Thief

Were it not for the generosity of a Steam friend, I might have missed this game. 'Stealth' games are not my usual genre, so getting started in Thief was a bit intimidating. I soon found that I really liked it. From a first-person view, you run, jump, sneak, climb, rappel.. all the fun stuff. Throw in a cross bow with various arrows and a host of side quests with collectibles... it just does not get much better! Thief is beautifully crafted with a good story, interesting characters, detailed artwork, and a solid sound-track.
Since I am an 'adventurer-sans-action' gamer, I played this on the Easy/Rogue level, which allowed me to have more fun with less stress and stand a snowball's chance of completing the game.
The best part about Thief is that you can play it however you see fit. You can be stealthy or you can kick ass and take names. You can search for loot or simply charge through. Until you get to Chapter 7 (which is a temporary point of no return), you can take side jobs and complete them in any order. You can explore the city looking for secret places, documents, and collectibles. You can reply chapters multiple times to gather more loot or pick up missed objectives.
I started out very stealthy but evolved into a predator. There is something quite satisfying about clearing an area full of enemies with bow shots to the head and with surprise 'take-downs.' With all enemies incapacitated, it is a lot easier to explore for treasure! This probably does not say anything good about my own character but it sure made Garrett more successful!
You receive gold for items collected and jobs completed. With currency on hand, you can upgrade skills and equipment, or buy tools. Thus, it pays to repeat chapters in order to collect loot more than once and build up your reserves. Most chapters have a nice blend of guarded areas (stressful) and unguarded sections (explore at your leisure). As you complete chapters (the first time through), you get focus points which are used to improved your abilities.
There is a manual save function with multiple slots so I saved quite often. Thus, when disaster struck, I never lost progress. For me, playing with a keyboard and mouse was much easier than using my controller.
My only complaint about Thief is the map. The City is a labyrinth of streets, gates, buildings, tunnels, etc. You can be yards away from your objective with no obvious way to get there and the tiny in-game map is little or no help. Thanks to gamepressure.com, there are external maps that are invaluable when learning the lay of the land.
To summarize, I loved Thief enough to spend 70+ hours exploring and collecting. I put away any idea of getting 100% of achievements and set some personal goals (which I achieved). I never tired of it and enjoyed being able to play stealthily or aggressively. The Rogue setting makes the game accessible to gamers like me and I highly recommend spending time with Garrett!

There's nothing I can add that hasn't been said already about the game. So to keep the review short I'll just list few bad and good things about the game, so we can all move on with our lives, and leave few tips if you want to 100% it.
The Bad
The Good
Awfully linear, short and lifeless level designs
Disastrous story telling
Little to no character development
Really bad cinematic direction
Terrible audio design for a stealth game
Unnecessary trinkets and tool upgrades
Bland, repetitive and sometimes cringe dialogues
Poorly designed World Hub
Cumbersome mechanics
Still looks great after 10 years
Bank heist arguably best level of the game
The "Client Jobs" are better than main story
Really well done animations
Movement feels fantastically smooth
Tips for 100%
I must emphasize, this is by no means a full achievements guide, nor should you follow what I say if it is your first time playing. These are simply tips that could prove fruitful and lessen your pain when doing all achievements.
Start a run on easiest setting. This is the run in which you will complete about 95% of the achievements
Be careful of points of no return. Certain points in which you can't go back to check on missed loot. Make sure you searched for every item, collectible and secret area. If you struggle to find everything, don't be afraid to use a youtube guide
Kill anything in your way, makes looting easier. Make sure to pick their pockets beforehand.
I suggest ignoring The City and Basso Jobs until after you've completed chapter 6.
After completing chapter 6, accept all Basso Jobs; so more windows and area open up; and start exploring the city.
You can ignore the "loot found" when exploring The City. That is only helpful within story levels and side jobs for the 'Thieving Objectives'
After you've collected everything and completed all side jobs, you can go and finish last 2 chapters.
For the "Modesty Denied" achievement, I suggest using House of Blossom map, Chain & Gain mod. Pick any 1 loot to extend time, knockout all guards first, loot top side then bottom until you have about 2.5M score, leave the bracelet located near finish line for last to pick.
If you've done everything right, the only missing achievements can be completed within a secondary playthrough, using the settings listed bellow
New game custom Master settings for last achievements:
Chapter Saves Only -- Off
No Focus -- On
Stealth Takedowns Only -- On
No Reticle -- Off
Speciality Arrows Only -- On
No Food or Poppies -- On
Zero Damage -- Off
Expensive Resources -- On
Slowed Movement -- Off
Iron Man -- Off
No Upgrades -- On
No Kills or Knockouts -- On
No Alerts -- ON
For the last playthough just ignore the city, ignore any loot. You just have to complete the story within the parameters above, If you fail, you just have to reload last checkpoint, so make sure to abuse the quick-save (F5 on PC).
This will unlock last 4 achievements, or 6 if you did not complete "Mint Condition" and "Child of the Shadow" on previous playthrough. Should not take longer than 3-5 hours.
Here are some guides that will help if you are struggling finding all collectibles/secret areas
All Secret areas
All collectibles within the City
All loot locations for story chapters
5,000,000 Points Challenge Mode achievement
Health Hazard achievement
Final Thoughts
I did say I was going to keep it short, but there's much more to say about the game, many more things that I found frustrating, more things that just point to a half-baked game, especially when trying to complete all achievements.
Locks resetting, dead guards respawning if you load into another area, which happens too often.
The god awful windows and crawl spaces, which you will have to go through so many damn times. Why there's no setting to disable spamming interact button, and instead pressing it once?
You have a map, but can't place waypoints
Trying to loot an item, but Garrett decides to peek behind the wall or press a button nearby.
The awful audio design, or rather the lack of it. Sometimes voices become louder, almost ear-blasting. Plus no audio for guards walking, instead being replaced by a focus ability upgrade
Dialogues getting stuck when traversing into another area
The solution to the Great Safe from chapter 4 felt like a slap in the face.
Garrett's edgy remarks from the beginning of the game to the end.
Even though Side Jobs and Bank Heist are considered better than main missions, they are still extremely short and require little to no effort or brain power to complete.
And many, many more...
The worst being the clear similarities to Dishonored, but taking everything done well from Dishonored and doing it rather poorly in Thief.
But alas, it's not a terrible game, it's rather decent. If you forgo previous Thief games it's a good game even.
I did enjoy Garrett's sarcastic lines... sometimes.
I liked Ector and Vittori side-jobs and the Bank Heist, even though they were short,
Loved the swoop mechanic, it just feels great to use, and it keeps itself balanced by the addition of guard dogs and caged birds.
I enjoyed certain dialogues from NPCs hinting to loot nearby, wish there was more of that within the game, it would have given it more personality.
I did like the ending, even though the entire story feels like "shit just happens" with no real progress to it, at least ending fit within that narrative.
If you want to fully enjoy it as your first experience, I recommend playing it on Master difficulty and taking your time exploring, but try not to care too much about finding all the loot.
I wish steam had a rating between Yes and No, it's not a game I would recommend nor telling people not to play it. for me the game is a 6/10

6/10
The most apparent thing is that the game feels like it was kind of rushed. Everything seems fine at first, but once you delve deeper, you notice that the Thief lacks polish. But anyways, it´s a good stealth game nevertheless.
What really stands out is the art direction of environment. The City is really immersive.

This game is very underrated. The story is OK, the stealth passages are very well implemented and there are a lot of hidden things to find on the maps, some of which are very difficult to get because you have to think about how to get there, some things I never managed to get to. The lighting effects are a big plus for a game from 2014.
Sometimes it felt like I was playing a different game, for example in the asylum level. But that also left a unique impression of the game.
If you like stealth games and want to discover things, you're in good hands here.

Yes, its a little old and occasionally buggy, but its a really fun game, especially if your into stealth Playstyle's.

I would love them to make an open world full RPG game with modern graphics, I'd buy that in a heart beat

Far from a perfect game, maybe even far from a good game. Fails to capture the feel of the original Thief trilogy and also fails to match up to its main competitor, Dishonored (which I can highly recommend). However, if you're really looking for another stealth "loot everything not nailed down" experience for your library, this is a forgettable yet serviceable option. Best bought on sale or, at time of posting, for free on the Epic Game store until April 11th.
Happy Stealing!

Great game.

I do not really get the hate this game receives, I like it so far. Indeed it is not a hardcore find-out-everything- by-yourself mode if you do not tweak the settings. But you can make it very hard indeed when setting the options on or off.