Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves - Episode 25: Fight and Flight

In today's episode of the "Honor Among Thieves" playthrough, we start the game's final level, "Honor Among Thieves", and fight Dr. M and his creatures over the course of several missions as we work to recover Sly's cane.
When it comes to "Honor Among Thieves", "Like with Cold Heart of Hate" from the first game, forgoes overworld exploration and standard mechanics in favor of a marathon of missions and a focus on the plot. As such, I've always found it hard to rank "Honor Among Thieves" alongside the other levels in the series. Though when compared to the other final levels in the series, I personally rank "Honor Among Thieves" as my second-favorite, with "Anatomy for Disaster" being my favorite, "Cold Heart of Hate" being my third, and "Paris Epilogue" (a.k.a. "Epilogue") being something that I'd like to chuck into a dumpster.
For me, the big thing that puts "Honor Among Thieves" above "Cold Heart of Hate" is the overall gameplay. For example, at the start of "Cold Heart of Hate", you have to complete a slow-paced turret section with no checkpoints, whereas in "Honor Among Thieves", your first mission is to steamroll the giant creature that was on the verge of killing Sly at the end of the prologue. Not to mention, instead of being one-third turret section, one-third standard Sly gameplay, and one-third one-off minigames (even though "Bentley Comes Through" serves as both a good level and a great source of character development for Bentley), each member of the gang (with the exception of Panda King) gets one final mission where they get to show off their skills. Heck, we even get another airplane mission that's a lot of fun to play, what with you flying around the island as you destroy turrets, a horde of robot bats, and fight against a giant whale/dragonfly mutant that Dr. M's controlling.
Though seriously, Panda King was done dirty. Here he was brought onto the gang as the full-time demolitions expert, yet instead of getting to blast down the radar towers that are keeping Sly from taking to the skies with an onslaught of fireworks, he gets to launch Penelope's R.C car onto a track so she can do the job. Heck, if you think about it, in regards to the Cooper Vault heist, Panda King's biggest contribution has been launching cars. I understand that a big part of Panda King's character arc has been distancing himself from his dark past (which, in turn means less wonton destruction and violence), but the whole reason why Bentley strongly insisted that the gang should recruit Panda King was because the Cooper Vault heist would be impossible to complete without the latter's mastery of explosives.