The idea of the game is playing a thief, which is mix of a quest(interacting with people and objects and making the right decisions) and sneaking around(moving slowly while crouching and hiding in the shadows to avoid enemies).

The story is not bad and the characters are well developed but the game itself is lacking.
1st. There is the idea of being a thief which is stealing, lock picking, cracking safes and hacking computers but for something(safes and hacking) that you need to learn to do fast and time yourself just right there is very little of it and feels like a waste time.
There is a lot of the thieving and lock picking parts but they are too easy and not a challenge at all.
2nd. The cameras are just horrible. You can barely see anything(even when you can switch between 2 camera views) and it makes it really hard sneaking around and maneuver. Even finding the point and click parts is not so easy because of the camera views...
3ed. the game crashes a lot and there are many bugs that will annoy you. Some bugs are so bad that they will actually prevent you from continuing the game even if you reload to the last checkpoint or restart the game!!!
The bugs just stay there forever and you have to replay the whole chapter and just hope to avoid triggering them on a second try. That is just plain ridiculous, and very lazy on the developers side. Any game a customer is paying for should be tested thoroughly before being released.

After finishing the game and enjoying it a bit(The parts where the game didn't crash or was too buggy to play), I could see that the idea of the game has a lot of potential but the bad parts of the game itself heavily outweigh any good parts.
I can't recommend it, not at a full price anyway(no less then 90% off the price in my opinion).

Combining XIII’s cell-shaded comic book cut-scenes, with Hitman’s costume and routes of approach, with Invisble Inc’s art-deco, criminal classiness, Thief of Thieves is an interesting menagerie of game. You play as Celia, protege to master thief Redmond, but since botching a job and making some dangerous enemies, she has had to flee to Italy. There she joins a team of fellow up-and-coming heisters and undertakes a series of daring thefts and capers.

That comic art style is on point and the game just generally exudes a sense of criminal classiness. I would definitely recommend this to comic-book turned game fans or to anyone craving a spot of thievery.

The zoomed-out, third-person perspective looks cinematic, but the fixed camera causes immediate headaches – you’re at the mercy of whatever the game decides to show you, unable to glance at anything off-screen.

Your impression of Thief of Thieves will depend greatly on how much you enjoy the story and art. It's the stealth mechanics that hurt the title because it does more things wrong in this area than right.

At this early stage, without too many guards to avoid, the rough and rudimentary stealth systems are annoying but bearable. The mechanical enemy AI manages to be both easily exploited and maddeningly psychic, and there’s very little flexibility in terms of how you get where you need to go.

All these guards and cameras patrolling a huge space with few hiding places, no camera control so you can see who’s about to walk into sight of you, no saving and minimal checkpoints to spare you the inherent repetition of instant-fail when caught, arbitrary restrictions on which obstacles can and can’t be vaulted over, a barely-visible lighting effect to denote where security cameras are pointed, guards who patrol just a little too fast…

Rocks to dash yourself against time and again, with none of the flexibility or thinking-on-your-feet of a good Hitman or Deus Ex level. It’s an exercise in repeated misery, damned by its fixed camera, openly robotic AI and deeply inconsiderate attitude towards its players’ time. Go play some Gunpoint, Thief of Thieves. A manual save system would spare a lot of pain, but that would only be a band aid over bad design.

On the audio side, the music is sparse but evokes the cool heist vibe of similar movies. At the same time, the silence is sometimes disappointing to hear when another music track could have been used instead. Voice work is excellent among every cast member, but there are times when it drops off for no apparent reason.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE. I don't recommend this game.

5.5/10

I found Thief of Thieves when looking for recently released stealth games on Steam. This one looked quite stylish, with high production values, and was apparently based off of a comic by Robert Kirkman (of Walking Dead fame). I enjoyed much of what I read of the Walking Dead and the Telltale games as well, so it seemed that this game might have an interesting story to tell.

The game is indeed stylish, with visually interesting camera angles, high-quality voice acting (featuring Cissy Jones), and comic-style speech bubbles and font. In addition, I liked the game's soundtrack. When you use Celia's (the main character) "instincts," handwriting is laid over the environment to simulate her thoughts in a cool way.

I also liked the planning aspect of the game. Prior to a few of the missions, you will go and "case" the environment. While casing, you can collect keys, document security, and take note of optional methods to enter and navigate the premises. Your actions during the planning phase directly impact what you can do when on the mission proper. I also liked how many ways it seemed that the missions could go. When reviewing a "let's play" video on Youtube to refresh my memory prior to writing this review, I saw that many of the missions could go quite differently than what happened in my game. One character that died during my playthrough was still alive in the video I watched.

Some of the missions are quite conceptually cool. I liked intercepting another team of thieves on a train, and the way in which you deduce the identity of the bank employee that handles a certain account of interest.

Unfortunately, I felt that the stylistic choices in the game hindered the quality of information given to the player. Since the player cannot change the camera angle, they rely on white bars to notify them of approaching enemies. The bars are a brighter white if the guard is looking in the player's direction, and gray if the guard is facing away. However, these can be difficult to distinguish in the heat of the moment. Additionally, it can be hard to figure out if your character is actually hidden from enemies in the shadows. It seemed that whether or not I was detected was a coin toss, despite hiding in places of similar brightness. Lastly, I found that the aluminum cans used to distract enemies did not always travel in the projected trajectory. On a couple of occasions, the trajectory would show the can landing on the opposite side of the room only for it to hit a table or chair right in front of me, making noise and drawing enemies directly to my location.

In addition, I ran into a few tricky situations in missions that I couldn't figure out. In one, I needed to get into a secured room in a bank. When I watched the "let's play," it seemed that the guard wandered off once the player spoke with the receptionist. In my game, I couldn't for the life of me get that guard to go away. He would periodically try and start conversation with the receptionist, but would always return to the door when I entered the proximity, regardless of whether I snuck or walked. Eventually, I had to just open the door right in his face, running away afterwards and hiding behind cabinets until he left me alone.

In another, I was expected to sneak into a house with a yappy dog. The top floor had a creaky floorboards, and it seemed that whether I entered on the first or second floor, the dog always barked and woke up the owner. Since this mission was of a preparatory nature, failure made the following mission extremely difficult.

Although I enjoyed the overall arc of the story, culminating in bringing unofficial justice to a Martin Shkreli-like character, I found that Celia was pretty insufferable. First of all, she was nowhere near the "cat burgler and social engineer" that she imagined she was. Who tries to steal a motorcycle from underneath a Russian mobster on the second floor of a building, in front of a ton of people and with her face in full view? Secondly, she was just incredibly rude. Immediately after meeting her new team, she went and talked to each new member about the "issues" she saw with the others, talking about everyone behind their back to everyone else! The fact that Celia seemed so opportunistic and amoral made it difficult to relate to her and care about what happened to her.

Thief of Thieves has some cool ideas and a great artistic style. However, stealth gameplay, as always, requires clear and accurate feedback from the game. I'd like to see what Thief of Thieves would look like with a few more ways to distract guards and the ability to control the camera from a behind-the-back perspective.

A very beautiful game, the comic aesthetic most definitely works. The voice-acting and music is also top-notch.

Plot-wise it was extremely gripping, I had to finish it in one sitting, which also might be the games weakest point: it' not very long (about 6-7 hours). On the other hand, I missed half the achievements while playing through casually, so hunting the rest will provide something more to do.

The mechanics for lock-picking etc felt a bit easy for me, but the game is more about stealth in any case, so I really can't fault that.

Definitely recommended.

My Playtime: 6.9h (100% achievement, finished the game)
Grindy Achievement(s): No.
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (46 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

Thief of Thieves: Season One is a story-driven, stealth game about Celia, a thief who is doing several heists. In doing so, you are free to do it however you want and choose any option in the dialogues that might or might not impact the future.

Pros:
- Your choice matters
- Multiple ways to solve a level
- Unique storytelling concept that makes you like reading a comic book

Cons:
- Bugs: autosave can randomly corrupt, random softlock
- It's hard to see where the enemies are sometimes due to the camera
- It is sometimes hard to see and walk to the location you want

Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

Yes.
If you like story-driven games with a lot of freedom and don't mind the bugs, buy this game on sale. Don't buy it for the stealth element because it's lackluster.

---

Thief of Thieves: Season One has two types of visuals. The story cutscenes look like an animated comic book, while the in-game visuals use top-down, 3D models. The in-game dialogues still use dialogue balloons, though, to preserve the comic book feel. Since the models aren't shown in close range that often, they are hardly noticeable, but I can see them using outlines just like how it was drawn in comic books. Most of the NPCs don't have the liberty to be drawn that way, although the cell shading technique still works well to conceal them.

The story is about Celia, a young thief apprentice who is stealing some objects with the help of her teammates. There are 4 volumes that tell about her 4 heists. All volumes can stand on their own, except the last one which incorporates part of the first 3 volumes in it. The game is full of dialogues at the beginning and the end of the volume, where you can influence the result to some extent.

Your choice matters. You can answer the dialogues from several answers, which can influence minor things like your relationship with people, which in turn might impact their future decisions. Your response also can affect the minor part of the heist part, giving you more or fewer options to work with. The heist will always work as planned, but the details will be up to you. I like how the game does this; it seems as if there is no limit to your choices.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3096831105

The approach of using a comic book style gives a unique take on the story. I felt like I was reading a comic book, and it helped to capture the expression or even show cool scenes for the event. However, the dialogue will proceed automatically, and there is no way to go back or even pause it. You can only fast-forward a dialogue to show the next one, and you'll be doomed if you press that when the next dialogue shows up. That being said, there is no actual fast-forward option for a second playthrough - you are forced to rewatch the whole cutscene again with a bit of fast-forwarding by mashing either the A or space button in some dialogues.

Gameplay
As I said before, the game is split into two parts: the story-heavy part and the action part. In the story-heavy one, you can express your feelings by responding from several options. I believe silence is also an option since there is a time limit for your response, but I never try to do that. Your response might or might not change something, which will help you in the action part.

The heist itself is usually broken down into several sections. You need to do some preliminary research before you do the actual thing, after all, or maybe you just need to set up some things beforehand. These heists usually have several objectives that you can do, with some optional ones in between. These optional ones usually affect minor things in the story later on.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1443168079

You are free to do the heist however you want. There is usually more than one way to do it, and you need to figure it out on your own. You'll find more options that you can take as you explore and gather intel from people. I like how they are doing it like this since I could do a trial and error to see what works and not.

Some QTE and minigames are also available. They are not hard, but the QTE might catch you off guard if you are not prepared.

Stealth
The stealth part isn't that clear, though. I thought I had to avoid from getting seen by everyone, but it turns out that you only need to avoid being seen by some guards. Other people might take notice if you do certain actions, but I didn't know that at first and tried to not be seen at all. That being said, it was hard to avoid being seen by someone.

First of all, your camera angle sucks. You can only change into two different angles, and sometimes, it's not enough to see where the guards are. There might be a marker indicating where they are and whether they have seen you, but it's often not helpful since the marker is too big for their actual location.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3051152264

Second, sometimes it's hard to walk where you want. I sometimes couldn't see where I was when I was in dark areas - I had to move around randomly until I saw where I was. Walking on a narrow bridge or container that acts as a bridge also feels weird since you can fall off if you are not careful, and the camera angle doesn't help with that.

Third, the surveillance cameras seem to be bugged. I had the most issues with them because I sometimes couldn't see their cone light. The cone would suddenly show up when I came into their range, but there was no way I could know that there was a camera there without me remembering it beforehand. I did spot the cameras in the preliminary tasks before the actual heist, which might have affected them not showing up if I hadn't spotted it beforehand.

Luckily, the guards are mostly dumb. They can hardly see you in the dark unless you are very close to them, provided that they are not on alert. Heck, there was a guard standing to guard a gate and I could pass the gate from the corner without him noticing.

Length and Difficulty
Steam says that I finished it in 6.9h, but I believe my playtime was longer. I was disconnected and lost 4h of playtime stat from my Steam Client after I was connected again and I think that playtime wasn't reflected in Steam. As for the difficulty, the game is fairly easy to do. Checkpoints are abundant and you can try finding an alternative if you are stuck in one section. When I had an issue with those cameras, I found that I could disable them, and that solved all of my problems.

Issues
There was one instance when I lost my autosave. The save was gone when I restarted the game, although luckily, I still can replay from the volume select. I also experience a softlock where a cutscene won't trigger and I can't move since the game thinks I'm still on the cutscene.

Thief of Thieves: Season One has potential, but it was bogged down by its poor stealth mechanic. I like how you are free to do whatever you want in the heist and how your choice affects a lot of things. If you like these kinds of games that promote your freedom, I could recommend this but do buy it on a sale because it was bugged and the stealth mechanic ruins the game.

Too buggy and won´t be updated anymore.

A narrative crime Noir adventure filled with suspense and intrigue, highly interactive in more ways than a Telltale title can shake a stick at and incredibly satisfying in its impactful and story-effecting execution.

Thief of Thieves is a classic heist story brought into a modern world and setting by way of Robert Kirkman, and this interactive adaptation is an ambitious new undertaking for underdog adventure game devs, Rival Games, who's first and previous project was the stylish cop-drama crime Noir The Detail. They've come a long way since then, and this trip is worth it for drama junkies whether you're a fan of the graphic novel or not.


Thief of Thieves is of course mostly driven by it's classic and thrilling heist narrative full of twists and turns and the choices you make within, but the big draw here that sets it apart from other choice-driven adventure games is the tight and refined stealth gameplay. Taking place in mostly 2.5D scenes of diorama-like sneaking taking place in multiple unique isometric perspectives and even more progressively unique suspenseful situations.

It's a nice healthy balance of the two, which is a breath of fresh air for the genre. You have the typical Telltale style bits of narrative adventure gaming with different branching dialogue choices. The different choices showcase different personality traits and allow you to shape the attitude and morality of your character while altering some of the outcomes in certain situations. The real deal here is the stealth gameplay 2.5D isometric scenes of sneaking with nice and simple crouch and sneaking controls that have you breaking your way into a variety of dangerous confidential areas while avoiding the vision of guards.

It weaves pretty seamlessly in-between the styles of play, honestly, with all of the story and cut-scenes using the aforementioned multiple-choice style and all of the action, heists, and break-ins shifting the player into the stealth-action bits and letting you actually play it out. I really like the idea that I get to -play- through my own fate as opposed to having it determined by memorization reliant QTEs.

Obviously while playing it becomes pretty apparent that the action bits and gameplay of stealthy sneaking are an afterthought, taking backseat to the influential graphic novel's original plot and gripping twists. The stealth aspect of the game, while functional and a welcome addition to the stale monotony of QTEs, are incredibly watered down and definitely a bit basic. There isn't anything inherently wrong or bad about these action bits they just lack the sort of complexity serious stealth veterans and players of games like Hitman might be looking for, and for a game of this storytelling caliber being on-par with the most quality of adventure titles I think that might be a slightly unrealistic expectation.

You see, I'm willing to forgive this one glaring negative for two main reasons; the first being that this is a breath of fresh air for the genre since there really aren't enough graphic novel styled adventure games that integrate a more hands-on interactive approach beyond just telegraphed prompts. The second reason being that if you've played Rival Games' previous effort, The Detail, you'll quickly realize that while the bits of gameplay here are far from perfect this developers have make an insane and remarkable amount of progress since their last project. If they continue at this rate, I could see future seasons of this being incredibly fun and worth the wait.


The fractal and crystalline prismatic colors that shimmer and shine vibrantly like stained glass as you move through each cinematic set-piece are probably the best part of this game and its top-notch presentation. It has this incredibly attractive and intoxicating 80's retro-future vibe going on all around, and the psychedelic neon overtones give this title an oddly dreamlike and surreal feel. The core bits of dialogue and story are presented through hand-drawn graphic novel styled cut-scenes. These are also pretty good Pulp-Noir comic visuals that give the characters a lot of expressive personality that stays more or less true to its source material.

Sound is another area where Thief of Thieves already excels, with a fully voiced set of dialogue and a seriously impressive cast of voice actors with some top name projects behind their names. The music is similarly very high in its production values with groovy radio-quality rock and electronic jams by artists I couldn't tell were actual artists or just composers for the game. Regardless, the soundtrack here is seriously good and highly cinematic.


Overall, the presentation in Thief of Thieves is perfectly engaging for the genre. If you're looking for a new adventure fix then this has the engaging and thrilling crime story of a crack team of heist-ers that'll keep you salivating for the next Season of episodes.

It's visually mesmerizing and the story hooks you as much as you'd expect a story by the man behind The Walking Dead to, which is to say this is a hopelessly addictive drama. While you shouldn't go in expecting mind-blowing or revolutionary stealth gameplay, the addition of any kind of action gameplay whatsoever in this kind of adventure game is a nice change of pace.

This review made possible through the generosity, consideration and contribution of Review Experts(REXnetwork) and the developer/publisher.

Email contact@dnbmedia.co for requests & game promotions

I really enjoyed many parts of this game, however I was unable to finish it because of a game progression bug. SPOILERS: In episode 2, after the safe was cracked, there was a bug that made it unplayable. There were two guards still in the room, I checked other game plays and the room is supposed to be empty. One guard was at the coffee machine still and one blocked the elevator exit. Since there was no way to escape back to the train station, I had to stop playing. I was disappointed especially since this game was fun and challenging up to this point, despite the camera view mechanics being a bit unfriendly to game play.

So this is a good example of an almost there game – if you like tell-tale games and their ilk you should give this a shot; but at a major discount.

It’s an admirable attempt to innovate and revive the Lucas arts/old school tell-tale style of game, with a sleek and killer visual aesthetic, superb soundtrack, strong voice work and very legible puzzles. It’s a heist story told well for the most part (The core plot is complete by the end; so there no TO BE CONTINUED to ruin the experience either) and the game stealth sections are solid, rarely annoying. Only one puzzle genuinely annoyed me; and that’s to the jank; which become more pronounced as the game goes along.

The biggest issue the game has is that act 4 soft locks often and the game feels unfinished – the game did not sell walking dead numbers and it’s clear it’s a very budget experience at points. It’s very apparent that they had to rush to a conclusion because it they knew they weren’t getting a season 2, so as a result, some plot points just stop; and the lack of more action driven set pieces also don’t help. It’s the embodiment of a “almost there” experience.

It’s far from a perfect game; but it’s not a bad one either. I had a good time with it, and I adored its presentation; but I’d only recommend it cheap.

6.5/10

Good concept, wooden execution, terrible controls. Most of the "choices" present a false sense of agency without actually changing anything, the overall gameplay is very short and tbh it ends up mushing stealth and adventure gameplay together with the end product being good at neither.

That in itself would must be a "meh" and not necessarily warrant a negative score, but the game-breaking bugs do - there's a few that can prevent you from progressing, and when and I've encountered one of them the game decided to eat my save and refused to restart the section. Really not something I'd expect from a finished product even if it was originally released in episodes.