A little conflicted on this, I like the core concept and the principle behind the core gameplay loop, but I think execution was botched in ways that threw a wrench into my enjoyment of the game, for reference i played on hardcore mode since I didn't like the perma-wallhacks you get in normal modes

The game is primarily centered around NPC schedules - you burglarize a home by learning an NPC's schedule, you avoid the rooms they'll be in at certain times of the day and aim to ransack their place while they're not home, simple and can make for very satisfying gameplay

The issue comes with how these systems were actually implemented - NPC schedules are a bit nonsensical, almost no one in this game seems to go to work, when they leave the house they leave for 3 hours, if they leave for any longer - chances are it's a household with multiple people in it (one of which will barely ever leave) other than that it's NPCs patrolling around their homes staying in one spot for an hour or two at a time and then moving to another room. How are all these people getting the money to buy these homes and all the stuff in them if they're eternal homebodies? These are the suburbs, people should have jobs that they spend most of the day at. While I get that might make burglarizing significantly easier, there are ways of balancing that out to make it less so (Most valuable items are on their person or locked up and require a key that the tenant only keeps on themselves for instance)

This leads into my second big issue - the timing of everything. Earlier I said tenants leave their homes for 3 hours at a time, in this game an hour translates to around 1-1.5 minutes of real life time, that is virtually no time at all to maneuver and in most cases you're better off just taking someone's stuff while they're sleeping (which is also subject to the timing issue)

The primary way around the timing problem seems to be to either only hit a house while the tenants are sleeping (which gets a little samey and dull) or nibbling away at valuables a couple rooms at a time and having to constantly leave the map because they'll call the cops because they instantly noticed their frying pan was missing or bedroom door was open.

How are people so damn perceptive? if one of my frying pans were missing I wouldn't notice for days, let alone call the cops the second I did notice, and if a door was open that i was sure I closed I absolutely wouldn't assume it was a break-in

Also a constant grating issue i encountered in my game - there is no in-game tools helping you understand a home's floorplan, the game doesn't tell you what room you're currently in or give you any sort of map of your surroundings, the drone you're given can't look up or down and is mostly useless for actually scouting the area, most of the time I'm left guessing as to which room is which and I usually have mere seconds to know if i'm in a dangerous area or a safe one

Lastly sound design, the tenants are better at hearing me than I am at hearing them, I can hear them opening and closing doors but footsteps are completely silent (god forbid you stop sneaking for a split second without any of the upgrades that make it quieter, you're a thief wearing combat boots).

Tl;dr the game has a great core design concept and the ideas are definitely there but massively blunders in execution and ends up being much more frustrating than it should be, I hope these issues are improved in the third game or spiritual successor the dev is working on, as a lifelong fan of stealth games I'm a bit sad that I just found this one too frustrating to enjoy

I have this game and the first one, and without a single doubt in my mind no questions needed i can say, this game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible. The first game is top 10 games EVER for me I love that game and god I've played through it many many times and played through the DLC content and all that ♥♥♥♥. This game just upsets me from the disappointment this game brings me because of the hype i personally had for this release, if you read this, please just play the first one. The 1st one is so so so so so much better than this mistake of a sequel.

我爱你我爱你我爱你