Originally Hitman III (2021), the World of Assassination Trilogy also containing Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2 (2018) was somewhat rough at times compared to its predecessors. Over time, more and more care was given to this wonderful game until it became a definitive title able to rival Blood Money. Importantly, when they rebranded the game in 2023, they eliminated all need to buy the previous titles and simply made them base content for this game.

This game is quite possibly one of the best stealth games ever created. Each map gives a reasonably immersive feeling, with extremely well-crafted graphics and lighting, NPCs that are largely each set on their own routines, tiny details and conversations to read into; many NPCs have obscure voice lines triggered under the most specific of conditions that nevertheless fill out the world and give you more details.

Your main goal is usually to take out 1-3 targets who are in the map, well-protected through means of limited access areas, guards, cameras, and other obstacles. Many of these things can be overcome by choosing the right disguises for the situations, or you can take on the ultimate challenge to take out the targets without being discovered or using disguises -- the so-called "Silent Assassin, Suit Only".

There is a lot of creativity available to you as you play this game as well. Various items and disguises may have effects or utility you don't even consider until you try them, and who doesn't want to experiment and see if they can kill someone using a stove while disguised as a chef after luring them by throwing a fish?

In terms of presentation, every mission is preceded by a detailed briefing on your targets and what the purpose is in taking them down. Why they are an awful person, or perhaps why they simply get in the way of your current goals. Between missions, the story advances through cinematic cutscenes. These scenes all take a noticeable dive in quality in H2, where they are presented more as animatics. This can create a jarring feeling when playing through the games' missions in order. In H3, the quality returns to roughly how high it was in H1.

In terms of levels, H1 gives you relatively ordinary types of assassination missions like you'd recognize from previous games in the series. H2 starts to mix in some more complex situations that require a different approach. H3 then in more regards eschews the classic formula in favor of a variety of different stages with gimmicks that still take strong advantage of everything you've learned. This causes the trilogy to, as a whole package, present a significant amount of variety in what you'll be doing as you initially play through the story.

The largest appeal of the levels, however, is the number of stories and challenges that are provided for them. You'll never get the same experience twice if you always seek out doing something different, and the game strongly rewards playing your favorite maps over and over again to take care of all the methods and mission provided to you, along with giving you new starting locations and items the more you progress through a map in different ways. Variety of methods has always been something the series has encouraged, but never on WOA's level.

There are also Elusive Targets, special missions available for a limited time, in which a special target is inserted into an existing level, and you are tasked with finding them, identifying them, and killing them, with a big catch: If you finish the mission, whether successful or failing, you cannot try again. I have mixed feelings about these, but they're a great idea -- I just wish that the DLCs you can buy to get permanent access to them provided these missions and the rewards. Instead, they provide a different version inside of what is known as the Escalation Arcade, with its own lesser rewards.

Escalations are a set of missions in which complications are given, conditions under which you must complete them. For example, it may task you with killing a target while wearing a mascot costume and poisoning them. Or, the map might be more difficult than usual in other ways. One catch is that Escalations require you to play 2+ missions (usually 3) in order, and you can't go back and do the previous level better without resetting.

The game also provides a mode known as Contracts, allowing you to create your own specific conditions for completing a mission and challenging other players to do it with the highest scores/lowest time. You set the conditions for your Contracts by playing through a mission and completing it in the specific ways you prefer. You can choose from a huge variety of Contracts other players have created, or discover Featured Contracts IOI picked. It's a somewhat lesser mode, but nice to have.

Last but not least, there is Freelancer. Added when the game was rebranded, this is a Roguelite mode in which you must execute sets of missions (known as campaigns) without dying, and can only bring in limited items. If you fail, you lose everything you brought with you or earned through the campaign. You take on these missions from a customizable Safehouse, gaining access to more items and unlockables based on your progress in the mode. Eventually, it can be a sprawling building with many rooms and decor. Plus, the challenge in this mode can get extremely high depending on the campaigns you undertake.

In terms of graphics, Hitman: World of Assassination is still one of the best-looking games. It's recommended to play it without ray tracing, as RT was added later in development. If you do turn it on, you'll find that it's usually very gorgeous, but the FPS drop from it is immense: not even an RTX 4090 can currently run this game at 60 FPS at 4K with RT on in every situation, even with DLSS. IOI has always done their research when it comes to rendering technologies and implemented extremely good-looking shadows and reflections even without RT. To be honest, if you turn it off, you will likely not even notice much of a difference -- the normal, non-ray-traced graphics are masterful.

In terms of audio, the game sounds overall good, and positional audio is well-implemented. One remarkable weakness is the gun sounds, which often come off a bit weak, poorly thought-out, and too consistent between different guns despite huge weapon variety. As well, there aren't many accents for the NPCs, which may feel strange when NPCs in Japan are speaking to you in a British accent. In lore, 47 is fluent in most languages, so maybe we're supposed to assume that we're getting the translated version. However, it's jarring at first.

Controls are well-made and easy to use, and the game can be played almost as well on a gamepad as keyboard & mouse, outside of headshot aim. You can rebind almost, but NOT QUITE everything. However, outside of "Which key do I press to skip this?" and some menus always being bound to F-keys, etc, this isn't a huge problem; very few keys are blocked. As someone who uses a mouse left-handed, I often run into trouble with this from other titles, but here, there is no issue.

This was my first Hitman title. I was terrible at this game, but in time I worked my way up as far as "SASO" enjoyably. This trilogy, through its three games worth of missions, tells you enough about 47 and his handler Diana to get you by without ever making past games obsolete in their storytelling. It only hints at things revealed in past stories, enough to get you curious, without making you feel left in the dark. It's a great place to start. At first, 47 may seem an entirely cold and uncaring character, and at base levels, he is -- but it's fascinating the true depths he has, which you'll discover.

I would strongly recommend this game to any Hitman fan on the fence, as well as anyone stealth-curious. It's also a decent pick if you just want to push your modern GPU to its limits with some really good lighting and reflections.

Be very careful with this one if you own HItman or Hitman II already. You will get minimal additional content for money and loose locations (4 Locations) that you would have access to with the previous games. So, in my case you have to Pay 3 times full price (85+ Dollars in my Region for the latest installmened) to get 4 Locations and lose 4 (2 are Sniper Maps) Locations. To add these Locations again that i already bought with the previous Game i would have to pay 30 plus on top.

Basically, if you are a fan and own the previous games DO NOT BUY this w/o a heavy discount. If you are not a fan and don't own HItman or Hitman II you can buy it.

The additional Freelancer Mode and Sessional Contant is basically only an automated randomizer for the already existing contracts with some loot box(???) mechanics, with as little effort as possible by the developer. As an example, you buy new weapons for the freelancer mode from a random NPC over a simple Screen in the mission. This solution was programmed last minute by an intern. And this low afford approach you can see through the whole new *live service" content.

As a fan of this Francize this whole concept is a evolution of the original Hitman Series but unfortunately backwards. I wish i would not play the campaign first so i would see the rest and missing locations before the 2h refund window was over. I would 100% refund it. I will continue to play because i would anyways with Hitmann II.

I played and returned this game a while ago. It didn't recognize my Hitman 2 dlc and looking on the internet the general consensus was IO didn't care and if you wanted to play the Hitman 2 dlc in Hitman 3 you would need to buy it again. To me that was very scummy so I returned it. That was about a year ago I would say, and am now looking at it now considering it is on sale and was re branded as "World of Assassination". Looking through it now though, it looks like everything related to buying this game was made worse. Who came up with these editions??? I am so confused on how I can just buy Hitman 3. It just looks like I cant anymore without buying the games I already have, which I am not going to do. I want to buy this. I love the Hitman games. The game however isn't good enough though to get away with treating their player-base like this. I would have more respect for IO at this point if they just charged 99.99 dollars for the CEO to spit in your face. At least at that point it would be pretty upfront that they are trying to screw you over. The way they set up this weird edition system however, just seems sneaky, and them trying to squeeze every last penny out of their customers. If they even fix this messed up system at this point, I would still not re-buy the game. I will never buy a game from IO again.