Ascend the Dim Valley is a shining example of what the culmination of 20 years worth of FM's can and should lead to. I clocked in at a bit over 4 hours, trying to explore the entire map, and even then I ended up with ~4700 with 1000 loot missing.

The map is massive, placed within a small valley where two opposing lords in their mansions/castles face one another, and you must loot both of the huge buildings along with areas adjacent. The level design is labyrinthine in nature, greatly owed to the sheer height of the world map and closely placed buildings, leading to a feeling of smallness and being lost. However, this is superbly done, because deceptively, the level design is in a way quite linear, albeit with branching paths and the freedom to explore the map in the direction you choose. When you spend 30 minutes or an hour taking a side route wondering where you are, there will be a passage you find that circles back on your original path, ensuring that you are never truly lost but at the same time allowing you to play at your liberty without any hand holding. Another pleasant note, while the vertical scale was massive, at the same time there was not much emphasis on rope arrow usage, which was smartly designed to avoid "pixel hunting" to find every possible wood surface in the map, which would have definitely been a mark against had it been the case. The visual design is also amazingly done, with very nice textures and particle effects stretching Thief Gold to its limits in terms of how modern it can be presented, on top of a consistent and aesthetic architecture. The maps given were also competently drawn, able to tell you where you were but not showing you everything, and being complicated enough that after obtaining maps, it would take half an hour or an hour before you could mentally place yourself on it, which was another added challenge to enjoy. The atmosphere felt chilling and sinister, with a feeling of isolation in the valley, and at many moments I expected undead or other monsters to appear and they never came, which speaks to how well the atmosphere was crafted by the author.

Shadow placement was good, and npc placement was all good as well, giving the mission some challenge but not being punishing. There is plenty of loot to be found as well as other items. The story was good enough, but only until about the last third of the mission did I finally start finding all of the story related readables to explain what was going on. A briefing at the start to set the stage and context would have been welcome. Also, there was not much of the two children in the mission despite their importance in the readables, so having more context behind them would have helped.

An absolute must play for every FM collection, worthy of archival.