The best stealth game ever made.
The game is set in medieval world and it has also some fantasy and magical elements. In the game, you control extraordinarily talented thief called Garrett. He lives in an unknown country in an unknown city, called just The City. He has no parents and no home, so he lives in the streets and he has to pickpocket people in order to get money to survive. Then one day he sees a strange man in the streets who seems to be completely ignored by other people, as like he was invisible. Garrett thinks that the man must have some pretty good loot and tries to pickpocket him. The man catches Garrett, but he is not angry at all. It's revealed that this guy belongs to a secret organization called The Keepers, who work unseen and try to keep balance in The City. The Keeper asks Garrett to join them and promises to train him even better than he already is if he does join. At first, Garrett wants to be left alone but then he thinks that Keeper training could be used for other things that keeping peace and balance in The City. So he joins The Keepers, and almost immediately after his training is complete, he leaves them and becomes a professional thief. The best thief the world has ever seen... or should I say, has never seen.
The game has 13 missions plus the training mission, which is integrated to the story. (It's the Keeper Training) Most of these missions are quite lengthy and pretty large, and they allow you to plan your routes and tactics on your own because they are very un-linear and have multiple ways of completing things. You can play the game in Normal, Hard or Expert difficulty, it doesn't have Easy because the first time you play it, it won't be easy at all. The difficulty levels of course adjust things like your hit points, enemies ability to see and hear you, the number of enemies eg. But they also adjust your objectives, meaning that at Expert difficulty you usually have about 2 times more objectives, and you need to collect more loot in the mission. Also in most missions in Hard and Expert difficulty you are not allowed to kill unarmed people or even anyone. Garrett is a thief after all, not a murderer.
When you are playing Thief, most of the time you'll want to stay in the shadows. Only move when the enemies are facing the other way or there are no enemies near. Garrett is very agile, he can run fast when needed, jump around and pull himself up ledges to get to places. Garrett has all kinds of neat tools that help him achieve his goals. He has the blackjack, which can be used to knock out most enemies with a single hit. At least if they don't know that you're there. He also has a sword in case he gets in a tough situation and the only way of getting out is fighting. There is another way of getting out of fights though, the flashbomb. It can be thrown at ground to blind enemies for a while (and Garrett too, if you're not careful) so you can run away from the situation and hide in a dark corner. Or you can knock out the blinded enemies if you're quick enough.
Then he has his bow, which most of the time is used as a tool, not a weapon. Though you can shoot enemies with regular arrows, most of the time this isn't the ideal option since even if they die from the hit, they scream really loud (who wouldn't?) and it alerts nearby enemies. Anyway, the bow has better uses. It can be loaded with water, moss, fire, gas, rope and noisemaker arrows. Water arrows are really useful, because they can put out torches to create darkness where you can hide. They can also be used against undead enemies (yes you WILL deal with undead a lot.. A LOT) if you have a bottle of holy water. Moss arrows, when shot in the ground, can make any surface really quiet. Which is of course very useful. Fire arrows are not ideal for stealth, but if you need to take out an enemy quick, they will do the job much better than regular arrows. You can also light torches with them, which isn't really useful at all, but still realistic. Gas arrows are very rare. They they work like blackjack, but they can knock out any human enemy from far away and even if they see you. Then the rope arrows, they are VERY useful. You can shoot them in wood or any soft surface to create a temporary (or permanent if you leave the arrow in place) rope that you can climb to reach places that otherwise would be unreachable. Noisemaker arrows are good for distracting enemies, and like rope and regular arrows, they can be recovered afterwards and used again. Rope and normal arrows can only be recovered if they didn't hit an enemy, and you did hit a wooden or soft surface. You can also distract enemies by throwing stuff like crates.
Then the rest of the equipment. You have of course lockpicks, essential thief tools. You've probably guessed what you can do with them, surprise surprise, pick locks! Not all locks are pickable though, so you'll have to find a key. Wooden doors can also be smashed with your sword, though this makes a lot of noise. Other (metal) doors can also be opened with a couple of fire arrows. Then you have a couple of potions, healing, breathing and speed. Healing heals some of the damage you have taken from fights, traps or falling. Breathing potion gives you more air when you are swimming underwater. Speed potion gives you more speed for a while, which is useful when running away from enemies or trying to make a long jump. There are also mines, regular and gas mines. You put mine in someplace, enemy walks over it and kaboom! Normal mines do a whole lot of damage, and a whole lot of noise too. Gas mines work like gas arrows, knocking out enemies silently.
Since the game was released in 1998, the graphics by todays standards look really poor and outdated. But when it was released, the graphics were pretty good. Especially the lightning and shadows are absolutely perfect, and they are very big part of the gameplay. Character models on the other hand may look a little... blocky, but they are ok. All of the textures are alright too, nothing special, but they do the job well.
Then the sound.. Oh the sound is just perfect, absolutely 10/10 here! And it plays part of the gameplay too. Not only the enemies can see you, but they can hear you too. Try to jump on metal or marble, and every enemy will know where you are. But there are some quieter surfaces though, like grass or stone. Anyway, the sound.. Voice acting is very good and convincing, especially Garrett's voice is really well done, and the character just wouldn't be the same if the voice was changed. Sound effects, yes they are good, everything from footsteps to swords clanging in fight sounds great. There isn't really ingame music in the game, but there are some *very* cool and well done ambient sounds, so the soundtrack is absolutely perfect too, it fits the game so well and gives it really dark and sinister feeling. The atmosphere is just perfect here. You HAVE TO play this with good headphones or surround sound speakers, and you need a decent soundcard (anything newer than SB Audigy 2 should be good) to fully enjoy this game. And you HAVE TO play this with a monitor that has a good, dark black. Meaning that in the darkest shadows, you will see only pitch black. Play at evening or preferably at night.
While this game is one of the best, if not the best game ever made and almost perfect in any way, there are some minor annoyances. The AI for example, while it works well most of the time, it can be very stupid and be exploited in many ways. For instance, you have a guard chasing you, and you jump on a table. Tadaa, you are safe forever as long as you don't go too near the guard. And the AI can be knocked out EVEN IN A FIGHT, as long as you are out of their field of view even just for the one millisecond when your blackjack hits them. Also, if you kill, say, 5 people, and bring their corpses to someplace and a guard walks by, he starts to search for a while as usual but then after a while he 'gives up' and thinks that 'it must have been rats' or something. While pretty hilarious, it makes the game seem less realistic. And the undead zombies are sometimes pretty buggy. When you kill them using sword or arrows, they don't really die. Which is how it should be. They fall down to the ground. Which is how it should be. BUT, after a while, they get up, walk around and can't see or hear you unless you go really close to them. They should stay on the ground until you approach them. (the developers said that it was the way it should've been) And there may be some glitches such as tables or chairs that float in the air and stuff.
But some bugs (especially the zombie one) are fixed in the Gold release, which also features three new missions that were originally planned to be in the game but were left out for some reason. And it has minor alterations to the original missions to make them better. Get the Gold release if you can, but it's pretty rare.
Anyway, all in all, this game is one of the most revolutionary games ever made. And the most original, because it was the first REAL stealth game, meaning you don't HAVE TO kill or knock out people to succeed, and enemies can see AND hear you. Even if it has those little minor bugs I mentioned, I think it deserves the rating 10/10, because even today, it remains one of the best, if not the best stealth game ever made. A real masterpiece.