Probably one of my favorite stealth games to date.

+ Great level design/world
+ Story is very good
+ Gameplay and stealth mechanics both are exceptional

- Combat is a bit lackluster

Arkane's breakout title is a rock-solid immersive sim with a few novel ideas but an overly simplistic view of how to integrate those to offer a myriad of solutions to problems. Coming off of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, which is a stellar fantasy murder simulator but not an amazing stealth game, it's easy to see how aiming to make their own superpowered take on Thief could have gone awry. Perhaps they were still finding their footing, though, since this game's success turned out to be a sign of good things to come from Arkane. Still, Thief, Deus Ex, or even their own smashing success Prey this is not.

Instead, most problems have a straightforward handful of meaningfully different answers--still more than most games, but the limited selection of abilities and the painfully binary moral choices keep it from the creativity and emergent solutions offered by the best of the genre. The bone charms are a nice idea--mainly stat-based bonuses that reward you for exploring, in contrast to the whole new abilities runes unlock, but so few of them are actually interesting or useful that they don't always feel rewarding to hunt down, particularly when it turns out they have nothing to do with your playstyle. If, instead, they were currency to upgrade your stats (much like runes are for your powers) then they'd both be more flexible and more useful. (Alternately, the system used in the DLC and sequel works fine, where some of them are stronger with drawbacks.) If you're going for a nonlethal run, this will feel even more restrictive, since over half the abilities and charms will simply be non-options most of the time.

A few levels have just-out-of-reach ledges and rooftops blocked by invisible walls which should seemingly be accessible with your blink and enhanced jump, which is highly disappointing to come across in a game like this, though luckily not for very long, since the levels are otherwise full of alternate paths. Still, this combined with the incessant tutorials reminding you "hey, there's more than one way to approach this!" for the first three or four levels serves to make it feel more railroaded than it may actually be--like the developers already thought of and scripted in whatever approach you're taking rather than thinking of it yourself. I mean, of course they did, but I don't want to feel like it.

Still, highly effective level design and the plain fun of what IS there in its toolset, along with a striking art style that has aged better than most late-console-generation games of its time, help make it fun the whole way through, and the crisp pacing makes it brisk enough to play through to completion.

A really good inmersive sim about not losing your shit and restoring your honor without killing anyone while not being seen by anyone. Or maybe you should have killed some of your targets.
The morality system can seem weird at first but you get use to it.
The story is also interesting just to see how your actions will affect the city and it's people. It also has some good twist for when you decide to be merciful.
As far as gameplay goes, you have a number of tools and powers to get your job done, however, if you want to do a non lethal run you are gonna have a very reduced arsenal.
Highly recommended if you like stealth games.

Abandoned this about 7 hours in, towards the end of the first proper mission.

I deeply disliked the effect the morality system has on the game. The game tells you from very early on that you have to avoid killing people in order to get a better ending. Upon learning this, and wanting a good ending, half the items and skills in the game became completely irrelevant if they were intended to kill enemies. Meanwhile the game turned into a mad flurry of saving and reloading (which I find very not-fun in games) because if an enemy ever saw you your inability to kill them meant all you'd be able to do is run away anyways, so if you don't save every time you knock someone unconscious and load whenever you're spotted the game takes forever. The condition attached to the good ending is also just very wishy-washy in a way that stressed me out too; how many enemies can I get away with killing?, am I going to be punished for humans dying for reasons beyond my control (apparently, yes, which was very frustrating)?, am I allowed to kill guard dogs without it hurting my good-ending chances (apparently yes, but I'd really like this to be stated in-game as it's just not intuitive)? Remove the morality system, and make killing people or being a stealthy ghost feel more like a play-style choice rather than something I'm being judged on with rewards being attached to one of the two options, and I'd instantly be much more on-board with the game.

Somewhat relatedly, I found playing the game a very stressful experience. When you're trying to play stealthily, such that you won't let yourself kill or attack anyone in an attempt to get the good-ending, you're super vulnerable. If an enemy sees you all you can do is run away and hide (as they take chase). Mechanically playing with this approach already starts to feel like its bordering on being a horror-game (weak, vulnerable protagonist tries to avoid relentless, essentially-immortal enemies whilst trying to reach the thing that will stop them attacking you), but these vibes are emphasised many times over by the oppressive atmosphere that the game's plague-ridden flavour conjures up. I think either the flavour or the mechanics on their own would have been fine for me, but combined these things led to me just being constantly stressed, on-edge and miserable.

A bunch of other stuff bothered me beyond this; it's very unclear what the range of sight on enemies actually is, attempting to knock enemies unconscious from behind just wouldn't work some amount of the time, I personally really dislike that the game requires I kill rats. Probably the biggest point in the game's favour, from the small portion I played, is that the two powers I unlocked (blink-teleporting and night-sight-that-lets-you-see-lifeforms-through-walls) are compelling and pleasing to use. The worlds I was exploring also seemed to have an impressive level of depth to them too, enough so that I'm a bit sad that not enjoying the way the game encourages me to engage with it mechanically prevented me from exploring it further.

I think this is probably my ninth or tenth full replay of Dishonored? I've been doing one a year around November/December every year since it came out, first on Xbox 360 and this year for the first time on PC. Hit me last night I had basically memorized the entirety of the Golden Cat mission (both routes) and knocked it out extremely quickly. It ends up feeling kind of quaint now (both because of knowing it in and out and because of improvements made in Dishonored 2) but still has a really special place in my heart as the first immersive sim I ever got super into. And it still just feels incredible to play, the sandboxes are limited by the hardware at the time but are really fun to move around in. Doubt this game will ever get old for me.