YMMV / Thief II: The Metal Age

• Best Level Ever: You'll find a lot of veteran Thief fans mark levels like Shipping... and Receiving as well as Life Of the Party on their "best levels" list. The former is an excellent introduction to the new level design on offer, with an open-ended objective (get as much loot as you can and get out), an unconventional but interesting locale to explore in a shipping yard, and sports some neat backstory to uncover in regards to the different merchants. The latter is potentially one of the best levels in the series period, as it's daunting in size, is full of densely packed buildings and has an impossibly huge wealth to things to see and do in just a single level, and it has some excellent atmosphere that really makes you feel like a... well, thief.
• Complete Monster: Father Karras is behind the Mechanists, a faction that split from the Hammerites due to Karras's desires for the destruction of all organic life. Karras rebuilds his faction around his own twisted ego rather than their god, the Master Builder, even placing himself above said god. Responsible for kidnapping countless homeless people in the city and turning them into twisted mechanoid abominations, he is introduced using his special rust gas to painfully kill two innocent people as a simple demonstration for a corrupt sheriff. Karras plans to use the rust gas to wipe out all organic life in the city while attempting genocide on the woodland people.
• Demonic Spiders: Combat Bots are bigger and bulkier than human guards, making it harder to hide from them in narrow hallways, come equipped with a gun arm that can shred you in seconds, and not only is it impossible to disable it silently, but you can't even move the body afterwards.
• Even Better Sequel: It is often said that the game greatly built upon what the first installment got right (and what it handled less well). Key points often highlight the level design, which went from the singular routes of the first game to having very open-ended levels with multiple routes to reach your objective, becoming a true Immersive Sim.
• Good Bad Bug: In certain levels, it's possible to circumvent the "no-kill" restriction given by higher difficulties by picking up a Hammerist Mace and throwing it at an enemy. For some reason, doing so will kill them but not count against the player's rating.
• I Am Not Shazam: Though it sounds like a nice and fairly logical alternative name for their faction, from a purely canon point of view, the Mechanists are NOT known as "The Order of the Gear". That doesn't stop some fans from including such references in their fan works, including fan missions.
• Narm: Despite how much of a Complete Monster Karras is, there's one thing preventing him from at least sounding intimidating, and that's his voice. Stephen Russell apparently decided to give the game's Big Bad the same voice as Droopy and Truman Capote.
• Narm Charm: On the other hand giving him a voice like this seems to be deliberate, to undercut the villain and present him as someone the audience is initially inclined to laugh at for sounding silly and underestimate, despite all the power he has, only to stop laughing when you find out the sheer scope of his horrific plans and scale of his madness. This vocal dissonance to Karras can be considered quite poignant to his character, and can explain his entire motivation, his contempt for the flaws of humanity he is trying to erase with his machines and Omnicidal Maniac plan, as part of a Freudian Excuse. It could be interpreted this very flaw of his and the in universe people's similar mocking treatment and laughter at him because of it is what drove him off the deep end in the first place. Nor can it be denied how much he stands out as a villain with the voice, and how bizarre it makes such a monstrous character seem. Stephen Russell's unique and memorable performance for Karras is certainly to be lauded.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Mechanist Cherub Bots only appeared as a single specimen in a single mission, the popular and praised "Life of the Party".
  • The four bickering guards in Life of the Party, who trade insults with one another, first about the opposite party's nobles, then each other, before it gets just plain deadly. It helps that when pushed too far, the second to last guard to speak screams so shrilly that he starts to sound like The Earl of Lemongrab.
• That One Level: "First City Bank And Trust" is a sprawling, brightly-lit nightmare loaded to the gills with guards (both human and machine) and Watchers. You'll be spending much of the beginning just wondering how you're supposed to be able to get anywhere at all, the objectives drag you from one corner of the massive building to another, and to add insult to injury, out of all the info the "tip" you can buy at the beginning decides to give you, it decides to warn you about the marble floors, which you'll likely notice the instant you set foot in the building.
• Ugly Cute: The Mechanist Worker Bots are smaller than the Mechanist Combat Bots, harmless to the player and fairly goofy.
• Watch It for the Meme: The rooftop guards of "Life of a Party". Transcripts of the argument are also available.

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