I am an absolute die hard Hitman fan. I’ve played all of them. Replayed the whole series last year. Blood money was a better sandbox by far than the previous games. And it’s still a blast to go back and play just for the nostalgia and the vibes. But the people who insist today that it’s better than the World of Assassination trilogy are smoking crack. Not only that, but in some ways Blood Money was a big downgrade from the previous games. Hitman 3 in its current state today incorporates all the best things about Blood Money, the games that came before it, the game came after it, while cutting out the negatives.

The biggest problem with Blood Money for me was that it trivialized all challenge the game could have had by making disguises perfect and infallible. In the games that came before, having the right disguise only working from a distance, and get this: you actually had to act natural. You could just sprint between two armed guards, brushing both of their shoulders with a huge machine gun out as you passed by. In Blood Money disguises were simply an indicator of which rooms you were allowed to be in, and if you got a good enough disguise you could just be in all of them.

In WoA they fixed this without making you have to walk everywhere via the enforcer system, and better level design with tiered guards. Finding a disguise for the highest level guards let you go anywhere you want, but there would be more enforcers for you to have to avoid. Where’s more niche disguises that would reasonably make sense for nobody to recognize you were much better for moving around unabated.

That's curious because I remember Blood Money feeling really good, especially if I compare it to my memories of the original (don't bump the banners in front of the building - the physics cause my PC to seize up!).

I'll have to check it out again so I can ruin my memories.