This game is full of beautiful environments brought to life by truly impressive graphics for the time. The world is brimming with little secrets and backstory to uncover that is pretty interesting and adds depth to the characters and locations you are exploring. Where the game truly shines is the optional puzzle tombs where you actually do some tomb raiding and after solving some well designed puzzles, you are rewarded with some upgrades and loot. The combat is decent yet not much has changed from its predecessor but it keeps you engaged for the most part.
The weakness of this game is with it's story which follows the insanely generic story beats of almost every Indiana Jones-esque adventure game where the protagonist finds out about some ancient artifact believed to have magical powers and somehow figures out it's location. In comes evil antagonist backed by an endless army of nameless, faceless goons who finds out the magical McGuffins location either by stealing the research of the protagonist, stealing the map the protagonist found at gunpoint, or by secretly following the protagonist to the secret location. A race against time ensues to see who can find the McGuffin first, and even though you are the one solving all the puzzles and unlocking all the secrets somehow the antagonist gets to it just before you do. Big fight (usually involving QTE of some sort), protagonist wins, roll credits. This formula is so tired I can't even begin to describe how boring it has become to me. Are you telling me there is no other way to format an adventure game than this?
I also found the final act to be a bit ridiculous as well. The big bad that have been hinted at a few times throughout the game finally appear "The Deathless" who's name implies that they can't die... Or at least would be hard to kill. But nope, they die in two or three shots like the regular armored humans, and they don't use guns so they are actually easier to deal with. Even if they were more tanky these encounters are made kindergarten levels of easy due to the comedically large number of explosive pots strewn around the combat areas. Not exaggerating here, there is usually more explosive pots than enemies in each kill room. Also in the final fight Konstantin sneak attacks you and takes your bow and somehow you magically lose all your other guns as well, this was just lazy if you want to disarm me, do it in a way that makes sense. Also during this fight you can literally just run up to Konstantin and spam melee attack over and over and he won't die but is essentially stun locked... just poor design.
Ultimately this is a big step down from the first game of the reboot in my opinion due to a totally generic story and a frankly embarrassingly bad final act full of poorly designed encounters, underwhelming enemies, overly padded content (I'm looking at you trebuchet section), and a terribly designed final boss fight. Hopefully Shadow of the Tomb Raider fixes these issues... On to the next!
The weakness of this game is with it's story which follows the insanely generic story beats of almost every Indiana Jones-esque adventure game where the protagonist finds out about some ancient artifact believed to have magical powers and somehow figures out it's location. In comes evil antagonist backed by an endless army of nameless, faceless goons who finds out the magical McGuffins location either by stealing the research of the protagonist, stealing the map the protagonist found at gunpoint, or by secretly following the protagonist to the secret location. A race against time ensues to see who can find the McGuffin first, and even though you are the one solving all the puzzles and unlocking all the secrets somehow the antagonist gets to it just before you do. Big fight (usually involving QTE of some sort), protagonist wins, roll credits. This formula is so tired I can't even begin to describe how boring it has become to me. Are you telling me there is no other way to format an adventure game than this?
I also found the final act to be a bit ridiculous as well. The big bad that have been hinted at a few times throughout the game finally appear "The Deathless" who's name implies that they can't die... Or at least would be hard to kill. But nope, they die in two or three shots like the regular armored humans, and they don't use guns so they are actually easier to deal with. Even if they were more tanky these encounters are made kindergarten levels of easy due to the comedically large number of explosive pots strewn around the combat areas. Not exaggerating here, there is usually more explosive pots than enemies in each kill room. Also in the final fight Konstantin sneak attacks you and takes your bow and somehow you magically lose all your other guns as well, this was just lazy if you want to disarm me, do it in a way that makes sense. Also during this fight you can literally just run up to Konstantin and spam melee attack over and over and he won't die but is essentially stun locked... just poor design.
Ultimately this is a big step down from the first game of the reboot in my opinion due to a totally generic story and a frankly embarrassingly bad final act full of poorly designed encounters, underwhelming enemies, overly padded content (I'm looking at you trebuchet section), and a terribly designed final boss fight. Hopefully Shadow of the Tomb Raider fixes these issues... On to the next!