First things first:
Is TBP (The Black Parade) good?
Yes
Should you play TBP?
Yes
Is TBP the best thing to come out of the thief community?
Best might be the wrong word, but there is no single thief campaign with such consistantly high quality. It's also one of the longest campaigns ever released.

If you haven't already, download TBP, and play it.


Ok, now for more detailed thoughts. TBP is a 10 mission campaign set prior to Thief 1. While 10 missions already sounds long, these missions are all themselves about as long as the longest of the Original T2 missions at a minimum. The quality of these missions does vary, but is always what I would refer to as "high quality content" None of it feels rushed, and there are no missions I will dread on a replay (at least, not for quality reasons. While custom resources are frequent, they are used alongside original textures and models. This can sometimes cause minor conflicts in quality, but care has clearly been taken to minimise this.
Most of the levels are set very firmly in the city. In fact 8 of the 10 levels involve travelling through the city streets as part of the overall structure. Build quality is off the scale both in these streets, and in the actual areas themselves.

One thing I am very impressed by is how reserved some of the more extreme custom resources are in their use. Custom enemies exist, but each of them are only used once or twice in the entire game, in some cases, an entire character has been added, complete with custom animations and attacks, and is then used once, often for an optional, or hidden, encounter.
This is a mission pack, not a custom resource showcase, the new features appear where they are needed, and are ignored when they are not. This restraint might disappoint some, but I would argue it keeps these new features fresh, and makes them feel like part of the world, and not something added to justify the effort of creating them.

Over time, a few problems will begin to rear their heads. The over-abundence of city sections means that by the end, you can end up sick of the city itself. Mission 8 is the first, and only, mission to take you out of this enviroment. In addition, the sheer size of the missions can lead to fatigue. If you binge black parade, you will quickly find yourself burning out from the sheer oppressive scale of the pack.

I will stress again: The individual missions are AMAZING. every single mission is good. None of the mission authors should have any doubts about their skills. Mission 2, 4, and 8, are especially great in my opinion. However, there is one place where TBP majorly falls short.

The big issue is the mission variety, and as a consequence of this, the fact that the plot in many places, doesn't feel like it's really evolving. The missions are lacking variety in their setup. Every mission is a robbery, or becomes a robbery less than half way through. Mission 1, 6 and 10, are the only real exceptions here, and it makes the ongoing sequence start to feel a bit stale. T1 somewhat has the same issue, but feels more broken up with quite a few places where the mission structure is played with. For example; Return to the haunted cathedral has most of it's run spent trying to escape, cragscleft is actually a failed prison break, (with the robbery being an afterthought), and Undercover has you walking around openly but in a disguise. I think that in the push to make TBP so good, they might have played it safe with their mission structures, and not taken enough risks with regards to the objectives in play. M7 comes close to breaking this monotony, but the unique goal in play is resolved very early in the mission.

This is not to say the level layouts themselves are similar. there are tombs, cathedrals, rooftops, and mansions of many varieties throughout the campaign. Visually, every level is distinct and different. Outside of the street sections, every mission is unique. It's just that the gameplay is overwhelming biased towards simple, old fashioned robbery. As mentioned earlier, the build quality is, and remains, superb ,and that includes in how it represents distinct enviroments in unique and interesting ways.

The plot is harder to discuss without spoilers, regardless to say, I think it's poor relative to all other elements, but I am not going to spoil it here. You will notice how it's still an 7/10 below. The fact that the plot is it's weakest element could easily be viewed instead as a testament to the strength of TBP in all other aspects
The incidental writing and events are mostly fine (and readables follow best practice, with important notes going into your inventory), and at times, even great.

There are a bunch of minor nitpicks I could also point out. The fact there are almost no female characters (apparantly due to the lack of female voice actors), a couple of places you can get stuck in the terrain in mission 8, the loot objective on a couple of levels can also be a bit irritating. These are all very minor issues, and honestly, I feel silly even mentioning them in the grand scheme of things.

Every mission is really really really good. There are no stinkers, and nothing is "wrong" with any of them in any major way. But as a full campaign, the pacing and variety suffers. Each mission of TBP is very well made, and extremely clever, and when they work (which is most of the time) they really work, when taken as a sequence, it misses the mark in a pretty major way. This is not helped by the ending, which is a bit unsatifying. To be fair, this is standard for thief games in general.

I still rate this 10/10, as it is virtually required playing for any thief fan. Black parade has set a new standard for build, technical, and gameplay quality, and I doubt many will be able to match it.

I agree that the mission lengths lead to fatigue! Some stuff goes on too long, despite being amazing in its own right all the way through. This can be exacerbated by the order of the missions, like going from the labyrinthine Death's Dominion to the equally winding The Brand.

I wouldn't say the mission goals lack variety - yes, pretty much every mission is a robbery, but 2 of them are tomb raiding, there's breaking into an abandoned mansion, recovering an item you lost, a mission that starts as a reconnaissance, and one that starts of as a ghosting/sneak through type of thing. There are other things FM's can play with like assassinations, rescue missions (TG kinda does this with Cutty), espionage and sabotage... but ultimately these things don't fit the Thief fantasy that much.

As to the story... yeah it's a bit incidental. I probably won't rate it super high either, but it works. Its incidentality is something that's common for all of the Thief games as well as Dishonored, for example. It seems like this is the price we have to pay for great levels.

Incidentality... You mean plot twists? ;)