Twilights Over Driftstone has a lot of peculiarities. It feels like a project from 2010-2015 in that it doesn't adhere to many conventions that have become staples of most city/city-mansion missions in recent years. And I absolutely loved it.

I thought the overall balance of playable areas was perfect. There’s the slum area and there’s the watch station, but it’s clear from the beginning that the mansion is going to be the focal point. None of the side areas actually demand your attention for too long. The slums and the underground are great, I get it. But I really don’t think expanding the underground as a side area would have done the mission any good balance-wise. I thought it was optimal as is. Similarly, the city streets and squares are only present in the most basic form and are all concentrated around the mansion.

Now, the layout of the particular areas can indeed be quirky. The mansion especially feels like a house-museum hybrid. Unrealistic as it may be, the thing is it works quite well, and if the gameplay aspect comes first, I’m willing to let it slip. What I especially liked is that the vertical aspect of the mission ACTUALLY serves to grant the player more freedom, not the opposite, as is unfortunately common with many of the fashionable city missions of today. Make your mission vertical to give alternative, easier, or quicker routes to the player – and NOT to force the player into the sole, compulsory path, just to make the mission harder. I really want to emphasize how much I liked the approach the authors took here in regard to possible paths.

The primary challenge of Twilights Over Driftstone is actually staying undetected - the guards are very alert, there are plenty of tiled floors around, and you can’t turn off almost any lights. I also found the loot requirement pretty steep (but not unfair).

Finally, I want to devote a few words to the ending, so if you haven’t played the mission yet, you might want to stop reading now.
-SPOILERS AHEAD-

The story of Twilights Over Driftstone is consistently cryptic. From start to finish you can’t know for sure what you’re actually involved in. The commission letter being anonymous and distinctly straight-to-the-point; the readables warning of an unspecified danger inside the manor; finally the ominous aura the lord and his possessions. I was perfectly fine with that and actually expected the ending (i.e. the delivery of the gem) to be pretty uneventful. But the drop-off point… boy, was it something else. For a moment, I thought – this is the best ending I’ve seen in a loooooong time – nobody actually got stiffed, the things just got 10x weirder, now everybody is going to walk away without asking questions or getting any explanation what the hell has just happened. Perfect. And then I walk right into the assassins on the way back. Why, why did it have to abandon that perfect ending for the most cliché twist at the last moment? :<

Okay, enough grumbling. It’s a really well-done mission that had me absorbed for a couple of hours. It may feel a tad different from many popular releases of today, but I don’t mean that as a criticism. On the contrary, I enjoyed almost every second of it.