The final chapter of both Dishonored's overall narrative and the assassin Daud's DLC side-story, The Witches of Brigmore is a satisfying – if frustrating – end to one of this generation's most impressive new IPs.
Following directly on from The Knife of Dunwall (transferring your abilities and decisions across as well), Witches is a bigger - if not necessarily better - experience than what came before. As Daud, you'll have to infiltrate the prison Corvo escaped from at the start of the main game, settle a dispute between rival gangs in a turf war played out in an upmarket shopping/textile district, before finally infiltrating a decrepit country estate to eliminate the head of the Witches, attempting to atone for killing the empress as you do so.
All of Dishonored's famed hallmarks are there: a beautiful world, intriguing political game-playing, and highly replayable levels. Sadly, chief failings are also on show - high levels of trial and error, overpowered abilities, and the feeling that your first run-through is sure to be nothing more than a glorified trial.
Some of those problems also afflict other stealth titles - older Hitman games being obvious examples - but they're escalated by the first-person nature of Dishonored. There's also the rather spotty enemy AI to contend with - where and when they can see you seems to change minute-to-minute. Chuck in the fact that they can teleport and respawn and you've got a recipe for frustration - when a witch appears behind you after minutes of sneaking, you'll howl in frustration.
But you'll persevere. Because despite these faults, Dishonored's world is still great (even if these maps aren't top-tier, with too much time spent fetch-questing) and the sheer number of different ways you can approach the missions - and improve your score - makes for compulsive gaming. Story-wise, it's a nice ending to a potentially great new IP. For it to reach those heights, however, it'll have to tighten up its gameplay next time around.
Version Tested: Xbox 360. Played for around 4 hours.
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