Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches Review

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. Click here to read about VideoGamer.com’s new review policy.