Thief. Well that only took me two and a half months... I finally took the time to fire it up and play through the last mission just now. At some point, I was going to write a long post defending it against the shitty reviews it got. But somewhere around the third time I got completely side-tracked from it by another game, I kinda realized it was missing something at its core. I still think it's a good game, though. Probably the worst of the series (definitely worse than 1 and 2 but I never got around to playing Deadly Shadows). But it's still a Thief game and a competent one at that. And, despite its flaws (and holy shit it has some major ones), that alone makes it better than most of what's out there for me. Its main problem is the story. It's complete nonsensical dogshit. Compared to the first two games, that's a major disappointment right there. I mean, fuck, they had their work cut out for them. The Trickster, the Hammerites, The Pagans, the fucking Keepers! All the factions and major players of the old games were infinitely more interesting than whatever this nonsense was supposed to be. I get that they probably wanted to do their own thing but come on, if you're gonna call it Thief then at least keep something.
But the gameplay is still great. There's some seriously questionable design decisions that were made (context-sensitive jumping and rope arrows, I'm looking at you) but it still works. Then again, most of the story missions go for a more scripted action-y vibe. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in small doses but, to put it into perspective, the most fun I had with the game was exploring the city and doing side-missions. And most of the side-missions consist of little more than 1) find room then 2) steal all the things, so that's not to say they're incredible. That being said, the client jobs were definitely the highlight of the experience. There's unfortunately only half a dozen of them (7 if you get the Bank Heist DLC). They're a bit on the short side but they're not bogged down by the shitty story and focus solely on actual thievery. The Bank Heist DLC was probably my favorite by far, even ignoring nostalgia. It's significantly better designed than pretty much every other level in the entire game and breaking into that vault was incredibly fun and satisfying.
Overall, it's massively disappointing for an hardcore Thief fan like me but there's still a solid game to be enjoyed there. Just don't play it for the story.