A couple of years ago, when I played it, Ominous Bequest had single-handedly crippled my trust in high ratings over here. Or I'd rather say, it made me realize, my taste in fan missions will hardly meet the ratings (the general opinion) every time. That's actually fine, and since then I've luckily realized that I'm not the only one with mixed - at best - feelings about this one (thankfully, since I started to feel insane), but Ominous Bequest has seemingly keept impressing new players.

I cannot ignore the obvious amount of effort put into the mission though, the level geometry is quite complex, the lighting and texturing is really good - and I'd say even the layout of the first half is more than decent. My problem is how Ominous Bequest takes the player a hostage by its way too often terrible mission design. Tedious backtracking, way too much dependence on annoying keyhunt, one insane puzzle that can easily lead to accidental soft-locking, and an overwritten plot that doesn't know when to stop.

I think it's a bit overproduced - like Eshaktaar tried to play with player's expectations and to push himself and players outside Thief FM "comfort zone" but went too far with plot twists and puzzles appearing one after another seemingly endlessly. In the end I felt exhausted and breathed a sigh of relief.

On the other hand I think OB deserves some awe of its ambition. It's not for everyone. It's too sprawling. Perhaps Eshaktaar's small and focused Keyhunt (also puzzle-solver) is what you are looking for. But I still remember it and from technical point it was novel. Also I guess you successfully learnt what to expect from Eshaktaar. I think sequel is better simply because it's even more ambitious and even more wild.

Ah yes, I've played Keyhunt not long ago, and enjoyed it significantly more.
I always notice ambition and tremendous effort when I see one (it's undoubtedly here, in OB as well), but I admit this mission has probably pushed me a bit too far. To be honest, it often felt like the author might have rather focused on winning an imaginary dick measuring contest of FM creators - but may be just a bad take on my part, since judging Keyhunt, Eshaktaar has been completely capable of going humble in scale as well.

I have no axe to grind here but I think you're being slightly unfair to it (definitely in rating) by overfocusing on an aspect or two of the mission and disregarding the whole rating picture. This was arguably the second best mission of its era and I think what most players liked about it was precisely that being caught offguard after a seemingly another dull dour (not so, there are fineries) run-of-the-mill mansion heist by the depths and lengths it went into, all well made and executed with no technical issues or artistic weaknesses of any kind. And there are in-game hints (if sometimes not immediately obvious) to all puzzles you encounter, something that cannot be said for many missions where deductions for arcane and arbitrary puzzle solutions would well be due. What remains is the by definition linear mission progression that makes it somewhat a one-off experience.

The rating reflects on the fact that I don't like the mission at all, but very much respect the effort and the technical achievement of the author. I made sure to address that in the title of my review, but I'm not quite sure why should I give a higher rating to something I don't like. I think it's a common misconception that members should vote based on what is "objectively fair" - instead of how and what they personally feel and think about something. The objectively fair score is the summary of everyone's opinion.

By the way, judging the date of the release, have I no struggle to understand how much this mission was probably ahead of its time, but 1. novelty isn't automatically good, 2. I'd never hold a gun to anyone's head to force them into liking Citizen Kane, for example. I don't 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 like certain things a community celebrates - if I would, that would be called snobbery.