In Trial By Night you are a new recruit to the local thieves' guild and are set loose in the darkened streets of the City for a test. You are to meet with Drannor, your instructor, but things get a bit out of control from there. The city is very well designed with narrow streets, pipes and other stuff to keep players interested. It looks very much like an OM, and has a great amount of detail throughout. The Hammerite chapel is also quite nice overall, with a nice little garden. The mission is kind of small, but the layout is so brilliantly made you won't realize this until you have all the keys and have explored everything. Exploration includes breaking into various households, pipe-climbing, sewer-trekking and Hammerite-kabonging. The atmosphere is also masterfully done, with great distribution of ambient sounds. I don't think there is one place in the entire mission that has no ambient sound. It feels gritty, dark and rundown, which is exactly what I expect from a Thief 1/Gold mission.

The mission is rather hard, with sometimes hard to avoid AIs, especially indoors. You will need all the water arrows you can gather. While playing on Expert, you will also need to find at least 99% of the total loot, and needless to say some of it is extremely well hidden and will most probably require you to consult a lootlist. Which is a real shame. There are also some nasty traps, but you can disable/spot them with a bit of observation. Some of the climbing parts are a bit awkward sometimes (but made significantly easier with NewDark) but they really feel rewarding. Most households will require you to find a way around, most of the times through the maze-like sewers, since the doors are locked and you'll need the corresponding keys. The texts are well-written and the story is pretty interesting overall, even if rather thin. But hey, it gets the job done quite well. The mission also features a very detailed and well made automap, which is very cool and helpful.

Overall, Trial by Night is one of the best city missions Thief 1/Gold has to offer. It features an excellent cityscape with narrow streets and a dark atmosphere, a rather hard gameplay with a ridiculous loot goal on Expert, and lots of objectives for you to complete. Despite its flaws, this mission is still one of my favorites.

(this review was originally written on TTLG)