So I am harsher than most reviewers. For me a 5+ is a good mission, but I know most people would never dare rate anything below a 7 unless they hated it, so as a result seeing a nice round 6 made me uneasy.

Quite honestly though, I had a blast with this one.

In this mission you are doing one of those assassination jobs which I usually hate...

As someone who is reviewing FMs. Old terrible stinkers are fun to review only if they contain something unique or strange to make fun of. Or are terrible in ways that allow me to tear into the author guilt free. But most bad missions are not like that. Every FM from Koobze, to Ominous bequest, has genuine effort and work put into it, and without...

Belboz is a name that is starting to get a certain level or recognision. As well as making the awful docklands, they are also responsible for Garretts revenge, the Tricksters gem mine series, and of course, this mission.
Honestly; I have gone from dreading his missions, to absolutely looking forward to them. Pretty impressive as he is one of th...

Can I just say; Garrett should totally just buy a second set of lockpicks. Seriously, they cost him one horn of quintus, and with how many FMs involve re-stealing it, just... get some futureproofing already.
Or maybe he has done that, and Garrett has just left a trail of lockpicks across the entire city already because he is so clumsy with them...

This mission is about as good as it can be, and turns out that is pretty good.

This is a standard mansion mission, with a slightly unusual set of objectives. It's well built (some of the brushwork is a bit weak in places, this is very much pre-newdark, so I can give it a pass on that) doesn't feel overly restrictive after the initial introdu...

This mission is bad.

It is massive and does not use that space. It's full of strange design. I do kind of like the fact that one of the objective items is a rat. I also didn't spot anything obviously offensive. Unfortunately, that's where the missions good points end. It's mostly just big, bland, and ugly. With it's size making it not even a ...

One of the downsides to playing so many Fan missions is inevitably becoming jaded to "normal" missions, and naturally biased towards the more unusual FMs in thiefs fandom. (I suspect this is the reason film critics often end up prefering strange indie movies, over blockbusters.) This mission feeds perfectly into that bias.

Embracing the enemy...

The ritual is one of those missions where the meta-narrative of the author slowly improving is probably more interesting than the mission itself. You are garrett, and... well the description of the mission gives you the whole plot already, so I can skip to talking about the execution.

This mission has a lot to like. But only in it's second ha...

Equilibrium is a mission which I think has a certain degree of prestige within the community, so much so that I had no idea it was from only 2000 (Though admittedly late 2000). This is one of those missions which feels so different to everything else around it, that it honestly is mindblowing.

Equilibrium is about 5 rogue keepers trying to ki...

Stronghold is a fun mission to talk about. It's not good, not by any stretch, but it's also not bad in the normal way. It's creative, it tries a lot of things (probably too many things), and honestly I can't help but feel it has a certain charm.

In this mission, you are stealing a sword. It's probably evil or something, and it's deep undergro...

This mission looks old. More accurately, it looks on about the same level as something like poor lord bafford, which released in the first couple of months of dromed being out. It is... certainly stylisticly challenged. Doors do not fit in their doorways, carpets are raised up off the floor, and generally effort was low. In short, this does not ...

The third and final installment of "the Docks" series. This mission is really more like 3 missions squished together, the first thirdbeing a hammerite church, and the final third is a secret mechanist base.

Those two sections, are creative, and do enough cool things to keep me entertained.

The middle of the mission is taken up with a short...

I am a harsher reviewer than most people who play thief. I think that is obvious. While 1s are pretty rare from me, I use the entire scale where possible, and this does make those rare high marks actually mean something.

Even with that in mind, the fact that this mission has a 4 star rating is bizarre to me. It leaves me wondering if I am mis...

This is a short, boxy, mansion heist. It feels extremily basic at first glance, but it's gameplay, as is often the case, solid. Despite it's primitive design, it has some nice features, and some interesting things to find.

Apparantly this was a short test mission before the author moved on to larger projects. Tragically, these larger projects...

I feel like as I move through 2000, I am starting to hit a weird mid-section between the early 1999 missions that are sometimes played out of curiosity, and the more fondly remembered missions from the mid 2000s. It doesn't help that even the best of these old FMs tend to be average by todays standards, sometimes I wonder if there is any reason ...

One of the great things about working through the backlog of old FMs is that occasionally, I encounter something that is actually rather clever, but virtually unknown. The Thieves Quarter is one such mission. It is a short city/haunted-cathedral mission which has a remarkably cool and interesting enviroment.

The start of the mission is a low ...

Order of the vine is a T1 FM about robbing a pagan cult. The cult sits inside a mansion which can only be accessed via a long waterway, and contains a huge number of guards, and secrets.

It should be no suprise that as a T1 pagan mission, it includes quite a few soft magical elements, and a certain amount of horror. However gameplay wise, thi...