Purah's previous works "Calendra's Cistern" and "Autumn in Lampfire Hills" were very enjoyable. I just can't seem to enjoy Calendra's Legacy however.

The campaign comes to a fairly strong start in the mission: "A Meeting With Basso".

Your objectives are to meet Basso so that he can be informed by Garret on where to store some loot later that night. After that is done you have to go to the local inn and book a room. The town of Lampfire Hill is quite fun to explore, there's a lot of hidden stuff to find and It's very nice looking mission as well for the time. One particular highlight is the lighting, it covers certain areas with light, thus changing where shadows are cast. It's not all perfect, I'm not very fond of the forced ghosting on every difficulty except for the lowest one.


After booking a room, we move on to the next mission: "Midnight in Murkbell". Here Garrett has to deliver an artifact to a Hammerite cardinal. As with most jobs involving Garret, things are more complicated than a simple delivery, we are told by the appraiser that the Cardinal has other business to attend to, thus, he can wait no longer than ten minutes, or the deal is off.

A timed mission isn't inherently bad, but the excuse this mission uses to have one is a bit silly, once you learn why the cardinal has hired Garret, you realize it makes no sense for him to reject the artifact, no matter what time it would take. There is another issue, the mission is huge in size, so having only ten minutes would be almost impossible for a first time player. The author must have realized this as well, since the optimal route to your destination is marked out on your map. While I appreciate not being frustrated and having to save scum, this feels like a Band-Aid solution to a design issue. Instead of being too hard, it is now almost mindlessly easy, the mission becomes a game of: check the map and follow compass. It's a shame, as the mission is very detailed, but you don't have time to explore anything or soak in the atmosphere.

Once the artifact has been delivered, It turns out the Cardinal has set you up! He alerts his guards and now Garret has to escape. After getting back onto the streets safely, Garret returns to his rented room where he finds Mercedes waiting for him (Garret's love interest for the "Calendra" series). We learn that the Cardinal was a person who Mercedes really did not want to get the Artifact. Why that is is somewhat vague, but Mercedes tells you that the Cardinal is currently at the cemetery, so now you're going to have to make it there, find that artifact and throw it into a Forge in the city to destroy it.

(SPOILERS BELOW)

Things are never easy for Garret though, as the whole town gets overrun by hordes of the undead! It is a cool idea, but navigating this huge sprawling town, without any weapons, and very limited amount of resources, makes the mission progress at a snail's pace. You can do a side objective to find a sword, but the monsters are very strong and plentiful, so it barely helps.

To round off the unfortunate problems with the mission, the ending cut-scene assumes that the player destroyed the artifact in the forge last, as the ending cut-scene shows Garret walking away from the forge. This must be an oversight, since you aren't forced to do this last, and it makes the transition from game to story feel disconnected, since I could be nowhere near the forge when I finish my last objective.

The last mission: "A Winter's Eve", is the strangest of the lot, both in design and story wise. After successfully destroying the artifact, Garret is invited by Mercedes for a bit of fun at her place. Three months later, she wants to meet Garret at a rough neighborhood in "Dayport". The area has deteriorated due to crime, with the local Hammerite Order trying desperately to keep peace, but to no avail, since the neighborhood has been overrun by "Gaston The Red" and his "Deepshine Thieves Guild".

Your main objectives in this mission are:
Meet up Mercedes by a nearby bridge, and make sure she does not get killed tonight.
You also have to find and Kill "Gaston The Red".

My first issue with this mission is that the story telling is very clumsy and hard to follow.
The establishing cut-scene is awkward and does not do a good job at establishing what is going on, in fact I had to re-watch it a couple of times on YouTube to not be left confused. A problem the previous missions did not have.

There's a reason for the awkwardness, resources were getting spread thin by the end of development, they just barely got the cut scenes done in the end, and by the third mission you can really tell, both the cut scenes and the mission as a whole feels more like a draft than a finalized product. One huge omission is the actor for Garret, he sadly could not return for this last mission(*1), leading to interactions between Garret and Mercedes feeling awkward. Even outside of the story, there are plenty of things to criticize here.

The mission begins with Garret witnessing Hammerites fighting against a group of thieves. There's a problem is right off the bat. The Dark engine's AI will be aggro and hunt the player even after only having seen and fought with other AI opponents, this means that the player has to sit there and wait for whatever is left of the two groups to calm down, or hope they get a lucky window of opportunity to bonk them or stab them (on higher difficulties you get access to a dagger).

After this, you have to sneak around a keeper compound, it is an okay section, but by this point I was so beaten down by the various issues that I just did the bare minimum to finish the the mission.

Before going into my final thoughts there is something I have to mention, that is the overabundance of sex and profanity. I have no problem with sex appeal or profanity in media, some boobs and swearwords can be a fun time, if done well. "Calendra's Legacy" however does not do this well.

The issues I have are as following:

Random pin-up posters of scantily clad women strewn about for no in-world reason. It wouldn't be an issue to have such posters, if you were infiltrating, say, a wealthy noble who is known to be lecherous. It does not make sense to have such a poster in a Keeper Compound however, which is how "Calendra's Legacy" does it.

Scrolls constantly talk on and on about sex! In the keepers compound there is a book that takes a whole THREE PAGES to describe a woman and how hot she is, going into detail about her body and toes and whatnot. It is far too much.

Mercedes is the typical Femme fatale trope, with some 90's attitude added for spice, It feels like almost every line of dialogue she speaks is alluding to sex.

It wouldn't be as big an issue (or even one at all) if it was done with some self aware cheese, but the tone of the story is meant to be serious, also, this is meant to be set in the same universe as LGS' Thief games, why? Just make your own protagonist and world, it would have fared much better.

I have been very negatives here, this mission is undeniably influential for Thief Fan Missions as a whole, and I respect that. I don't like to be negative towards what Is at the end of the day a free fan project, but I also can't lie and claim that I liked it.

Too bad, I really did enjoy "Calendra's Cistern".

Sources:
*1
https://youtu.be/moagNipHPro?t=1763

It seems like CL evokes different feelings: I like MiM because of its challenge and because of "undead event" - which itself significantly changes gameplay conditions. The last mission while not being as good (in fact, it is quite empty and feels disjointed from the main storyline), but still has lots of stuff with the Gaston's hideout and with THAT compartment.

I found It to be a major let down compared to CC. I play ghost only, so I should have been right at home...

The first part was...ok, I'm not a fan of puzzles though really. The second part was the worst for me though. It felt more like a maze than a city. Canals with few ways of mantling out of, dead-ends everywhere, far too confusing of a layout.

The museum was the easiest part for me actually. I got the vault done and dusted pretty quick. The marble everywhere was just annoying though. It felt more like my time was being wasted, rather than time well spent (in the end).

I guess It would have been ground-breaking back in 2002.

Yeah this FM was pretty disappointing after the first mission, I ended up dropping it because I thought destroying the relic would kill all the undead to make the second objectives easier but it didn't. There are too many damn undead all over the place and you don't even get to have your sword to fight with, even without holy water you could at least knock out zombies and just avoid getting toomclose to them so they don't get back up.

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 a sort of funny side quest.. Exploring is everything in CL. One can also get mutually hostile AIs (Mercedes for instance has a very potent and fast (mostly) one-shot attack, or "ask" the Falstaff wizards, etc.) to help you out.

It is true that destroying the Cylix actually and logically might have killed off the invasion (in contrary reasoning it might have been of use just to conjure it but not destroy it), in any case it was apparently meant instead as a very last task judging by the ending sequence.