- - - MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD - - -
This campaign is a must play for every Thief series fan, just to witness and experience for themselves how much you can still squeeze from such an aged engine.

In terms of sounds and visuals you can find very few flaws. Everything looks and sounds just excellent, building an amazing atmosphere. Apart from some great architecture around, you will notice all the little things which make the campaign a fascinating experience, like the cute, original AI banter, finding new uses for well-known objects or greatly extended (and phenomenal) application of AI animations.

Gameplay-wise, it plays very well for the most part. You get a lot of classic thieving, the objectives are fair and clear, if a bit repetitive – most of the time it’ll be a “find this; find that; oh, also get some loot” set. Thankfully, all levels, apart from maybe the last, retain an open structure rather than setting out one preferable route. You will have numerous options to proceed and many gameplay styles are welcome. The levels are vast and often challenging. With automap feature absent in Thief Gold, labyrinthine structure of many maps makes it very difficult to approach them in any organized way and keep track of places, even though most areas are given very distinct character. Also, many levels feature some waaaaaay too big and distracting side areas. Luckily, scouring (even finding) them remains totally optional, even on expert difficulty.

The strongest point of the whole mod, however, got to be a wide range of novel AIs, both just flavour and real opponents, you meet on your way. Their variety will leave many experienced taffers amazed and each of them will present different challenges. Let me tell you, you will come across some things you would never expect to find after 20+ years of playing Thief games.
You will also have some new equipment at your disposal – these are, however, mostly just weakened versions of stuff from the original game (or even Thief 2X for that matter) that I found rather useless. One exception was the smoke bomb, which worked great and I thought was a nice addition.

The story definitely remains the weak link of the campaign. The storytelling works nice at the level of places you see, some of the characters you meet, and all the flavour around it. The main plot, though, I found really unconvincing. First of all, it doesn’t even start for half a game – the opening 4 missions feel almost like a collection of individual pieces rather than a part of the campaign. Then the story takes off at around halfway mark and things actually get interesting, but this proves to be the high-point as all further proceedings feel rather flat and tedious. Especially the last mission is the low point both story- and gameplay-wise, as it unfortunately feels like an unoriginal reprise of the Thief Gold finale.

I feel the protagonist is really weak and unconvincing. For many hours you don’t even know why this campaign would need a new protagonist at all, only later does it get soooomewhat justified by the story. The background on our Hume doesn’t logically connect with the in-game present. We got a convict who spent several years imprisoned get released to immediately become a master thief with skills comparable to Garrett? Doesn’t make much sense. His way of speaking and overall demeanour (and also the mentioned background, if you think of it) would better match a petty criminal. I found myself really detached from the protagonist and completely indifferent to how his story would end.

Putting all the reservations about the plot aside, I would recommend this campaign to anyone. It’s hours of fun gameplay, amazing, very detailed levels and staggering novelty value for a game this old.

In the first briefing, Hume mentions that he found a keeper gem which helps his stealth abilities. However, he does not possess the same skills as Garrett as AI will notice you easier than Garrett.