>>14573800
The audio mixing is fucked, at least for NPC voices. You're silent when walking slowly as long as you're not in water or walking over broken glass. Given that the Thief games had stellar audio, this is a significant failure in terms of living up to the series' legacy.
The light gem only has three states: bright, dim, and dark. It removes a lot of the tension, since you know an enemy will never see you if the light gem is dark (unless you bump into them).
The parkour system, and movement in general, is pretty good. Some people were miffed that there's no dedicated jump function outside of the parkour movement, but it didn't really bother me.
A lot of people also didn't like the first-person animations for picking up loot. I didn't mind them, but I recognize that I'm in the minority there.
The lockpicking mini-game was pretty well done. If you mess up during it, it will make a sound, which can alert nearby guards.
There's also the focus mode, but I only ever played on the highest difficulty with focus turned off, so I can't really give any opinion on it.
Combat is difficult, as it should be. It's basically a punishment. The most you can do is dodge and knock out one or two enemies. It really encourages you to run, if you can.
Overall, I'd say they nailed the moment-to-moment stealth gameplay. If it had a little more polish (especially in the audio), and wasn't called "Thief," a lot of people would be singing its praises. So, like Blacklist, it's a real stealth game, if a middling one, but it doesn't rise to the heights of the other entries in its series. Worth playing if you like real stealth games, but probably only once. Still better than Blacklist.