YMMV / Thief (2014)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Primal Erin, who exhibits one easily dodged attack and is defeated by picking up three stone fragments around the room.
• Complete Monster: Thief-Taker General Thaddeus Harlan is The Dragon to Baron Northcrest, but lacks his master's good intentions for the City, in favor of needless greed. Creating the "Black Tax" to squeeze the already-depleting resources of the poor, he would hang those who don't pay his taxes, killing hundreds. He would then search their corpses for valuables, later killing one of his own men for not thinking to check a particular corpse's stomach for a special ring despite the man not being told that this particular person was a special case. Going to a brothel he brutally beats and nearly rapes a prostitute, with it later being implied that he's a pedophile. Thaddeus later switches sides to The Baron's half-brother Orion, helping The Graven cause more chaos in the City, so he could draw out Garrett and kill him.
• Demonic Spiders: The Freaks are ridiculously tough, cannot be stealthily knocked out or beaten head on, home in on you when you use Focus, and are always encountered in dark, narrow hallways where they are nearly impossible to avoid. The only way to take them out is by exploiting environmental hazards or expending your more powerful arrow types.
• Disappointing Last Level: After a suitably epic fight with the Thief-Taker General, the final level is spent slowly sneaking through long, dark, uneventful corridors, concluded with an Anti-Climax Boss and a Sequel Hook ending that resolves very few of the plot threads.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Many who find the storytelling and atmosphere too dour or self-serious compared to the occassional humour of the older games, seem to have regarded Basso as this, since they appreciated the levity and laid-back attitude he brought to most of his scenes.
• Fan Nickname: The game is sometimes called "Thi4f" (Pronounced "Thi-fourth"), after the original logo when the game was still named "Thief 4". Alternatively, "Thiaf", to point out how 4 is usually a replacement for A when using Letters 2 Numbers.
• Funny Moments: Despite the game's dour reputation, there are some genuinely funny bits.
  • Basso really doesn't like it that Garrett never uses doors.
  • In Chapter 2, following the scene where the Thief-Taker General fishes the ring out of Cornelius' stomach, one of the guards wonder if they should be examining the bodies for cock rings. A conversation ensues where the guard explains how he heard from his brother (who heard it from a prostitute) that cock rings help with getting an erection.
  • The first optional mission for Vittori involves shadowing a drunk named Lenny to where he has stashed a talking skull, one of the attractions in Vittori's carnival. Lenny is so stumblingly drunk that he can't see Garrett even when he stands next to him. Garrett even has to open doors for Lenny and at one point dunks a prostitute in the sewer because Lenny gets distracted by her. (She blames Lenny and screams that once she gets out of there, some girls would charge extra for what she's going to do to him.) The final conversation between Lenny and another thug is comedy gold, wherein Lenny describes working for a noble who collected teddy bears and how his equally-alcoholic mother breastfed all six of her sons. "Said it made us what we are today."
  • Garrett's second mission for Vittori involves finding an eight-legged cat called the Octupuss. The nobleman who purchased it is implied to have some ... unique tastes.
  • You get one in the Moira Asylum of all places. Garrett can find a log book with patient activities, and the second to last entry recommends lobotomy for a Patient #78. The last entry is golden.
  Doctor Huntfield continues in the delusion that he should have jurisdiction over the entire Asylum. Recommended he pull his head out of his arse and stop suggesting lobotomizations in the office log book when I'm off duty.
• Goddamned Bats: Birds. Seriously birds in cages are such a pain. They're often easy to miss, they're easily startled by loud noises and quick movements and if they detect you (regardless of if any human enemies are around) it counts against you going completely undetected in missions.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Garrett and Basso's relationship. Under the general snark and head butting you can really see that they care about each other. Especially apparent during A Friend in Need where Garrett braces a collapsing keep to save his friend and Basso is obviously very afraid for Garrett when he realises that there is a big ass safe around for Garrett to crack.
  • This only turns into a CMOH when you let it sink in for a moment. Garrett can enter the Crippled Burrick Tavern and overhear two men having a conversation. One of them points out "Basso's friend who never drinks with us" and they go on to speculate what the deal is with the hood and all the leather (rumour has it Garrett's been disfigured and thus turned to a life of crime). In the end one of them says "Doesn't matter, let's drink to his health". Basso's friend is everyone's friend.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: ScrewAttack's review stated the gameplay barely changed over the years.
• Jerkass Woobie: Erin starts out the game as an unrepentant and stuck-up protege, whose impulsiveness leads to her killing a young guard and later dying via falling through the skylight at Northcrest Manor after rejecting Garrett's calls to leave. Then it's revealed through her backstory that she was an orphan, worked in the House of Blossoms and killed a client who tried to touch her and has unrequited feelings for Garrett. Likewise, she never died - she was kidnapped and tortured by the Baron to extract the Primal (which failed) and was stolen by Orion, who tries to use her as the catalyst to (unintentionally) turn the population of the City into Freaks.
• Narm: Pretty much every one of Erin's lines can be counted as this.
• Nightmare Fuel: Anyone who was not at least on edge and (rightly) waiting for a Jump Scare or two inside the Moira Asylum is lying.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Several online reviews have pointed out that the game takes away control whenever you perform an action, even one as simple as picking up loot, opening a door, or snuffing out a candle. This has a knock-on effect on the flow of gameplay, as it can lead to instances where the player is caught while in the midst of one of these animations.
  • After being absent in Thief: Deadly Shadows, rope arrows returned — but immediately attracted criticism for being situational arrows that only worked on "pre-approved" surfaces, instead of allowing the player to fire them at nearly any surface as an impromptu ladder in the first two games. This was likely due to a developer edict that players should not have the ability to go Sequence Breaking (particularly as several routes in The City are blocked off until later chapters because you need specific equipment for it), but it attracted controversy for being nigh-pointless beyond a handful of mandated uses and a way to get some additional treasure.
  • Due to its console-focused development, the size of levels is much smaller than the previous games, with loading screens being masked by forced interactions.^note Deadly Shadows itself faced this criticism, due to being built on an offshoot of Unreal Engine 2 ("Flesh Engine") that eventually required fanmade patches to remove the loading screens between level sections. This includes having to repry windows that were already opened (to move from one zone to another) or picking up a piece of wood blocking a small path. As pointed out in some online reviews, this doesn't even fix the issue — one notable instance in Chapter 2 shows the level simply "pop" in as Garrett is riding on the conveyor line through the processing plant, just as he passes through a black screen.
• So OK, It's Average: General opinion is that it's an OK stealth game with some good ideas, but poor sound design and having to live up to the Thief series legacy weaken it considerably.
• That One Level: A Friend In Need. Toward the end, guards flood into a room full of dark, twisting pathways, and your goal is to get past them without being detected and unlock a giant safe in the center of the room. Running and hiding after being spotted is nigh-impossible, and your health is so low from the Thief-Taker General crippling your hand that only two or three attacks will take you down.
• The Un-Twist: Erin didn't die in the explosion at the beginning of the game. This was easily guessed through Garrett's frequent hallucinations, but is ultimately the only information gleaned from the nightmarish Moira Asylum visit.
• Tough Act to Follow: Were this not a game in the Thief series, it probably would've been better received.
• Win Back the Crowd: The announcement that the game had different playstyles (Ghost, Opportunist, Predator), as well as the ability to play on custom difficulty settings that make the game Harder Than Hard, won back a lot of fans who were initially turned off by the game.

---