Personally, I'm one of those taffers who enjoys the hell out of a Thief mission when its setting goes deep into the dark fantasy territory - thus why the title of Into the Dark Forest hyped me up quite a lot already! And oh boy, was I pleased by what I got! Gotta mention though the mines and the factory sections (basically the first third) almost made me give up...

There is a lot of fantastic effort and attention on details throughout the mission, but frankly, those parts of the map made a maze that was AWFUL to navigate. An overcomplicated, nonsensical and lengthy mess, to put it politely. I don't know what's with the author and their enthusiasm towards the Hammerite factory setting, but I was so glad when I could finally leave all that visual and level layout noise behind and start the actually enjoyable part of the journey! Lots and lots of fantastic visual storytelling and interesting ideas - loved it!

Recommending this mission is quite hard, because I sincerely think that the first third is a very annoying experience. No idea, why the author has thought it had to be there like that, but the rest is (in my opinion) so good, it makes Into the Dark Forest (at least this remastered version) worth to play. By the way, looking at the ratings makes me curious what the original version did so much worse, hmmm...

I actually quite like opening sections. Finding way forward was not easy task (and map was not that helpful), but I liked challenge. On the other hand it was hard to find the main Mcguffin and I didn't like the fact that to finish mission you must trudge through the entire level back.

I can't comment the original release of DF but I played Tough Night which was released along first release of Dark Forest and it was subpar. It is city level with very samey architecture. Very, very samey and copypastic. At least map was VERY helpful here. The next Master of Dromed's city mission - Visit to the Baron was slight improvement though.