This review contains spoilers
For personal reference more than anything else.
First full playthrough of this game after an attempt about 8-9 years ago and another attempt 2 years ago. Got 76%.
I was sort of worried about going back to this game as I figured it would just be kind of boring and play poorly but as I wanted to replay Rise at some point and figured that it felt weird to go straight into that one, I decided to at the very least try this and see what happens.
To start off with the story is actually pretty good, I really liked learning about Himiko and what Matthias and the Solarii were trying to do. I also think that Lara's personal journey is great as well, I quite like this version of Lara and found it interesting to follow her and see how she changes throughout the game. I also think that around the halfway point onwards I genuinely considered her to be a badass due to how many enemies she was dealing with and the fact that she was able to dispatch all of them, her getting the grenade launcher in the Solarii Fortress was definitely a highlight to me.
The rest of the characters were just sort of there, Alex was annoying, Whitman was kind of a prick but he was hot so I didn't really mind, Jonah was likeable but didn't really seem to do much, Roth was fine, Grim was funny. Reyes I liked and she provided a nice change of pace due to her slight dislike of Lara which I was a fan of as it made their conversations (and Reyes as a character) more interesting and I thought Sam was good, with me also enjoying the relationship between her and Lara. There were two things I really liked about the Endurance crew, the first were the cutscenes where Lara would watch some old videos they made of happier times (I kind of wish they did this a bit more though as they were nice to watch and I think they would have really helped to flesh out the crew) and the second thing was the hostility in the group at times between Lara, Reyes and Whitman, it made me think of the drama in The Blair Witch Project and Unfriended which is my favourite parts of those films and so I was very happy that it was present here.
As for the gameplay though, part of my worry was that despite having a far bit of it before and also having played Rise & Shadow, I for some reason thought this game would just feel slow with unengaging gameplay. I was so wrong though, this game is so fucking fun. The combat is amazing, all the weapons felt great to use, some of the attacks were really brutal and it was kind of cool. Upgrades were a surprise as in so many games I play, upgrades feel so boring but here it was stuff I wanted and made the game more fun. The puzzles were fine but most of them felt too easy and short, I think I did every optional tomb barring one and the majority felt like the first step of a puzzle but was over before it got to the main part. There were a couple of tombs I enjoyed and thought had a good puzzle that was more complex but they felt like the exception.
Action set pieces happened a bit too often I think, it felt like every five minutes a structure was collapsing, an explosion was going off or Lara was sliding down something. It meant the game relied on QTEs quite a bit which was fine most of the time but just sort of annoying every once in a while. Admittedly though, the frequency of the set pieces and the fact that they were ramping up in intensity with each one, making them more and more outlandish as they went on really worked for me and it made the whole situation very amusing, probably not what was intended but I was having a very good time.
Some scattered thoughts:
• I was going to try and go for 100% but while I was happy to get collectibles as I was going, stopping and making a point to look for all of them in each area got boring on the first area I tried so I just decided against it.
• I did enjoy the majority of the logs I found but I think in some cases it felt like they were saying things the game should have been communicating in cutscenes and the like, big plot moments and character development end up inside these optional and missable logs which I think was kind of a bad decision.
• Being able to fast travel in this game is very strange and doesn't really make sense but it is much appreciated.
I really enjoyed this game, I can't believe its taken me this long to actually finish it but I'm so glad I did. In a way this is kind of an important Tomb Raider game for me as while its not the first one I played (Underworld or the Sky Games one, I think?) or the one that really got me into the series (Rise), I don't think I would have gotten into this series at least as early as I did if I hadn't had got it on Xbox Live Gold and really enjoyed my time with it when I was younger, because of that I honestly appreciate it quite a bit.
First full playthrough of this game after an attempt about 8-9 years ago and another attempt 2 years ago. Got 76%.
I was sort of worried about going back to this game as I figured it would just be kind of boring and play poorly but as I wanted to replay Rise at some point and figured that it felt weird to go straight into that one, I decided to at the very least try this and see what happens.
To start off with the story is actually pretty good, I really liked learning about Himiko and what Matthias and the Solarii were trying to do. I also think that Lara's personal journey is great as well, I quite like this version of Lara and found it interesting to follow her and see how she changes throughout the game. I also think that around the halfway point onwards I genuinely considered her to be a badass due to how many enemies she was dealing with and the fact that she was able to dispatch all of them, her getting the grenade launcher in the Solarii Fortress was definitely a highlight to me.
The rest of the characters were just sort of there, Alex was annoying, Whitman was kind of a prick but he was hot so I didn't really mind, Jonah was likeable but didn't really seem to do much, Roth was fine, Grim was funny. Reyes I liked and she provided a nice change of pace due to her slight dislike of Lara which I was a fan of as it made their conversations (and Reyes as a character) more interesting and I thought Sam was good, with me also enjoying the relationship between her and Lara. There were two things I really liked about the Endurance crew, the first were the cutscenes where Lara would watch some old videos they made of happier times (I kind of wish they did this a bit more though as they were nice to watch and I think they would have really helped to flesh out the crew) and the second thing was the hostility in the group at times between Lara, Reyes and Whitman, it made me think of the drama in The Blair Witch Project and Unfriended which is my favourite parts of those films and so I was very happy that it was present here.
As for the gameplay though, part of my worry was that despite having a far bit of it before and also having played Rise & Shadow, I for some reason thought this game would just feel slow with unengaging gameplay. I was so wrong though, this game is so fucking fun. The combat is amazing, all the weapons felt great to use, some of the attacks were really brutal and it was kind of cool. Upgrades were a surprise as in so many games I play, upgrades feel so boring but here it was stuff I wanted and made the game more fun. The puzzles were fine but most of them felt too easy and short, I think I did every optional tomb barring one and the majority felt like the first step of a puzzle but was over before it got to the main part. There were a couple of tombs I enjoyed and thought had a good puzzle that was more complex but they felt like the exception.
Action set pieces happened a bit too often I think, it felt like every five minutes a structure was collapsing, an explosion was going off or Lara was sliding down something. It meant the game relied on QTEs quite a bit which was fine most of the time but just sort of annoying every once in a while. Admittedly though, the frequency of the set pieces and the fact that they were ramping up in intensity with each one, making them more and more outlandish as they went on really worked for me and it made the whole situation very amusing, probably not what was intended but I was having a very good time.
Some scattered thoughts:
• I was going to try and go for 100% but while I was happy to get collectibles as I was going, stopping and making a point to look for all of them in each area got boring on the first area I tried so I just decided against it.
• I did enjoy the majority of the logs I found but I think in some cases it felt like they were saying things the game should have been communicating in cutscenes and the like, big plot moments and character development end up inside these optional and missable logs which I think was kind of a bad decision.
• Being able to fast travel in this game is very strange and doesn't really make sense but it is much appreciated.
I really enjoyed this game, I can't believe its taken me this long to actually finish it but I'm so glad I did. In a way this is kind of an important Tomb Raider game for me as while its not the first one I played (Underworld or the Sky Games one, I think?) or the one that really got me into the series (Rise), I don't think I would have gotten into this series at least as early as I did if I hadn't had got it on Xbox Live Gold and really enjoyed my time with it when I was younger, because of that I honestly appreciate it quite a bit.