This game is noticeably weaker to me than the previous two. This game is just more of Rise of Tomb Raider, but worse in a lot of small ways for some reason?
-This is the biggest downgrade in that they made combat just worse to try and encourage more stealth gameplay. The stealth is fine I guess, but not as good as many other games by 2018. Melee is effectively useless in this game, feels so much weaker than the last 2 games. You barely get to execute enemies anymore, it was fun shooting enemies in the knees, then going for a execute.
-They brought back the A/D button mashing quick time event from 2013. This quick time event just fucking sucks.
-You used to be able to hold E when Lara had to smash open minerals/doors in Rise, but in Shadow you can't do that anymore and have to mash E, why?
-Can no longer see your maximum item count from the menus, have to go to a store to see if you are close on capping.
Besides these things the story also just feels super "Ehhh." Like I just did not vibe with it, the general premise is cool, but the moment to moment and characters felt wrong.
There is also an insane bug for a sidequest where you can talk to someone you aren't supposed to before you talk to the initial quest giver, you will not be able to turn in the quest (You will still get the reward since it doesnt rely on turning it, but its still fucks over 100%). The dev's know about this too and have done nothing.
I have no idea why the Tomb Raider series got traded from Crystal Dynamics to Eidos Montreal, but its obvious to me that all these weird changes are because of the studio swap. Like Eidos got it pretty close, but just flopped hard in weird places.
-This is the biggest downgrade in that they made combat just worse to try and encourage more stealth gameplay. The stealth is fine I guess, but not as good as many other games by 2018. Melee is effectively useless in this game, feels so much weaker than the last 2 games. You barely get to execute enemies anymore, it was fun shooting enemies in the knees, then going for a execute.
-They brought back the A/D button mashing quick time event from 2013. This quick time event just fucking sucks.
-You used to be able to hold E when Lara had to smash open minerals/doors in Rise, but in Shadow you can't do that anymore and have to mash E, why?
-Can no longer see your maximum item count from the menus, have to go to a store to see if you are close on capping.
Besides these things the story also just feels super "Ehhh." Like I just did not vibe with it, the general premise is cool, but the moment to moment and characters felt wrong.
There is also an insane bug for a sidequest where you can talk to someone you aren't supposed to before you talk to the initial quest giver, you will not be able to turn in the quest (You will still get the reward since it doesnt rely on turning it, but its still fucks over 100%). The dev's know about this too and have done nothing.
I have no idea why the Tomb Raider series got traded from Crystal Dynamics to Eidos Montreal, but its obvious to me that all these weird changes are because of the studio swap. Like Eidos got it pretty close, but just flopped hard in weird places.