I actually quite like opening sections. Finding way forward was not easy task (and map was not that helpful), but I liked challenge. On the other hand it was hard to find the main Mcguffin and I didn't like the fact that to finish mission you must trudge through the entire level back.

I can't comment the original release of DF but I played Tough Night which was released along first release of Dark Forest and it was subpar. It is city level with very samey architecture. Very, very samey an...

I also don't find them too hard. On the other hand they are gimmicky, that's for sure. They often use some interesting trick, idea. Sometimes there are challenging chokepoints, bottlenecks. But I don't think of them as hard. I think it's matter of personal preferences.

I guess Dark Radiant is more up-to-date and popular nowadays.

I think of Short Night's Work as some kind of enhanced "remix" of Augustine's Revenge -also "low-key" city mission but bigger, better, badder. I like this one more, but surely it is not without its drawbacks. Perhaps you may like Nigel's Hidden Treasure more - it was made after AR, and is quite varying as well as Three Crowns. Perhaps to the point when it felt a bit too much varying and exhaustive in my opinion.

His other missions are very good even though they can be a bit similar to each other (circular structure of level, mixing different locations and themes for example). My personal favourites (aside from this one) are Three Crowns and Augustine's Revenge.

I think it's a bit overproduced - like Eshaktaar tried to play with player's expectations and to push himself and players outside Thief FM "comfort zone" but went too far with plot twists and puzzles appearing one after another seemingly endlessly. In the end I felt exhausted and breathed a sigh of relief.

On the other hand I think OB deserves some awe of its ambition. It's not for everyone. It's too sprawling. Perhaps Eshaktaar's small and focused Keyhunt (also puzzle-solver) is what y...

I approached Tolham as sandbox in which I am not obliged to find every piece of loot and visit every location (save it for the next time). So after completing all objectives and achieving loot goal I finished the mission.

Yeah, final showdown is more like episode from straight up shooter (like RTCW). It's complicated though: it faces you with challenge but different than usual challenge in stealth game. Esp. given poor character movement in TDS. On the other hand it was surprisingly interesting for me. Though I would rather have fully explorable Wolfenstein castle which would have been different and contrasting experience than village.

Well, since they are going to perform important ritual they must ensure that everything is okay and (esp. after treason of Keepers Aramis and Alabastor) any possible threat (including those from Keepers) is to be eliminated. Therefore extreme security measures.

Well, the humour thing is really subjective thing. I like what you don't and you like what I don't. In my opinion this mission is more or less challenging as stealth mission - partly since water is deadly here and Hanover Aldercash built lots of really nasty traps around this. That's in my opinion the biggest achivement here. Perhaps will replay it later with ghost/no blackjack in mind. As for parody/TDS mocking - well, I'm also not in his camp entirely, but sometimes itmanaged to put a sm...

Iirc it's decent mission though too much fake doors and quite boring music ambient track which mission uses for most part somehow soured things for me here.