Thoughts on the Main Missions After 100% Completion
My overall thoughts on this game are that it’s a pretty solid foundation for what I hope will be a much more open and player friendly sequel(s). The story is pretty great and sets itself up well for a sequel with a decent amount of loose ends. As for the individual levels, they were pretty fun on a first playthrough but not nearly as polished as the masterclass levels from Hitman 3. They also proved to be noticeably more flawed as I replayed them to complete all the challenges, and revealed a bunch of fundamental issues I have with the game itself that I hope are remedied in the next entry.
Here are some thoughts I had for each of the main missions (namely the ones that had extra challenges) individually:
Against the Odds (Iceland) - Honestly this is imo a pretty damn near flawless opening level. The place looks and feels great to play in and it’s intimidating as hell on a first playthrough when you’re still learning the controls. Then when you revisit you quickly learn that it’s also extremely easy and you wonder why you were ever scared to begin with. I guess my only complaint is that I wish sticking to the cliff face/dropping down into the ravine after G9 didn’t completely trivialize the mission? Like maybe put one guard near the ravine that you have to sneak past or take out.
A New Home (London/Malta) - I was a big fan of the look and feel during the training montage section, although I wish the game gave you a bit more control during the sequence so you weren’t spending most of it watching Bond train. The actual mission challenges themselves were pretty fun too. The only one I took issue with was the “Monroe’s Way” challenge where you have to take out every guard in the training arena before grabbing the flag. I’m pretty sure you have to trigger extra reinforcements in order to get this to count, which feels like a misstep to me. It definitely led to me having to repeat this one a couple times, which was pretty annoying considering it was probably the longest challenge to complete in the mission.
All the Time in the World (Slovakia) - Beat for beat, probably the best mission in the whole game. This one has it all: great story, a gorgeous locale, sneaking, breaking and entering, combat, disguises, puzzles, a boss fight, a car chase, a shoot out, and a goofy combat section at the end. What more could you want? My one complaint is that the level can occassionally feel like it’s on rails a bit too much, but honestly im not complaining when every section is so fun. All of the challenges were pretty fun to do as well.
The Past Never Dies/Beyond the Grave (Mauritania) - So… this is where my fundamental issues with this game start to arise. Namely, the checkpoint system. For a game that clearly wants you to replay missions, it has a bananas inconsistent checkpoint system. Some missions have wayyyy too many checkpoints (to the point where each time you damage a boss counts as a checkpoint) and others don’t have nearly enough. This is one of the latter. The entire section where you have to earn $100k is one checkpoint, there are no intermediaries. This means that if you want to do any of the opportunities in the market that require you to have cash, you first have to do one of the sidequests to earn said cash every single time you replay the mission. This is coupled with the utterly baffling design decision to give you a fixed gadget loadout whenever you select a checkpoint from “Select Chapter” menu. Might not seem like a big deal at first, except that for some fucking reason the fixed loadout for this mission does not include the laser strap, despite it being flat out required for some opportunities. This means that in order to do those opportunities, you have to select the checkpoint in the previous chapter where you first select your gadgets, and then replay EVERYTHING up until you get to the opportunity. Factoring in long unskippable cutscenes and walking/driving sections, this becomes a huge time waster. This is particularly egregious because the Hitman games would let you select your full loadout every time you replayed a mission, which makes this just seem like a weird oversight. Hopefully this is remedied in a future patch, because this is by FAR the most annoying part of trying to 100% this game. Back to the mission itself, this is unfortunately my least favorite mission in the game at the moment due to the issues i described. If you’re trying to do all the challenges, make a list and try and do as many of them in one run as you can. None of the individual challenges themselves are that bad, and some are even pretty fun like “No Trouble at All”. Unfortunately, this mission also has imo the weakest story out of the main missions, as the whole 009 conspiracy mystery felt too contrived to me.
Uninvited (London) - This mission is where I started to notice that the game is also weirdly buggy? Several challenges simply would not complete unless I did them in a very specific way. The most egregious example of this is the “Nothing to Report” challenge where you have to take down every guard in the workshop without being seen. At the beginning of this checkpoint, before you actually get to the workshop, there are two guards who come into the room looking for you. For whatever reason, if you take out these guards it locks you out of getting “Nothing to Report”, even if you do it stealthily. What you’re actually supposed to do is sneak past these two guards and THEN take down every guard in the workshop without being seen. I don’t know why these two things would be related, but you can imagine my annoyance when I successfully cleared out the whole workshop stealthily only for the challenge to not pop up at the end. The rest of the mission I thought was fine. The courtyard area was particularly fun.
Knightfall (Webb Industries) - This mission is by far the worst offender of the “not enough checkpoints” problem. Everything from getting off the elevator with Finch to making it to the third floor is all just one single checkpoint. This means if you want to repeat this section to do the the multiple challenges in the security room on the second floor, you first have to get the key to the second floor, head up there, take out the first guard, notice that the proceeding door is locked, and then have the mandatory “side chat” with Greenway. Every. Single. Time. There definitely should be a checkpoint after the Greenway chat, and honestly imo there should even be another one when you first get to the second floor. It’s just a bizarrely long stretch to not have a checkpoint even if there’s no fighting up to that point. On a lighter note, the server room is one of my favorite encounters in the whole game and doing it stealthily was also a great challenge.
Time to Die (Vietnam) - This mission is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, I actually really liked the first part of the mission where you’re learning the map and learning about the three potential targets. This is the part of the game that actually felt the most like Hitman for me. On the other hand, the nighttime section was pretty disappointing and surprisingly short. In particular, the “Wraith” challenge where you have to traverse the resort without being detected was extremely annoying because there’s very little cover to hide yourself and the enemies behave very inconsistently. The second Murto battle was also a letdown after the first one, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the big quarry battle at the end either.
Wave of the Future (Antarctica) - This is one of the best missions in the game, up there with “All the Time in the World”. This mission is quite long with plenty of checkpoints, a lot of fun sections, and a great story. Only two problem challenges here: the “Perfect Strike” challenge where you have to destroy 10 androids with one roll of wreckie was pretty finnicky to line up properly. The other one is “Deadly Delivery” because it requires the flash mines and this is another instance of the fixed gadget loadouts not giving you what you need. This one is an especially long run back too, about 20 minutes long including a lot of unskippable cutscenes.
For England (MI6) - The final mission of the game is… decent. “The Great Escape” has my vote for hardest challenge in the game since it’s a lot of enemies in an enclosed space and you have no gadgets or Q-Lens to help you out. “Apex Predator” is another challenge that’s unfortunately bugged/mislabeled because it wouldn’t pop unless I took down at least one guard with an aerial takedown for some reason. “Reduce Your Screen Time” is also without a doubt the dumbest challenge in the whole game; destroying 50 screens takes forever especially since it takes more than one bullet to bring down a screen. On the other hand, the Q-Lab and car sections were good goofy fun, and the final boss fights against Damien were pretty entertaining as well.
