Thief Simulator 2 Review

Developer: CookieDev, Ultimate Games S.A

Publisher: PlayWay S.A

About

The door to your robber’s career is waiting! Just crowbar the lock off and force your way through the threshold. 

Learn skills, collect tools and become a master of the thieving trade!

Thief Simulator 2 is the sequel to the Ill-received title named Thief Simulator.

Now, you may ask yourself "What does number 2 have to offer that the original doesn't?" The answer is simple, it offers much better gameplay, graphics and overall Quality of Life upgrades.

I haven't played Thief Simulator 1 before, so this is a fresh experience for me. Together, let us delve into the world of burglaries and crime.

Gameplay

There is so much that I can say for this, where do we even begin? I know! From the beginning!

The game begins with you in the main menu, where you have a selection of difficulty settings from Story to Hardcore, for the sake of this review I played in Story mode, as it was my first time playing something like this. You can also choose whether you want to free-roam or start the basic story.

Thief Simulator 2 offers a tutorial in which you must escape from some thugs, who turn out later to be an organised Crime Syndicate after you stole $50,000 from them. Luckily, this level is relatively easy to pass as you climb through the window and out the back gate, sounds easy though, right?

You are then led through the game unlocking unique skills and better equipment for your late-night meetings, or your mischievousness.

Skills include; Pickpocketing, Lockpicking, and Safe Cracking. Each with varied challenges and stages.

The main thing to remember is that you are a thief, a burglar and you must remain vigilant and on guard, it's easy to get caught I know that from first-hand experience as I walked under a camera that I didn't know was there.

Along with those skills, you can unlock new equipment, things like drones for disabling cameras, car picks, tranq guns, and glass cutters.

You'll start by learning the basics and raiding an abandoned house, and eventually work your way up to raiding heists or mansion-like houses. You don't always have to loot everything you see, only the items that you think are worth the most money, loot will always respawn after a couple of in-game days.

Amongst the standard items that can be stolen, you can potentially find special loot that can upgrade your skills, these are more notably found in the Purple skills section.

Each house has tenants, and you must watch and learn the routines, thankfully a tool can used you mark them, and then using the Right mouse button you can view a sort of planning section where you can see what time that tenant will go towards the next task.

This is especially important to remember as not all houses will contain one tenant... I looted a house with a dog and 2 tenants inside it... With only 1 window of opportunity to get in and out of that house in 24 hours...

Each house can also host missions that can be found on your home laptop, these can range from destroying property, stealing specific items, taking photos, and assaulting. Be warned of assault with the crowbar... You'll be deducted cash and have instant police on you.

Speaking of the police, you can easily escape them by hiding in places that have a green icon on, things like trash bins, under beds, and in wardrobes, I wouldn't recommend the wardrobe however.

If you do get caught by these aimbots of police with the tazer gun, you'll be sent to jail where you can either pay the fine or escape. In Story mode, escape is a breeze, it's also a story mission to get caught, keep that in mind too.

There are countless ways in which you can approach a home, by force or by stealth the choice is yours. Me? I chose to stealth at night when I could help it when the rain was falling rain can muffle your footsteps, I found that out by the handy tips when going through loading screens.

Heists are fun, they are large, and difficult as you have to keep in mind all the guards, quests and cameras, along with trying to get to the objective, I thought the Warehouse heist was the easiest one compared to the Resort, for reasons that you can find out yourself.

Patience is a virtue in this game, as you could be waiting for the perfect opportunity to steal that high-tech TV in the front room.

You can sell anything to the Pawn shop owner for a small price, or if they are on Blackbuy which is something that you can access from the Home PC, then you can make more of a profit with the collection set. I tended to store my Blackbuy items in the storage locker and would frequent it from time to time after perhaps 3-4 raids of people's houses.

The graphics are reasonable, and from what I researched on the internet are a lot better than Thief Simulator 1 are, the same can said about the gameplay. There is just so much more you can do here.

Sound cues are also useful if you are going into a person's home without prior knowledge. Hearing doors and footsteps is incredibly useful, just hope they aren't coming in your direction.

The use of the notebook is underrated to be fair, I'm not sure I used it all that much, but perhaps it's better used in Hardcore mode.

There are also slight lags and frame rate drops when driving around, but that could be caused by me, rather than the game, just pointing that out.

Final thoughts

I wasn't sure if I was going to get into this game, but surely enough it itched the right spot for me as I continued through the levels and 6 hours in, I wanted to carry on.

A multitude of missions and heists, a good amount of houses including a 2nd neighbour to explore, and some parts come from games like Car Mechanic simulator as you dismantle a car, which I very much enjoyed doing.

All in all, a rather well-made game, with a deep focus on patience, planning, robbery and theft.

I will probably stop playing Story mode after the final mission, and play on Hardcore to test my abilities, sounds fun to me. I'm also aware that there is a VR version of Thief Simulator 1, if it is possible to play Thief Simulator 2 on the VR Quest, I would take it on.

Rating

5/5

(5 being the absolute best thing ever)

Links

Steam

The release of the game for all other devices is said to be in 2024! Keep your eyes and ears open.

For more games like this - Go ahead and visit PlayWay