I didn't have super high expectations for the Carpathian Mountains level. With the max Mastery Level only being 5, I figured it was going to be akin to Hawke's Bay. But my initial impression was "Wow, what a shitty final level". They really ended this awesome sandbox stealth trilogy on this terrible, linear, shoot 'em up on this boring ass train that just goes on and on, and without any real interesting ways of eliminating the target? It felt like a waste of the Romania setting considering its importance to the series backstory, and a really weak payoff to the story buildup over the last three games.
BUT....as I replayed it a few more times to get SASO and to do other challenges, I discovered that there's a lot more depth and strategy to the level than it first appeared. While you're not offered a lot of creativity when it comes to taking out the target, it does offer a fair amount of variety in terms of how you make your way through the train. There's a little something to each car that can be used to your advantage in a meaningful way. In the end, there was actually a lot of fun to be had here. It's still the worst level in the game, but for what it is, I don't dislike it.
It still does feel like a bit of a wasted opportunity, though. If this was a two-part level (i.e. with a mini-sandbox area either preceding or following the train section, and you'd have the opportunity to eliminate the target in the first part of the mission or you could allow it to play out in full) I probably would have liked it a lot more. I still feel like the target and the setting both deserved a full-scale sandbox level to end the trilogy, but it just wasn't to be.
I'd probably rank the missions like this:
- Dubai - Just a classic Hitman level. Perfect size, tremendous level design, densely packed with stuff to do, and lots of fun & creative ways to eliminate the targets.
- Berlin - An awesome murder playground. It revisits some of the Colorado ideas, but does everything so much better. One of the most replayable levels in the series.
- Mendoza - A great map, a ton of fun assassination opportunities and lots of neat little nods to earlier missions. With a lot more polish, this would be higher.
- Dartmoor - A unique style of mission for the series, it is brilliant with all of the different ways the detective story can play out, but there's not that much to do outside of that.
- Chongqing - This is a "ho-hum" level I'd put in the same class as Bangkok or Mumbai. It's fine and certainly not bad, but not particularly memorable either.
- Carpathian Mountains - Not what I'm looking for from a Hitman level, and a missed opportunity overall, but its got its positive qualities which allow it to be pretty fun.
I definitely enjoyed this game a lot more than Hitman 2. I would take the top 4 levels here over any of the ones in H2 aside from Miami. It really does come close to Hitman 2016 for me. Where I feel Hitman 2 learned the wrong lessons from Hitman S1 (apparently that Colorado was one of the best levels instead of the worst), Hitman 3 gets nearly everything right. I
love that they've separated the "story playthrough" into its own thing which doesn't force those requirements on you for replays. I think this makes the game better in terms of replayability and in terms of providing a better story-focused mission structure for each level. For example, in Hitman 1+2 you would have always had to hack into the Chongqing data core. It's cool to do this on the story focused run, but it's also great that you don't have to do it when replaying the map to do SASO, sniper challenges, etc.
Overall, the second half of Hitman 3 is weaker than its first (to be fair, this trend applies to the whole trilogy) and while I feel Dubai/Berlin/Mendoza/Dartmoor is a really strong Top 4, I would have it just a notch below Sapienza/Marrakesh/Paris/Hokkaido. Hitman S1 also has six full sandbox levels vs. five, in addition to the ICA training levels which are more substantial levels than Hawke's Bay/Carpathian Mountains, imo. So at the end of the day, for me it goes H1 > H3 >>> H2. Going to revisit H1 levels in VR next.
