The death cry of a burrick is quite sad :(

There is this room in Mission 9 I halfway played last night where I was surrounded by 4 Burricks. Well, my patience ran out, I no longer knocked them down but went all out to massacre them in that room.

Agreed. I feel no remorse when killing Craymen. The only things that disgust me more are those Mantis things. I go out of my way to kill them. Horrible creatures *shuders*

Well, for me it is not so much of a remorse, but rather that it is fun to avoid their claws and hit them with sword. For me it is certainly up there in terms of fun with shooting zombies using blessed water arrows and fire elemental with regular water arrows.

Hammer Priest Apparitions are a kind of enemies I usually go melee with, but not as fun as Craymen.

I am in the beginning of Mission 11 Return to the Cathedral and find myself out of fire arrows and flash bombs after dealing with 3 Hammer Haunts, 1 Hammer Spirit, and 3 Zombies. Since this is still early in the mission, do you guys think I should restart or continue? If there are any more of these undead creatures I will not have any means to kill them (unless they can be killed with a sword, which I am sure zombies can't).

It depends on what you want to do for example being a thieving bastard and try to avoid unnecasary conflicts, although some places in the Cathedral force you to fight. When you grab The Eye try to use the rope arrows that are near it and places you can use all over the cathedral to climb. Once you grab the eye you will be going to another part of the Cathedral area thats outside like a courtyard and allows more room. I say restart the level. After all getting The Eye is the easy part...

Hammer Haunts can be killed with a sword. At least, it's possible to sneak up on them and kill them with a backstab. I'm not sure if you can kill them in a straight-up fight, but I think you can.

It's possible to be very sneaky in this level and hardly have to fight the zombies and haunts at all. When I first played I would freak out and try to kill every zombie but later realized that I can sneak past them in most cases. So it is possible to finish the level without flash bombs or fire arrows.

Having said that, it might be safer to restart and use them more sparingly while getting the Eye. That way you'll still have a few for emergencies later in the mission. Try being more sneaky and only fight if you're discovered. Also, in the case of Hammer Haunts, you can sneak up on them and backstab them.

Thanks for the responses guys. Sorry I did not check the forum yesterday. I decided to proceed, killing the Hammer Haunts and Hammer Spirits with backstab. For zombies I also striked them with swords until they all went down (and did not stand up again unless I got too close to them).

I am onto Mission 13 now (by the way, it was Mission 12 not 11 as I wrote above). I am hoping to finish the game sometime next week, then either taking a break by playing other games or continuing with Thief II. I am still undecided at this point.

I liked Thief II even better than the first game. Definitely play it, even if you don't play it right away.

[I know it's a bit of a thread resurrection, but nevermind]
2 hours for the Guild mission is about right actually, I normally spend about an hour to 90min on each mission (except for the short ones like Bafford). The final mission of Thief 2 (Sabotage at Soulforge) takes me around 2 hours. And that's with a walkthrough to stop me getting completely lost.

One of the great things about Thief is the open-world-ness of it, the fact that there's multiple ways to perform a task, and player exploration is rewarded. This is even more so in Thief 2, some of the levels there are huge, if you want to explore them!

Oh, and for reference, you can kill Haunts with a sword in a normal sword-fight. You just have to be very good :)