Thief

🎮 Steam ⏳ 12 hours ⭐⭐ (2/5)

Modern Stealth Revival #

This title is a bold attempt to revive the beloved stealth franchise for a modern audience. The MC is called Garrett, a master thief navigating a dark, industrial city rife with corruption, social inequality, and mysterious supernatural forces. The game leans heavily into stealth mechanics, encouraging careful planning, patience, and creative use of gadgets like water arrows, rope arrows, and the trusty blackjack to incapacitate foes without raising alarms. Shadows and light play a critical role, making the environment itself a key part of gameplay strategy.

Moody, Immersive World #

Visually, Thief delivers a moody, immersive world. The city is filled with narrow alleys, towering rooftops, and richly detailed interiors, all bathed in an atmospheric mix of torchlight and fog. Sound design further enhances the tension, with creaking floors, distant guards, and ambient noises creating a constant sense of unease. However, while the setting is impressive, the story falls short compared to earlier entries. Garrett’s motivations are often underdeveloped, and the narrative, though engaging at times, struggles to maintain momentum across missions.

Stealth Gameplay Strengths/Weaknesses #

As for the gameplay, the focus on stealth is both a strength and a weakness. Many missions reward careful, methodical play, but some sections feel repetitive, and enemy AI can be inconsistent, sometimes clever and unpredictable, other times easily exploitable. Combat is intentionally weak to reinforce stealth, but this can frustrate people who prefer a more balanced approach.

Falls Short Overall #

This game succeeds in creating a tense, atmospheric stealth experience, but it cannot honor the spirit of the original series. It shines in its environmental design and stealth mechanics, but a thin story and occasional gameplay inconsistencies prevent it from fully reaching its potential. This is not a very good stealth game, and a very very bad Thief title, I’m saying this as a fan of stealth games in general, and not as a Thief fan, because despite all the criticism, I’ve never played a Thief game before.

First-Hand Fan Verdict #

This was my first Thief game, and I knew this was not a good one, though I decided to play it to see for myself. And all people say is true, this is a very bad stealth title, as already said, and it made me want to play the other Thief games, though not because this one is good, but because I keep hearing good things about them so I got very curious. I recommend this one is skipped and that people interested in the series buy and play the re-releases for the modern platforms, and stay away from this one.