begging persona writers to stop using sexual harassment as shorthand for evil, especially with characters who are survivors of abuse. it's one thing to attempt to have a genuine conversation about it like with the original game's kamoshida arc even if you mess some stuff up but it's another entirely to just have random minibosses do it just because the writers want you to hate an enemy you won't ever again care about 15 seconds later.

that aside, this is mostly a rehash of p5's story but slightly more competent, even if shallower. the conceit of the road trip through japan is fun! and having established the character dynamics (in a laborious separate 100 hour game) the interstitial scenes have some great moments. i laughed out loud sometimes. the new characters, Sophia and Zenkichi, are great especially the latter. it's fun to see a real adult person fuck with some self-righteous kids and it's equally as fun to see the reverse. Sophia is cute, not much more yet (I stopped in the middle of the third jail because my copy of Armored Core 4 arrived) but i expected to despise her and i don't. put simply - when this game attempts to have themes i stop listening but when it's just a bunch of kids and an idiot cop messing around it's enjoyable. as for how it plays...it plays bad. it's a musou game trying to be an action RPG, in return it has none of the mindless zen state playing a real musou game gets you nor the depth and feel of an actually good action rpg like kingdom hearts or even hell, nights of azure. mainly shelving because im leeching off my brother's ps+, moving back to uni in a week so can't finish it in time, definitely vaguely interested enough to finish it though not sure if my rating will go up

This seems very overrated... I don't get it
I'm guessing it's one of those games people love due to the nostalgia of playing it when it came out. Not discrediting how ahead of its time it is for 2007, it is refreshing for a game to have this aesthetic when every shooter in the 2000s looked so ugly with the brown filter. The art direction is really good and probably the strongest aspect for me.
However, as good as the atmosphere is I can't get over how the story is told through hundreds of voice memos you find that are hard to pay attention to while you're shooting. It makes it really hard to connect and be invested in it. People praise bioshock's story so much and then... that's it?
The gameplay is clunky and for me it wasn't that much fun. Maybe I'm spoiled by today's standards but it just didn't click, even with all the different plasmids it's still very basic and it just got very repetitive.
And lastly, what made me quit is that technically it's a mess. I tried installing all the patches, tweaking the settings and everything but it's a mess. I managed to stop it crashing randomly mid gameplay but it still crashes constantly just by opening the map or saving the game. And you do have to save constantly cause you never know when it might crash again and make you lose progress. It just got too frustrating and I felt like I was making too much of an effort for an experience that wasn't that rewarding.

My favorite Tomb Raider from the reboot trilogy.
Seeing Lara's growth throughout these three games and slowly becoming the badass we're used to (though she never quite gets to Legend levels of iconic, but there will be a sequel soon so who knows) was a great journey.
I stopped playing this halfway through and only picked it up again now a year later so I don't really know what's going on with the Mayan apocalypse story, but story has never been something I really cared about in these games. The main point for me is the exploration, and it hits all the marks there. They finally put the shooting in the backseat and the stealth can be fun sometimes with lots of different options. It's the most platforming and tomb-focused of all the reboot games and that's soooo much fun. The stunning visuals and super detailed world also help. I still think Tomb Raider works best in linear levels as opposed to the hub worlds they keep trying to push, but this one is linear for most of the time so I was very pleased. I also played the definite version with all the dlc tombs and they are all super fun and challenging. Should've been included in the base game, to be fair.
The action sequences are so over the top and fun it's hard to even pick one. But the whole oil refinery sequence culminating in Lara emerging from the water with flames behind her and picking up a rifle will always be one of my favorite sequences in all the Tomb Raider games.
Very excited to see where this goes next