Started on May 31, 2023

The game introduces many major and not-so-major characters to the plot, and the game just expects us to already know about them and their relationship with Lara. Now, since this is my first old school style TR game, I might probably be missing a few info about the characters, however, considering that this is supposed to be a reboot, I highly doubt it.

Controlling Lara feels weightless and floaty, and the camera often gets in the way of platforming.

The motor driving sections also drag on for far too long, and it's not helped by the fact that the maps that you drive through are pretty much just looped to extend their length, with it being prevalent in the very first driving segment of the game.

Boss fights aren't that much better either, with them repeating the same two dialogues all over again. And the loops aren't even that spread out, the same dialogue get repeated just about 2 seconds apart from each other.

As for the tomb raiding, well, it does feel fun to explore a few locales, however, the puzzle solving which is a very prevalent mechanic when exploring the tombs, kind of dampers the experience. Many of the solutions are hard to discover and are just not that clear at all, often times obscured by the terribly lit environment and awful camera. I'm not ashamed to say that I've looked at a few solutions for the puzzles online in some occassions.

This PC port also includes the ability to play between the original PS2 graphics and PS3 graphics. With the PS2 options leaning more on the cartoony artstyle while the PS3 options provides more realism to the environments, although little to no improvements were done to the character models. I'm just not that fond of the cartoony artstyle at all, many if not all characters look like they were created using the Sims 3.

Throughout the entire duration of the game I used the PS3 graphics option although there were a few instances were I forced to use the older graphics style due to the game crashing in many levels that uses it.

Most reviews I found for the game were positive so it does make me wonder whether all of the technical jank that I've encountered were only the result of this PC port.

Despite the name, Tomb Raider: Legend is no legendary game.

Reviewed on May 31, 2023


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