Recommended BUT Only Just.

What to say about this game, I had little or no expectations of this game, like so many classic PC franchises, I knew that it wouldn't be what I wanted it to be. Armed with this I started playing the game with an open mind and I have to say that the core of the game is good, it would be amazing if it wasn't for the broken and very annoying sound.

The voice acting and the ambiance are good it is just the conversations between NPCs is poorly applied. Picture the scene, you are in a new part of Town looking around, avoiding the guards. You see a nice dark and cosy area to hide and observe guard movements and as soon as you arrive in the dark spot you hear a very loud conversation directly behind you, you panic and roll into the vision of the guards, grrrrrrrrrr. You reload after getting a kicking by the Guards, go to the same spot and try and find who was talking and you cannot see them anywhere the reason being they are 2 floors up and on the other side of the building, very misleading in a game where you should need to hear where your threats are. After the first hour of gameplay you give up using your ears and just go on visual clues.

The graphics are very good, I can max out all setting on my rig and it shows the time the Devs took getting the lighting just right, the game engine is very good and the controls are simple, all this adds up to a very fluid and immersive world where you can make the game as challenging as you wish.

If it wasn't for Garrett and the name of the game you wouldn't know that it was a "Thief" franchise. There's no Pagans, Keepers, Hammerites or Glyphs. The story is very, very bland and as for the ending.......lol, It's like the Devs realised what a turkey of a story they had and just stopped. No explanations to the Primal or anything.

The so called open world really is an annoyance. This game needs well thought out, fixed, maps not a join the dots that the open world becomes. The chapter missions are however the Town that you can run around in serves no purpose to the story and really does feel like it's padding to make the games seem bigger than it is.
As for padding, there is a stupid and pointless part of the game, the Clock Tower. You finish a chapter and get teleported to the Clock Tower, where a screen informs you that you have new loot to admire. After you click confirm, you are free to move about in your base of operations, LOL. Basically right in front of you is your stash, I didn't need to put a single item in my stash all through the game, just past your stash is a display cases where you can look at your special loot if you are that tiny fraction of gamers who gives a s**t about that sort of thing. After that you go up stairs where there is nothing apart from the exit to the building. Completely pointless, it ends up, Finish chapter-load screen-click confirm-run for 10secs-load screen-back in the Town heading for the next chapter.

All that said I did enjoy my 62+ hours in the game,

6/10 this goes to show that a great game engine cannot make up for poor application and a poor story

Edit: Nov 2016 Just to say that i replayed throught the game and it's the same as when i posted above, The sound really is broken. I'm using 7.1