I like it when authors continue certain story threads they've spun in their previous works and expand on them. Legacy of Knoss is a bold sequel to Catacombs, and since it's nicked's work, you can expect quality. While it's definitely a great experience, I believe this mission has a feature that instead of playing to its' strength, it ultimately plays to its' detriment.

The story takes us from a shady antique dealer - we're to investigate a strange door underneath a theatre, whose owner seems obsessed with the occult. The door has a symbol on it, that matches Knoss' - so we have to get there with a certain stone key that the dealer acquired and snoop around, taking loot in the process. Only, it gets nicked (pun intended) right at the beginning by two entrepreneurial thieves. We're then thrown into a shady City district ( where everyone and their mother seems to either worship the dark occult gods of old or practice blood sacrifice in their spare time), going through cult hideouts, mansions, bars, a theatre, and an enormous haunted underground complex.

The story's pretty good - the rundown district used to be run by a necromantic cult of sorts, but since Truart's stranglehold on the Watch and consequently any City undesirables started, they were forced into hiding to plot a way to overturn their sorry fate. It had me invested, and, given how the mission ends, I'm very interested in how the next chapter of this story might unfold.

I have to get this out of the way now though - SCALE. By the Builder, this map's enormous, or at least it feels this way. While it's very impressive, I have to say it's worn me down to the point where at the very end, I was simultaneously terrified (because of what might happen next) and exhausted, and also pretty down on my resources. I wanted to rush this instead of exploring, and when I grabbed the final prize and found the exit (thank you nicked for planting a nice way out instead of making me retread my steps), I felt relieved and happy - but mostly, because it was finally over. I'm not sure if I should feel this way.

It would be, in my opinion, much better to split this one into two separate missions, like the predecessor. Some interiors were sort of small (the theatre could use some more grandeur in my opinion), and I believe that it would allow the author to polish some other aspects of gameplay and location layouts, and expand on the city part as well. While I can definitely appreciate the huge amount of work this FM required, there were some corners cut here and there, and with the aforementioned split, it would have made for a much smoother experience in my opinion.

Also, a certain area at the very end has extremely dark parts that become very hard to navigate. While I believe that was the intention, it was actually pretty frustrating for me to be completely blind at times.

Everything else is very good - dark, engaging story with some twists, a plethora of interesting places, readables, some new enemies, clever puzzles, crazy interiors requiring typical Garrett acrobatics - there's a lot of it, and more. The underground place is properly bloody scary, and the tension buildup at its' beginning (the linear section) is very good.

So, concluding, I can definitely recommend the FM - but be aware that it's pretty big, and that might wear you down. I hope it's not the last we've heard of Carmella though...