This game absolutely kicked my ass. Repeatedly. So much so that I had to take a break from playing any video game for a couple of days just to refresh my brain.

That doesn't mean I didn't have fun. I think this game picked the best parts of both prior titles in the series, and put them together to create the most polished and varied experience of all the games so far. The environments were varied, and exploring them was always interesting - and the enemies seemed perfectly placed, with plenty of ammo to go around meaning I never felt short on ammo for my favourite weapons, except for a few places where by design you are short of your firepower.

I loved being able to choose what order to tackle the levels. The more open end feeling did mean that the difficulty curve was more like a difficulty brick wall, with the entire game being difficult from start to end, but it was incredibly satisfying to conquer some of the trickiest parts. There was at least one part in each major part of the game where I had to look up a guide to help, which again I'm unsure if it's just me being dumb, or some of the puzzles being a bit obtuse - though it didn't mark my enjoyment too much.

In spite of all the positives about this game, I didn't quite enjoy it as much as Tomb Raider 2. The major gripe that certainly made my experience less enjoyable was the sheer amount of backtracking in almost every level. I enjoyed how dense each level was, though the more you backtracked, the more you realised that most levels are actually very small, they just have puzzles layered on top of each other, and you go back and forth through the same areas constantly. This actually ends up making some things more confusing (especially in the London levels.) Luckily, each stage of the game feels varied enough that completing levels and finding a new type of environment to explore is very satisfying.

I think this is a great end of the first trilogy of games. It's left me excited to see what other mechanics or challenges these games can throw at me. I just hope the levels don't keep following this trend of backtracking - or if they do, I hope it's handled in a more open ended way like levels in Tomb Raider II, such as Barkhang Monastery.