Victor, The Korrigans, The Den, this) by the same author that follows Garrett's tribulations with the key protagonists. L'Arsene is author's first but all are arguably classics. Special recommendations: The Korrigans and Emily Victor.

The Fireshadow is added by TFix (as many other things, such as the "little big world" section in The Sword) also to the original (Dark Project) version of the game. It is of course an improvement but in a way it is a sad aspect that the original version of the game "as it was" with all its little differences (both gameplay- and engine-wise, sometimes intertwined ) is not playable on modern setups in any way anymore. For example, how many players today know that you could get enemies drown ...

Interesting, but I am unsure if this deserves a straight unequivocal 1 - I've seen much worse that clearly does. This to me has its bizarre charms of the very early or "naive" fms.

I have no axe to grind here but I think you're being slightly unfair to it (definitely in rating) by overfocusing on an aspect or two of the mission and disregarding the whole rating picture. This was arguably the second best mission of its era and I think what most players liked about it was precisely that being caught offguard after a seemingly another dull dour (not so, there are fineries) run-of-the-mill mansion heist by the depths and lengths it went into, all well made and executed wit...

To me also it's actually a 7.5-7.75/not a straight 8 due to the slightly repetitive level design/assets/secrets approach and no surprises/unique situations of any kind but still a clear step forward (not least in overall conciseness) from Into the Dark Forest Rem. where some parts of the map were just entirely redundant run-throughs (and there's again no shortcut of any kind to get back to the start once all is done but this time it's at least less gross given the slightly more manageable mis...

Kept Away From View: just follow the courier, erm rogue, erm keeper* (*according to campaign authors).

The transformation in the library could have had some real impacts in the campaign, as it is it feels ultimately very self-contained (and references to something that plays far after the originals should have been kept to a minimum) - that and the weirdly mechanical feeling about the sanctum's layout and (far too regular) geometry, as if made first using an automated tool and the rooms ...

There's not just a sword (blade) with holy weapon and other interesting properties you can get easily in this (2nd) mission but also and notably a very complicated, cool & awesome scripted procedure (with an equally cool guide) to get an even more potent AoE (mostly) one-shot weapon against the undead (with limited charges so to be used wisely), one of the ingredients for which also functions as a "sort of" funny lesser weapon, in addition to several holy water potions, one of which again in...

Emotions of course are perfectly normal but only acceptable in a rating if considering a mission as a whole, which again brings me back to what maybe should be considered a rule/encouraged guideline: Only rate a mission once you completed it.

Erm you still playing/haven't finished it but already rated it?

The rating logic of some reviewers evades me.

And this is how we continue to get 1 or 3 star ratings for objectively good (and even some of the best) missions that clearly don't deserve it.

It's a shame you haven't played Calendra's Legacy first. That's the Source.

I noted the occasional models in long coats (they're here also for the record) but I mean the "standard"/reskinned rogue models w swords and bows.