Neither of the Washington sisters will be particularly distressed if they learn that the other is killed.
Averted/Justified with the Knox duo in Miami. Robert's assistant will not let anyone tell him of Sierra's death, so he wouldn't know unless you orchestrate things in a manner that causes him to kill Sierra himself, and he does feel distraught when it happens.
As per the series norm, an NPC can witness a bald assassin gun down their friends and colleagues, yet go back to mopping the floor once the killer has disappeared for a few minutes.
Annoying Video Game Helper: Diana, as with the last game, will chime up on occasion to give you information on a target, and has target identification quips at hand for all of them. Mission Stories have her get more involved, and aren't often too bad to listen to. The prize for most annoying Diana dialogue probably goes to when she talks in "The Stowaway" Elusive Target, which has Diana outright bark instructions at 47, instead of merely suggesting things. There's even a PiP view of when Chen acts suspiciously, but it's totally pointless, as it only activates when 47 is close by. The mission comes off as if the target is some kind of tutorial.
The Artifact: 47's facial model from 2016 is retained in the Legacy Pack cutscenes, but the face was changed to look a bit more angry-looking in-game, causing this effect.
Arc Fatigue: While the presence of Legacy Elusive Targets are welcomed by many players so people can get the location-gloved suits back from 2016 (as well as letting new players unlock them for the first time), many players also lament that these were the only type of Elusive Targets that IOI released for almost five months in a row in 2019, instead of new Elusive Targets in the Hitman 2 levels one would reasonably expect. Per the devs, this was so the team could prioritize the Expansion Pass content, but it still only meant that the second-to-last Elusive Target (The Censor) only appeared in October 2019. This coincided with news that Mumbai wouldn't get an Elusive Target (its exclusive suit was unlocked in a escalation instead). This meant the legacy locations were repeated very often, with Paris and Marrakesh being the worst offenders, with 3 and 4 repeats respectively. All this meant Bangkok, Colorado and Hokkaido only ever got one Elusive Target run each (despite having more than one ET to go per location), so if you missed that location, you couldn't get location-specific suits if you missed it the first time round. In hindsight, many players got the suspicion that these Legacy ETs were essentially used as filler to pad out the roadmap with reused content.
Ass Pull: Haven Islands' Twist Ending is very clumsily written. We see 47 return to Grey from killing the HAVEN Trio, Olivia gets the information to find the Partners' assets, but her and Diana discover that the assets are all being transferred to "Arthur Edwards", A.K.A The Constant, instead of the Partners. Edwards has just miraculously escaped off of their boat while they were distracted with this news, and Immediately following this, Grey gets a call from either the boat or Edwards, but nonetheless outright lies to 47 about "everything going according to plan" — the implication the story tries to go with is that him and Edwards were working together in secret somehow. There are two issues with this:
First off, Grey betraying the group is seriously out of character for him. He had shown nothing but Undying Loyalty to 47 and his cause in both the comic book and in-game cinematics, and while Grey being a master manipulator was established back in 2016 in "Freedom Fighters", him suddenly being portrayed as a manipulative Turncoat comes out of nowhere, and contradicted his Necessarily Evil characterisation the games and comics had established.
Second, there wasn't any suggestion prior to this that Grey was going to double-cross them; he'd already warned Diana after the events of Sgàil to not take his eyes off of Edwards, fully aware of how slippery he can be. His past actions of wanting to hunt down and destroy Providence by any means simply does not correlate to this suddenly new agenda, creating a Plot Hole.
This ending caused a lot of confusion in the fanbase, as not only did it ruin a character fans were really starting to warm up to, it felt like the writers were attempting to create a Twist Ending for the sakes of doing one; continuity and characterisation be damned! Enough backlash on this revelation surfaced that IOI redid the ending for Hitman 3 and reframed its' events. Grey underwent Character Rerailment in that Grey doesn't keep Edwards' escape a secret, Edwards' escape was not planned out, but was Edwards persuading a sailor to set him free (a skill that was well-established in 2016 and 2, and is considerably more believable), and the story continues to emphasize 47 and Grey's relationship, instead of trying to break it up so unconvincingly and forcefully.
Audience-Alienating Ending: As detailed above and below, the Twist Ending that Grey was strongly implied to be working with Edwards was not well liked within the fanbase, as it undermined his characterisation in the games and comics. IOI took on this fan feedback and the ending didn't stick, and was rewritten to what is detailed above.
Base-Breaking Character: Lucas Grey. Either fans like him for being a badass chessmaster, as well as having a prior history with 47 (and thus enjoy his interactions with him), while others find his manipulative and uncaring behaviour toward his subordinates, letting 47 eliminate over 10 of them and simply disbanding the militia after forming a team with 47, as well as being suspicious of his actions at the end of HAVEN. He doesn't betray them, and exhibits Undying Loyalty to 47 to the end, and the two actually become Bash Brothers briefly. Grey even gets to deliver a speech to the Partners.
Best Level Ever: All the levels have their defenders, but Miami, Colombia and Mumbai are the ones people tend to rave about. Whittleton Creek also has its fans, though that's mostly due to the Nostalgia Level and its aesthetic rather than the actual mission, which is itself criticized for its mandatory puzzle mechanics. The two DLC expansion pack levels; New York and the Maldives (HAVEN Island) were also well received, the former due to being a unique level set inside, in this case a bank, and the latter was touted as some gorgeous Scenery Porn, though criticisms for both being a bit short were quite plentiful.
Cheese Strategy: Using the ICA Electrocution Phone on an Elusive Target for a quick and easy way to complete the mission. Not surprisingly, the device was removed from the Legacy Pack DLC for the third game because of how controversial the phone was, even if players imported their progress over.
The Kalmer 1 and Sieker 1 dart guns are among the most used items in the game, and would continue to be in Hitman 3. So long as you can find some cover to aim at your target, you are able to set up a distraction, or prompt the target to go to a toilet to throw up, allowing for a fairly risk-free accident kill. Plus, NPCs you tranquillize with the Kalmer don't break "no bodies found" for Silent Assassin runs.
As mentioned above, the ICA Electrocution Phone superseded all other items as it could be used anywhere, counted as an accident kill if picked up by the target, and was very consistently seen in playthroughs of Elusive Targets. It also has the distinction of becoming the first item in the trilogy to be outright removed in later entries, not just nerfed.
Critical Dissonance: Players were disappointed regarding the initial ratings critics had given the game, citing that the game is basically a Mission-Pack Sequel with additional minor changes and very little else (though the statement isn't exactly unfounded, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who disagrees with that summary). The average Metacritic score for the game is 82, with IGN and Riot Pixels being the low-scorers; 7.7 / 10 and 74 / 100% respectively.
Crosses the Line Twice: The "Defenestration" achievement obtainable in the DLC New York level, requiring the player to crash the bank's stock by selling all of the shares personally, then killing the target by pushing her out of her window as if she committed suicide over the collapsed prices. This unlocks a new escape route, allowing 47 to climb up the railing and walk off the building in an apparent suicide attempt. It's Played for Laughs and utterly hilarious.
Disappointing Last Level: Some players are disappointed by "The Ark Society" not being climactic enough to end the second game on, mainly due to the Washington twins feeling akin to a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere considering they were only mentioned in the previous level and never built up to any degree. Additionally, the sole reason they're targets is because they're carrying the kill switches holding the Constant, rather than anything else. Though Diana does point out that they're not exactly the kindest of souls, who totally have it coming anyway. Haven Island, while well-received, also got this reaction from some players as it became clear that Providence targets were being saved for a sequel.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Out of all the targets, Dawood Rangan is unquestionably the most popular. Janus also has his fans due to his complicated backstory and moral ambiguity.
Mark Faba, likewise, is the most popular Elusive Target (for both seasons). I wonder why...
Even Better Sequel: While 2016 was a great game, it had its flaws. These included a muddled U.I., a lack of series staples like reflective mirrors and the briefcase, level quality being uneven, the music being reused and shared between levels ("Showstopper", "Club 27", and "Landslide" all have the same music), as well as many smaller issues with performance and polish. H2 fixes just about all of those issues; The U.I and level quality is more consistent, the briefcase returns, mirrors now work as expected, and all the music tracks are unique to a specific location (Golden Handshake music stays in New York, Miami Music stays in Miami). And since you can import all the levels from 2016 into this game (and all of the levels have been updated with new features and mechanics to make them better), 2016 has become somewhat irrelevant.
Evil Is Cool: The Constant is a man who seems to always have a plan for everything, is a Graceful Loser who never appears to be fazed about anything, and can figure out a lot about a person just from a few sentences. All of this while looking like a guy who you could see doing office work. His way of taunting Diana? Give her what he promised her to begin with; information about 47. Namely the fact that he detonated the car bomb that orphaned her. Just two missions later and he already escaped from captivity, betrayed the Partners and embezzled money from their accounts.
Fan Fic Fuel: Killing The Constant is the single most common contract for the final level. Ironic, considering you're not meant to kill him in the level proper.
The fans and the devs alike frequently refer to Orson as "Sean 2", thanks to Alma jokingly calling him that in Hawkes Bay.
As with Blood Money and 2016, players tend to use the word "loops" when describing the routines all NPC's take in a given level. Everything from guards, civilians, and, of course, your targets, they all follow the same path every few minutes and will almost always go back to their starting point (or on a loop, hence the name).
Players tend to either shorten the mission or location name, or use the location name itself to refer to the main missions, disregarding the Special Assignments, when conversing online:
Players using the location name of Miami usually are referring to the main story mission: "The Finish Line". Mumbai is also called by it's location name, not by its mission name.
"Santa Fortuna" is shortened to "SF" (again, disregarding the Special Assignments), and "Another Life" is often shortened to "WC", or "Whittleton".
The Isle of Sgàil is just shortened to simply be called "Sgàil").
Meanwhile "Golden Handshake" is almost always called "New York" by players.
"The Last Resort" is usually referred to as HAVEN Island or simply HAVEN by players, which is unique in that it's not the mission title or the proper location title; people use the name of the island itself.
Franchise Original Sin: Forced, unskippable secondary objectives, a commonly criticized aspect of Whittleton Creek and Mumbai. This is not a new problem and goes back to 2016. Sapienza's "World of Tomorrow" mission forces the player to destroy the virus prototype in order to exit, while Colorado's "Freedom Fighters" mission had a forced bunker exit (until it was reworked). And while neither of these objectives felt out of place, and Colorado's exit limitation was a fairly small diversion, destroying the virus prototype was a noticeable level design flaw. In this game, players were much less willing to give Whittleton Creek a pass on its mandatory secondary objective (requiring you to scour the level for pieces of intel on Janus). Mumbai also suffered, as The Maelstrom is initially unknown, asking the players to look for him, but the game has several workarounds to cut down on search time, or avoid having to search for him entirely, and garnered less complaints as a result. Similarly, on "Golden Handshake's" release, the developers were quite aware of this problem, and even cited that they wanted to avoid World of Tomorrows' issue of funnelling players into one place, and so they made two ways of getting the data needed to exit; steal the data rack from the vault, or steal three partial backups from Perez, Mann, and Savalas.
The briefcase breaks Season 1 missions in half, as while the levels have been updated with some of the newer features that Hitman 2 brings to the table, such as long grass and crowd blending, the level remains largely the same as in 2016. For example, if you put a sniper rifle in the briefcase and start "Situs Inversus" in 47's room, you can simply snipe Yuki Yamazaki from your balcony. In the previous game this was impossible as you couldn't smuggle items to 47's room, and by the time you'd get the rifle from another room, she'd would've already have moved on, and she never revisits that specific spot again unless she's alerted to your presence.
The 2 ICA tasers make any custom contracts with guards as targets a joke, as you can "accident kill" them in plain view with the gadget and NPC can be tricked to lead the target to one with a coin.
The ICA Electrocution Phone is very overpowered. It can be used to kill any one target as all you have to do is leave it in front of them and wait for them to pick it up, and then trigger it to electrify them for an easy accident kill. To wit, It is very possible to kill Viktor Novikov in an accident twenty seconds into the first mission by doing exactly this. Not only does the phone trivialize accident kills, it also trivializes any mission, contract, or escalation where you have to kill someone within a specific timeframe for the same reasons, all without breaking Silent Assassin conduct. And it trivializes many Elusive Targets - an Elusive Target mission can be replayed at any point before you actually kill the target, so the most dangerous part for anyone who wants a Silent Assassin rating is escaping after the kill. With this however, this isn't an issue - you can just trigger it while standing right next to the level exit. Notably, when Hitman 3 released, this was the only weapon to not be transferred over into the game, presumably due to the backlash it caused, and was essentially replaced with the ICA Remote Micro Taser, which is essentially a remote controlled car battery that requires water to work.
The Sieker 1, a dart gun that fires emetic poison darts, makes many previously difficult silent assassin challenges trivial; provided you can reach a vantage point to fire it from, it can easily separate targets from everyone around them.
Tossing objects at a locked route to a person's head returns from 2016, which itself was from Absolution, but for some reason the speed for tossing the briefcase was significantly slower than all other objects. This means that you could see the object tracking much clearer than you would otherwise be able to with swords and the like, allowing you to see briefcases chase people around corners among other amusing things. The briefcase bug got silently patched out in Update 2.14, and now travels as fast as other melee weapons. IO did later add in a homing briefcase as an item, the Executive Briefcase MK.II.
In "Nightcall", Alma Reynard will flee to the shoreline should you scare her away from her panic room. Since there's no other lockdown locations for her to go to, her AI will instead choose to run in the opposite direction of 47 afterwards, which usually means that she'll run into the ocean and immediately drown.
Sedating someone with the Kalmer 1, then shooting their head before their body hits the ground is a bug that allows for said body to never be found. It popped up during the sedative rework in Update 2.24, and has remained unpatched.
Goddamn Bats: Cameras on Professional and Master Mode. They're hard to see, detect illegal actions which alarm guards who are nearby, and are placed in large numbers in helpful routes and locations. However, destroying the security footage disables all cameras in the level, so this can be avoided. Unlike in 2016, cameras between the two modes don't change places, making it, in some respects, easier to know where the cameras are placed.
High-Tier Scrappy: The ICA Electrocution Phone for all the reasons listed above in Game-Breaker. In casual circles, the phone is seen an easy way to kill targets, as well as being fun for the first few times players use it, but it's a fairly boring item that loses its appeal really quickly. Similarly, Veteran players don't like the weapon because of this trope, making the games' other lethal options far slower by comparison, as well as being too simple to use, essentially being as close to a "free kill button" as one can get in a game like Hitman. No other phone item acts like this, which just adds to the frustration, and many consider it overpowered, bordering on Pay-To-Win (as it was a DLC item that makes the game trivial to play). It also breaks contracts mode as you can ace any contract with non-forced objectives with no repercussions to your score, meaning it perverted even more incentives to interact with the game. It was removed completely in Hitman 3, even between progress transfers, and while IOI didn't specify their reasoning, it's pretty clear they did not expect the can of worms they had opened up in terms of balance.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: "Nightcall" only having up to a Mastery Rank of 5 and "Another Life" having a Mastery Rank of 15 caused some players to voice their concerns over the two maps being much smaller and more condensed compared to the usual. "Another Life" more-or-less escaped this complaint on release. However, players were still disappointed by the wasted potential of "Nightcall", since it is essentially a glorified tutorial mission, something deemed unnecessary considering the prologue from Hitman (2016) is still playable, regardless of if you own the Legacy Pack or not. This complaint also evolved into one that notes that between both missions missing 20 Mastery Levels, this means that the game is technically missing an entire mission's worth of content.
Detractors of "Golden Handshake" believe that the target should have had a much more complex and longer patrol route rather than remaining in her office. There are only five Mission Stories, with only two directly affecting the patrol route of the target and causing her to leave the room. Much like "Another Life", this mission also only has a Mastery Rank of 15.
Some were somewhat disappointed by the gameplay, since it's mostly identical to the previous game. Downplayed after the reveals of the new additions, the returning features, and the reveal that the entire previous game is included in this one (for free if you own 2016).
The majority of the fanbase is upset by the Mark II variants of weapons being the exact same weapon other than a "2" sticker on it, feeling as though it's a cheap way to fill the mastery rewards without even doing a proper reskin.
Pretty much every "Special Assignment" mission; "Embrace of the Serpent", "Illusions of Grandeur", "A Silver Tongue", and "A Bitter Pill", have been universally condemned by the playerbase for a whole myriad of reasons. Chief among them being that because the levels do not change up a given location very much, if at all, these levels are paid content, and are part of the Expansion Pass that costs $30 normally. Lots of players felt like IOI making them was a waste of resources for such short missions that only have a few ways to reliably off them, as well as not changing enough of the maps' scenery to justify the mission, with only using a fraction of a level they're based in. Other players cited the missions' general lengths make them feel more like permanent Elusive Targets rather than a completely reskinned level, Ala the previous games' Bonus Episodes (which is what the Special Assignments are the equivalent of, despite IOI trying to claim otherwise). Story-wise, all the targets are actually pretty interesting, with the latter two missions having a story tie to each other, but many feel the targets are wasted when their gameplay AI routine is no more than a large square or triangle in a tiny area of the map, meaning they never explore outside of their starting point. "The Snow Festival" avoids this problem by being part of the Legacy Pack (but initially was time limited content), and was essentially free to returning players, not to mention being set in a small level to begin with (Hokkaido, instead of Colombia, which is vastly bigger). You would be very hard-pressed to find a person who would find these missions any more than an average affair.
Jerkass Woobie: Sierra Knox. A brusque, corrupt and murderous young woman, who was always neglected and ignored by her father.
Just Here for Godzilla: Many people bought the game specifically to kill Mark Faba; A.K.A: Sean Bean. He's also the only target to be given two canonically separate contracts, and is the face used on the Marketing for the Miami pack.
Love to Hate: Dawood Rangan is a Jerkass and Hate Sink without a single redeeming quality. However, he’s such an entertaining douche that he ends up being one of the most memorable targets in the series.
Les Yay: Between Sierra Knox and her lawyer, Brigette Cabot, as meticulously detailed in this Reddit thread.
The Maelstrom, real name Wazir Kale, is a legendary South China Sea pirate. Once a Mumbai street orphan, he slaughtered his old gang to join the Mumbai Mafia. After a few years rising up the ranks, he turned on them as well, completely dismantling the local mob outfit. Escaping from Mumbai, he then reinvented himself as the Maelstrom, raiding commercial ships to sell their fuel on the Black Market. Kale and his crew were the scourge of the shipping industry for years until a failed raid on a Hamsun Oil Freighter, which prompted Kale to join forces with Lucas Grey to destroy the rich Westerners who had torn apart his crew. Returning to Mumbai, he disguises himself as an ordinary citizen and seamlessly blends into the slums. When he finds out that an assassin known as the Kashimirian had been contracted by his associates Dawood Rangan and Vanya Shah, he lets him kill the both of them, finding them unpredictable, before recruiting him.
Ljudmila Vetrova is Haven's client handler and one of its three co-owners, alongside Tyson Williams and Steven Braldey. Deciding to embezzle Haven for all it's worth, she instructs an employee at Haven's underwater server to steal a USB drive before throwing her under the bus and hiring "Tobias Rieper" to retrieve the drive from her. Upon gaining access to Jason Portman's computer, Vetrova and Bradley gain access to every database in the world, which they plan to wipe to cover their escape. Secretly planning to betray Bradley and meet her lover Pietro in Paris, Vetrova's plan only fails due to Bradley's inability to hack into the computer.
Man of a Thousand Voices: Dave Foquette, Dave Hill, Elsie Bennett, Aakash Shukal, Adam Bond, Matthew Gravelle, Oliver Cotton, Yuri Lowenthal, Rochelle Greenwood, and many, many more VA's.IOI certainly got a lot of mileage out of their performances, as more than three quarters of the cast voices at least one other character in the game (Legacy or otherwise), so be prepared to hear these people a lot in your playthroughs.
Memetic Loser: Orson Mills has gained this reputation, as not only does Alma consider him expendable and a replacement for her previous boyfriend, both the devs and the fans call him "Sean 2" thanks to Alma jokingly calling him that. The fact that he's not even a target shows that he's Not Worth Killing either.
The Snow Festival suit and Winter Sports Suit, which, while cool-looking, feel very out of place in a game where the levels consist of an MGS-style infiltration mission (Colorado), three missions in hot climate (Mumbai, Colombia and Sapienza) and one in a secret location with a strict dress code (Isle of Sgàil). The only level with snow in it is Hokkaido, and that's a Legacy Pack location via DLC. They also aren't as absurd as some of the other suits, the former being a arctic parka, the latter being a snowboarding/ skiing outfit, which are pretty normal, unlike the Legacy GOTY Clown Suit that looks absurd anywhere, so they don't necessarily fall into Narm Charm either.
47's repeated use of the alias "Tobias Rieper" got grating for some fans, wondering if the repeated use of the already unusual pseudonym would have raised any red flags amongst targets.
The way 47 can outright poison drinks, glasses and food when dressed as a waiter by obviously sprinkling poison from a suspicious bottle into the drink or dish.
Narm Charm: The 12-gauge shotgun was added to the game when The Bank was released, with the gimmick of being concealable. However, bringing the weapon into the level with you in the primary slot made 47 unequip it as soon as he entered the level. Depending on the location and starting position, you could attract suspicion before you entered the level. It was most famous on Paris, where you just handed a shotgun as well as your invite to the guard, and they don't bat an eyelid.
Older Than They Think: A lot of journalists and people believe that hiding in grass and crowds was introduced as a mechanic in this game. This idea has been used in Absolution (released in 2012), but has been around ever since 2009's Mini Ninjas.
Salvaged Gameplay Mechanic: Silent Assassin rules were actually updated around mid-way through the games' life here so that kills that were witnessed by the target would still qualify for the rating, something that was a widely praised change by players as it opened up the possibility of more direct confrontational kills (I.E, pacifying Dexy and shooting Jordan when they meet after the birthday party in Club 27).
The Scrappy: Nolan Cassidy, Whittleton Creek's secondary target, is generally considered to be undeveloped and boring vy fans, simply being a grumpy Overt Operative in comparison to Janus, who gets a lot more focus due to his role in the story and 47's past. It doesn't help that Nolan has only one mission story (being shown the explosive vault), and has very limited assassination methods (via fumigation setup or poisoning him at the barbecue).
The clues in Whittleton Creek are always mandatory, requiring you to find at least three clues along with eliminating the two targets to finish the mission. Fans believe that, while it is unique and interesting at first, it ruins the mission's pacing on replays of the map. This is a similar complaint to Colorado from Hitman 2016, where only the underground bunker was available as an escape in the campaign, requiring you to get Sean's Mask to leave the level. Colorado in Hitman 2 no longer forces one exit after a single play-through of the level, and in Whittleton Creek's case, there are easier, smaller clues to find, which don't take long to complete, but are out of the way enough from each other to become annoying to deal with, especially with repeated Save Scumming (or even when you can't save, like in Master Difficulty).
The Holiday Hoarders and Snow Festival missions being seasonal content complicated completing its challenges at first release. They all take some time to complete, and mid-mission saves were no longer possible, meaning if you mess up at any point, you have to start all over again. Both levels were made free permanently in December 2019, which mitigated these issues.
For the legacy pack, there is one particular guard in the party area for Paris that, for reasons unexplained, is an enforcer for 47 in his default suit, despite having a formal invitation. This was likely to take advantage of the new crowd blending feature, but this change has sparked some confusion and ire from fans. This is more confusing, as the "Vampire Magician" disguise does not prompt the same suspicion from that same guard, despite clearly looking goofier and more out of place.
Sniper Assassin mode has a really, really long grind per-level. The incentive to play is to upgrade your weapon each tier, making it easier to complete subsequent runs, which is all fine. What players take issue with is the time to beat each missions' mastery is painfully slow. Not only does it make the levels unfun to replay, there's no end-game reward for both "The Last Yardbird" and "The Pen and the Sword" (something "Crime and Punishment" does have, but the unlock is identical stat-wise to the Jaeger 7 Tuatara), all of which mean players have largely sworn off completing the Sniper Assassin missions to their fullest. Even the challenges for the level do not provide much of an incentive as they tend to focus on easter eggs and specific events that require guides to find or shooting everything on sight.
Self-Imposed Challenge: The Kill 'em All run, often referred to as the "Kill Everyone Challenge" is, well, a Genocide run taken to its logical extreme. The challenge has you go around killing every Guard, NPC, your Target(s), anything with a heartbeat and a head in a level, so long as they are not mission-critical (such as The Constant in the main mission) that is. There are easily around 600 NPCs in a given level, so good luck!
Running no longer causes guards to turn around to investigate the noise (read: almost always at you) on Master difficulty, a mechanic that was in 2016's Professional Mode and was universally loathed by everyone because it slowed the pace of the game down to a crawl.
Casual mode. The intention behind it is to let players screw around in a given level so they can get used to the layout and the mission stories. It's also useful if this is your first time playing a stealth game.
Master difficulty isn't quite as difficult as 2016's Professional Mode, as the item limitations are not present. For example, you are allowed to carry the Silverballer with the guard disguise, where previously that was forbidden, etc.
While the security cameras now alert enemies on every difficulty level, this actually makes the game significantly easier, as it means the player needs to actually remember their locations and will know when they screw up, in contrast to the last game's normal difficulty where the cameras had such a minor role that most players ignored them until they encountered them in Professional Mode. This time, the cameras always have the same spots on the map on Professional and Master, making learning their places on the map much easier.
Unconscious bodies thrown from ledges now properly count as accidents, unlike in the last game where they were only "accidents" if the victim was conscious before falling. This helps tremondously, as it makes hiding bodies in rooms that have full/no body containers much easier as long as there's a window, even if there are people on the landing zone. However, if the target is dead before being defenestrated, guards will treat it as a murder.
In a cool zig-zag of the trope, the game restores some older gameplay elements that were missing only from the previous game. Cameras now alarm nearby enemies on Professional and Master difficulties, and NPCs can see 47's reflection in mirrors, among other changes.
Things like the coin and lockpick are not standard. Considering that 47 can literally carry as many melee weapons and pistols as he wants, it's odd that he can't fit some coins and a lockpick in without sacrificing something else. Still, if you need a lockpick you can put it in a briefcase drop and get it later.
An unintentional example: Certain situations block saving, and the Autosave only happens randomly and after certain one-time-only triggers, meaning that longer sessions (such as Genocide playthroughs) can leave you unable to save for hours at worst.
Subverted in Casual mode. Most direct action is a last resort and discouraged in the main game; on Casual mode on the other hand, the AI is very forgiving for those who get into firefights often.
Sniper Rifles are now illegal in every disguise, including guard ones. This is where the briefcase comes in...
Shocking Moments: EveryHitman (2016) mission is in this game, from Paris, to Landslide, all the way to Patient Zero, all with updated features to boot. And if you had the first game, the missions were added at no additional cost. No-one saw that coming.
Spiritual Adaptation: You are a genetically engineered agent for a clandestine secret organization in the service of The Illuminati to hunt down a morally-ambiguous terrorist organization that is secretly led by your brother. Halfway through the game, you have the opportunity to turn against the Illuminati and take them down. Are we discussing Hitman 2 or Deus Ex?
Tainted by the Preview: A piece of gameplay that included the briefcase revealed that it has no animations beside the standard "pick up agency pickup". The game proper has animations for most sniper rifles, although they aren't as elaborate as they were in Bloody Money, to players' collective relief.
Tear Jerker: A minor one, but in Haven Island, one of the guests (Malcolm Roberts) calls his lawyer, expressing doubts over faking his death and remorse for the people he hurt. It's then revealed that his twin brother framed him and forged his signature and he is now living on his graces, cosigned to spend his life in obscurity in some small town somewhere.
The "Silent Assassin Suit Only" challenge. The majority of the castle beyond the reception area and lower courtyard can't be accessed without disguises, and sneaking there requires platforming or subduing several guards and civilians. Neither of the Washington twins are easy to get to - Zoe walks around the upper courtyard and the castle's first floor, which has a few accidental kill methods. Sophia, however, never leaves the heavily-guarded upper floor, where there are very few opportunities to kill her without drawing attention.
"Making Waves" was removed, but required dumping 47 bodies into the water. Thanks to the jagged nature of the island, bodies might not even fall straight into the water and won't count to the goal.
"None Shall Pass" is similar in that it requires blending in on all plinths scattered throughout the level. You can only blend in using the Knight Armor from the Penthouse, which is considered an illegal disguise everywhere. On the bright side, 47 can take much more punishment in this outfit than normal.
"7 Minutes in Heaven" requires Sophia Washington and Blake Nathaniel to be stuffed into the same closet in a security room. While Sophia does go there as part of her patrol route, Blake does not and must be dragged through several crowded rooms to get there. The challenge's difficulty is likely why it was removed in Hitman 3.
Similarly, "King of the Castle" requires both twins to be thrown off the balcony of the penthouse. Voting against Sophia during the "Winds of Change" opportunity will lead to you being able to meet her easily. However, Zoe never goes to the penthouse balcony and will have to be dragged from the ground floor all the way to the top, inevitably passing numerous civilians and guards along the way. Much like "7 Minutes in Heaven", the challenge was removed in 3.
To unlock the phantom suit, you need to kill 100 targets in ghost mode; it's not necessarily difficult, but A) each match ends once either player has 5 points and B) many players tend to quit the game if they are losing. Even if you won each match with all 5 points, it'd still take 20 matches to reach the goal. Hilariously, a challenge that sounds difficult (3 wins in a row) becomes surprisingly easy due to the players' aforementioned tendency to quit early.
Several players have expressed disappointment over the lack of an option to purchase a VIP ticket from the black market dealer in Miami. The fact that coins can be used to buy stuff in other scenarios and that he is trying to sell you one only to automatically assume you're not interested feels like there is supposed to be a way to buy one from him doesn't help. As a result, the only way to get any tickets from him is to take him out.
Rico Delgado, nephew of the late Fernando Delgado. Swearing revenge on his uncle's killer, he built the Delgado Cartel back from the ground up and back to glory. With a sizeable criminal empire and a personal vendetta against 47, Rico would have made a fantastic main or major villain, but is relegated to a single mission as he's only a target due to him working for The Shadow Client.
Wazir "the Maelstrom" Kale is described as having become a shadow of himself, bloodthirsty and desperate to regain glory. When we actually meet him, however, he is a rather stable man, and that his own PR made him sound more daring and crazy when that's far from true. It could've been more dramatic if he was more unhinged and ruthless, showcasing How the Mighty Have Fallen, rather than him being reserved and regretting the stories of him.
"The Censor" elusive target was in the main game news as a serial killer and his briefing hinted the possibility of him killing again. However, his official appearance consists of him making a very tiny patrol loop around the party in Whittleton Creek and making thinly-veiled threats to other partygoers, making him among the easiest Elusive Targets to take out, despite his identity initially being unknown.
The Heavenly Guard colonel Jin Noo and captains Lhom Kwai and Re Thak have unique character designs, combat ability and intriguing backstories, with Lhom Kwai being in contact with Triads and Human Traffickers and Re Thak being a Tragic Villain who lost her entire family to falsified charges. A proper main mission exploring their lives could've been dramatic and exciting, but they were all killed off in a Sniper Assassin mission, with not much of their distinct personalities coming through due to the range and lack of voice acting.
Some players have wished that Jebediah Block or Blake Nathaniel replaced one of the Washington twins as a target in "The Ark Society".
The end of the "Social Climbing" opportunity in the final mission has the Constant confronting Sophia Washington for conspiring to have him killed. Washington taunts him for his middle-class origins while standing at the edge of the tower. This culminates in... the Constant berating her and storming off. It could've been more climatic if, similarly to the the Cross-Morgan confrontation in the previous game, the Constant shoved the Rich Bitch off the tower to her death (of course, the killswitch makes that impossible and without the killswitch, there would be no reason for the Washington twins to be targets at all), which is presumably why this never happens.
After Mark Faba survives 47's initial attempt in "The Undying", 47 is sent to kill him again in a mission entirely identical to the previous contract, the only changes being to Faba (who is now wearing an eyepatch over his right eye), and a re-recorded briefing (where Diana is, understandably, annoyed at him re-appearing). It could've been more interesting if Faba had reappeared elsewhere in the game, instead of his contract essentially being the exact same mission twice with minor differences. Even a second outing to Miami wouldn't have been so bad if he was walking around the other sections, such as in the Global Innovation Race spaces, so they could be differentiated.
Tough Act to Follow: The cutscenes have this reception. The story cutscenes from the main mission are comicbook-esque slides and still with minimal animations, which, while detailed in their own right, are still very limiting at conmveying the otherwise-complex story. Meanwhile, the DLC missions work have pre-rendered in-game engine cutscenes, not unlike the ones the first five games in the series had. While both of these cutscene styles are good in their own ways, they pale in comparison to the pre-rendered cutscenes the previous game had, which were rich in detail and very refined. Of course, the cut in budget is why this is the case, but it's still a bit odd having three separate storytelling mediums clashing with one another as you progress though the story,
Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: While nowhere near as hard to pronounce than that of The Warlord from 2016 (Nne Obara), Vincente Murillo does have an odd looking name that can confuse players. For what it's worth, in-game it's pronounced as [Vin-chen-tay Marie-oh].
among other amusing things. The briefcase bug got silently patched out in Update 2.14, and now travels as fast as other melee weapons. IO did later add in a homing briefcase as an item, the Executive Briefcase MK.II.