I love... being able to write this. Its like a rock on my chest and shoulder, crumbling and giving me relief. I had such a huge beef with Rise. Felt it was way too distant from learning about Lara as a character, Story was massively uninteresting, too focused on combat and Siberia was so "sigh". Puzzles were too easy and rewards were too boring and at times annoying " stuff auto glowing when nearby. WTF... "
But.... thats in the past now. The dev listened. To every bit of criticism and they fixed the issues of both 2013 and Rise and they gave us a fantastic conclusion to this trilogy, easily the BEST of the trilogy and a game that has me extremely optimistic for the future of this franchise.
Pros: Improved gunplay. Lovely tombs and crypts. More customization. Greater challenge all around and with customizable difficulty as well. Gun and bow sounds are vastly improved. Which fixes issues I had with weird pew sounds and alike. IT sounds realistic and meaty now. Its great. The world is larger. Zones are beautiful. More life. More people. More variation between NPCS's and not Rise's copy pasted face 300 times.
People you interact with are nice, interesting and give you cool rewards for you listening or helping. Anything is useful. More vendors as well.
And we do far less killing and far more exploring, talking, climbing, swimming and tomb raiding this time. Which is a huge Pro for me. A step in the right direction. Letting this franchise be its own thing and not an uncharted clone.
The biggest Pro for me... is the narrative. Lara as well as Jonah are SO WELL FLESHED OUT. We get so much more character development, progress. Moments of bonding, cool flashback sequences that are fun and relevant with puzzles added in too alike Anniversary DLC from Rise ( the BEST thing in that game In my own opinion. That DLC = 10 out of 10). Moments where Lara is hurting, or just rushing ahead, and Jonah is there to bring her back down. Give her a reality check and challenge her. Highlighting she doesn't have everything under control. She is only human. And as the game so eloquently puts it " We all create destiny Together" this message is spun so well from start to finish. No god mode. Teamwork is key. And its just beautiful. Making Lara way more of a relatable character. A down to earth realistic person you empathize with. And not just a killing machine with no personality = Rise.
Its wonderful. They listened to so much feedback. So much criticism. And they gave us the best tomb raider of this Trilogy. Polished story, characters, locations, combat, customization, difficulty, world building and NO MORE OPTIONAL TOMBS. Thank God....that was so bloody annoying. Now its just " Tombs and Crypts"
No more screwing with immersion or BS. Tombs offer far better rewards too. stuff you dont want to miss. Unlike Rise. (I know I know. I can't stop but I hate that bloody game lol. )
Anyway. Its wonderful.
What about cons?
Well. Dont play this game with Exclusive fullscreen and tab out or you're screwed by horrible stuttering. Optimization can be wonky sometimes. But 98 % of the time it runs flawlessly. Some sudden camera changes mid jumps can at times kill you and really anger you. But it happens seldomly but beware playing on max difficulty because of it. No autosave and this happening is enough to make your blood.... BOIL. Losing 20-30 minutes of progress +.
Other than that. Nothing actually other than decisions I disagree with.
Nr 1: No dual wield. They could've and should've given us that. I know why they didn't but it really is overdue since 2013 teased it at the end 5 years ago.
Nr 2: Still unable to remove silencers from your rifle or pistol if you attach it. This is meh. Hoped they'd learn that from Rise.
Nr 3: When you arrive in paititi, you can only wear maybe 20-30 % of all your unlocked outfits. And only talk to Rebels using 1 specific one. This would be fine to begin with but later on you should've gotten their trust and then wear whatever you want. I got like 10 outfits and another 5-6 custom made ones. And I cannot use them because I wanna do quests and stuff. Thats dumb. We should be able to wear whatever outfits we wanted to after we gained their trust which is like 1 quest.
Nr 4: Unable to use Mud camouflage at will. There are very specific combat areas where you can use mud. Other places have none. And if you're not in combat or near combat areas you cannot interact with mud pits. Thats kinda meh for those of us who wanted to go hunting using camouflage but no E to interact option appears. So that was a bummer. WHen it works tho, its fantastic. Cool feature. The Rambo / Arnie in predator angle was very badass. And stealth has many more cool animations too so it sucked being unable to use it often with Mud camo.
Nr 5: Removing auto save from max difficulty. This is the last one and its personal. I played this game on max difficulty at first. Progressed 60-70 %. Then I stopped and restarted. And it was because I was getting insanely F'ing angry. I was tired... of dying and dying and dying because of lag or camera changes, swinging lara's face 180 degrees to the right, mid jump so I fall to my death and lose half an hour of progress and exploring. It absolutely sucked and drove me so upset I stopped enjoying the game outright.
I LOVE HARD MODE. I love tough enemies. I Love tough challenges. And all that good stuff. But I rebooted on the lower difficulty instead because when a game has these sorts of punishing bugs or glitches and offers no auto-save... it quickly goes from " Argh. Gotta git gut" to "GTFO....." Borderline rage quit. I rebooted. Played the whole thing on a slightly easier difficulty and cleansed my memory of the crap. And had a blast. 9 out of 10 level amazing. Because if I had completed the game with that amount of punishing deaths, I knew the score would've been the same, but my memory of it would've been extremely negative. Straight up elevated blood pressure whilst reading the credits. And I didn't want that.
Come the next game. Make enemies tougher. make it so headshots dont 1 shot. Make so you die taking 1 single hit of damage. Crazy stuff like that. Thats fine. Roll, dodge, take cover. use stealth.
But removing auto-save.... is just cruel and excessively punishing. It doesn't make the game harder that I gotta re-do a 30 minute section and redo a crypt or tomb. It just makes it tedious and annoying. And after investing 30 hours into MAX difficulty....I can bloody well guarantee you that it didn't change my mind in the slightest, dying countless times and losing all.
I just got angrier and sadder and realized that if I complete the game in 5 minutes I'll just be upset and not enjoy it.
Thats not Very Hard Difficulty. Thats bad game design and punishing us who want the toughest enemies and tombs. And what adds insult to injury was that even on max difficulty I 1 shotted enemies with headshots. As well as animals. It didn't matter. It took 3 hits to die from stuff.
The only change is removal of auto save and thats just evil and tedious. Not hard. And I'd like to see that fixed in the next game.
Final thoughts: One big thing I loved about this game was how they did MORE with the mythological monster angle. The native underground beings we first fight end up being our allies and we get a huge revelation how the queen of the rebels we assist is actually sort of symbiotic with the queen figure of the underground native monsters. And even how different they are... they both want the same thing and live in harmony. Cooperation.
And its just so cool and different from Rise that showed us the cool byzantine soldiers that turned out to be just... generic zombies with fire arrows and nothing else really happened. Unlike Himiko's Stormguard that were FAR more intimidating and fleshed out as monsters you gotta be wary of. Plus Samurai are epic.
I loved to see them do more with the supernatural creatures this time. They just evolved on such much yet could've innovated more in a few places which is what keeps this game from a perfect rating. Such as for instance, making the world bigger and more open. Maybe even letting lara traverse using a vehicle or such. But hey. Maybe next game.
Either way. For what we got compared to its predecessors, its a damn fantastic game. And definitely the best of the trilogy.
Thank you for an epic journey and a fantastic conclusion to this part of Lara's story. I'll look forward to see what comes next.
According to the patched day 1 Ending... a little letter spoke of Natla the Atlantean in India. Time shall tell what happens next.
I'm just happy that I had a blast unlike in Rise and I feel good about being excited for the future for this franchise.
9 out of 10. damn fantastic ride. Lots of fixes and improvements. The MOST tomb raider feeling game of the trilogy. Intelligent and harder puzzles to solve. Cool stories and interesting lore. Wonderful & deep character development and improved, meaty combat that is well balanced without being overly excessive.
Thank you for listening, developers. Thank you.
Can't wait to see what comes next.
But.... thats in the past now. The dev listened. To every bit of criticism and they fixed the issues of both 2013 and Rise and they gave us a fantastic conclusion to this trilogy, easily the BEST of the trilogy and a game that has me extremely optimistic for the future of this franchise.
Pros: Improved gunplay. Lovely tombs and crypts. More customization. Greater challenge all around and with customizable difficulty as well. Gun and bow sounds are vastly improved. Which fixes issues I had with weird pew sounds and alike. IT sounds realistic and meaty now. Its great. The world is larger. Zones are beautiful. More life. More people. More variation between NPCS's and not Rise's copy pasted face 300 times.
People you interact with are nice, interesting and give you cool rewards for you listening or helping. Anything is useful. More vendors as well.
And we do far less killing and far more exploring, talking, climbing, swimming and tomb raiding this time. Which is a huge Pro for me. A step in the right direction. Letting this franchise be its own thing and not an uncharted clone.
The biggest Pro for me... is the narrative. Lara as well as Jonah are SO WELL FLESHED OUT. We get so much more character development, progress. Moments of bonding, cool flashback sequences that are fun and relevant with puzzles added in too alike Anniversary DLC from Rise ( the BEST thing in that game In my own opinion. That DLC = 10 out of 10). Moments where Lara is hurting, or just rushing ahead, and Jonah is there to bring her back down. Give her a reality check and challenge her. Highlighting she doesn't have everything under control. She is only human. And as the game so eloquently puts it " We all create destiny Together" this message is spun so well from start to finish. No god mode. Teamwork is key. And its just beautiful. Making Lara way more of a relatable character. A down to earth realistic person you empathize with. And not just a killing machine with no personality = Rise.
Its wonderful. They listened to so much feedback. So much criticism. And they gave us the best tomb raider of this Trilogy. Polished story, characters, locations, combat, customization, difficulty, world building and NO MORE OPTIONAL TOMBS. Thank God....that was so bloody annoying. Now its just " Tombs and Crypts"
No more screwing with immersion or BS. Tombs offer far better rewards too. stuff you dont want to miss. Unlike Rise. (I know I know. I can't stop but I hate that bloody game lol. )
Anyway. Its wonderful.
What about cons?
Well. Dont play this game with Exclusive fullscreen and tab out or you're screwed by horrible stuttering. Optimization can be wonky sometimes. But 98 % of the time it runs flawlessly. Some sudden camera changes mid jumps can at times kill you and really anger you. But it happens seldomly but beware playing on max difficulty because of it. No autosave and this happening is enough to make your blood.... BOIL. Losing 20-30 minutes of progress +.
Other than that. Nothing actually other than decisions I disagree with.
Nr 1: No dual wield. They could've and should've given us that. I know why they didn't but it really is overdue since 2013 teased it at the end 5 years ago.
Nr 2: Still unable to remove silencers from your rifle or pistol if you attach it. This is meh. Hoped they'd learn that from Rise.
Nr 3: When you arrive in paititi, you can only wear maybe 20-30 % of all your unlocked outfits. And only talk to Rebels using 1 specific one. This would be fine to begin with but later on you should've gotten their trust and then wear whatever you want. I got like 10 outfits and another 5-6 custom made ones. And I cannot use them because I wanna do quests and stuff. Thats dumb. We should be able to wear whatever outfits we wanted to after we gained their trust which is like 1 quest.
Nr 4: Unable to use Mud camouflage at will. There are very specific combat areas where you can use mud. Other places have none. And if you're not in combat or near combat areas you cannot interact with mud pits. Thats kinda meh for those of us who wanted to go hunting using camouflage but no E to interact option appears. So that was a bummer. WHen it works tho, its fantastic. Cool feature. The Rambo / Arnie in predator angle was very badass. And stealth has many more cool animations too so it sucked being unable to use it often with Mud camo.
Nr 5: Removing auto save from max difficulty. This is the last one and its personal. I played this game on max difficulty at first. Progressed 60-70 %. Then I stopped and restarted. And it was because I was getting insanely F'ing angry. I was tired... of dying and dying and dying because of lag or camera changes, swinging lara's face 180 degrees to the right, mid jump so I fall to my death and lose half an hour of progress and exploring. It absolutely sucked and drove me so upset I stopped enjoying the game outright.
I LOVE HARD MODE. I love tough enemies. I Love tough challenges. And all that good stuff. But I rebooted on the lower difficulty instead because when a game has these sorts of punishing bugs or glitches and offers no auto-save... it quickly goes from " Argh. Gotta git gut" to "GTFO....." Borderline rage quit. I rebooted. Played the whole thing on a slightly easier difficulty and cleansed my memory of the crap. And had a blast. 9 out of 10 level amazing. Because if I had completed the game with that amount of punishing deaths, I knew the score would've been the same, but my memory of it would've been extremely negative. Straight up elevated blood pressure whilst reading the credits. And I didn't want that.
Come the next game. Make enemies tougher. make it so headshots dont 1 shot. Make so you die taking 1 single hit of damage. Crazy stuff like that. Thats fine. Roll, dodge, take cover. use stealth.
But removing auto-save.... is just cruel and excessively punishing. It doesn't make the game harder that I gotta re-do a 30 minute section and redo a crypt or tomb. It just makes it tedious and annoying. And after investing 30 hours into MAX difficulty....I can bloody well guarantee you that it didn't change my mind in the slightest, dying countless times and losing all.
I just got angrier and sadder and realized that if I complete the game in 5 minutes I'll just be upset and not enjoy it.
Thats not Very Hard Difficulty. Thats bad game design and punishing us who want the toughest enemies and tombs. And what adds insult to injury was that even on max difficulty I 1 shotted enemies with headshots. As well as animals. It didn't matter. It took 3 hits to die from stuff.
The only change is removal of auto save and thats just evil and tedious. Not hard. And I'd like to see that fixed in the next game.
Final thoughts: One big thing I loved about this game was how they did MORE with the mythological monster angle. The native underground beings we first fight end up being our allies and we get a huge revelation how the queen of the rebels we assist is actually sort of symbiotic with the queen figure of the underground native monsters. And even how different they are... they both want the same thing and live in harmony. Cooperation.
And its just so cool and different from Rise that showed us the cool byzantine soldiers that turned out to be just... generic zombies with fire arrows and nothing else really happened. Unlike Himiko's Stormguard that were FAR more intimidating and fleshed out as monsters you gotta be wary of. Plus Samurai are epic.
I loved to see them do more with the supernatural creatures this time. They just evolved on such much yet could've innovated more in a few places which is what keeps this game from a perfect rating. Such as for instance, making the world bigger and more open. Maybe even letting lara traverse using a vehicle or such. But hey. Maybe next game.
Either way. For what we got compared to its predecessors, its a damn fantastic game. And definitely the best of the trilogy.
Thank you for an epic journey and a fantastic conclusion to this part of Lara's story. I'll look forward to see what comes next.
According to the patched day 1 Ending... a little letter spoke of Natla the Atlantean in India. Time shall tell what happens next.
I'm just happy that I had a blast unlike in Rise and I feel good about being excited for the future for this franchise.
9 out of 10. damn fantastic ride. Lots of fixes and improvements. The MOST tomb raider feeling game of the trilogy. Intelligent and harder puzzles to solve. Cool stories and interesting lore. Wonderful & deep character development and improved, meaty combat that is well balanced without being overly excessive.
Thank you for listening, developers. Thank you.
Can't wait to see what comes next.