played through the game again on master difficulty, after getting the levels through hitman iii, and I gotta say, this feels like the way the game was meant to be played. gone are the hints on how to complete the mission stories, and instead you have to work out how to complete them yourself. they aren't even that much harder to figure out, and yet it feels completely different without the tutorials and tips helping you along.

the inability to save scum also improves the game a lot, as it adds more tension to your every action and forces you to think quickly when your plan doesn't work, instead of just reloading a save from 10 seconds ago and trying again. I have found save scumming to be a pretty big problem for me in immersive sims and hitman's solution to it feels very appropriate for the kind of game that it is

replaying has also reminded me of how damn good this game is! pretty much all of the levels are great (i even enjoyed colorado this time round) and there are a ton of viable solutions to any given problem that you encounter.

sadly, the online system is still garbage, and the (questionable) requirement for an connection to a server in order to play the game is going to be what kills in in the long run, when it's no longer profitable for the servers to keep running, and this incredible SINGLE PLAYER game becomes impossible to fully experience