I'm having trouble figuring out where to start with this review. Shadow of the Tomb Raider feels like the moment when you're building a sandcastle on the beach, and no matter how much sand you try to stack on top, it keeps falling, and you know you reached the limit of how tall it can be.
It's obvious, looking at the previous two games, that the objective was to keep building on top of the foundation of the first game; they tried to stick to that formula to give players a sense of familiarity, but also some fresh mechanics each time to justify sequels. However, I think they peaked in the second game; that was the sweet spot of how much sand added to the castle, so to speak, while in this game they seemed desperate to add every single grain of sand they could fit, regardless of whether they should.
In turn, this game feels bloated; there were a lot of systems and additions that felt unnecessary and that I barely even interacted with, and my experience was mostly unaffected. It doesn't help that I feel like progression in this game was a lot less smooth than in the previous one, where it seemed a lot more thought out on how paced the unlocks were.
Another part of the game I take issue with is how the side activities were implemented; there was way too much stuff to do, and a lot of it was very unengaging, with rewards that were hit or miss. I was especially tired of the side quests; those were almost robotic in their writing, and none of them I'd go as far as saying were worth it for anything other than rewards.
The tombs and crypts ran into a different issue, though; the tombs at least felt like they had some level of quality for the most part, but there were many, and some of them were a little too similar for my taste. This made me get a similar effect to when you say a word many times to the point it no longer seems like a word; the tombs started to look more like jungle gyms left there for Lara rather than actual puzzles, and I was like 2 or 3 more away from getting tired of solving them. On the other hand, the crypts were much simpler, and I appreciated how they rewarded paying close attention to the environment, but they were indirectly made less appealing to me thanks to the everlasting wave of side stuff to do, so I wasn't too compelled to find all of them.
Then there's the story, which in my opinion is one of the most disappointing aspects. For a game that was trying to be the conclusion of this trilogy, it certainly had trouble doing so, especially due to its plot feeling like little more than a rehash of the previous installment. There were way too many similarities to it for it to feel like its own thing, and by the end it just didn’t improve on anything and only made it worse.
On the gameplay side of things, a lot is pretty much the same as in Rise, but I have to say this game was too long and it just didn’t have the meat to warrant an almost 30-hour playthrough, by the end I was tired of the uninspired, always samey underwater sections, the repetitive climbing sections and pretty much everything besides the combat, which I must praise for its variety.
Don’t get me wrong though, I did have fun for a solid chunk of that time, but I recommend that, for enjoyment's sake, avoid giving too much time to the side stuff and try to focus on the main quest; otherwise you’ll be tired of the game by the end like me. This was a decent experience that could’ve been much better, and I hope future Tomb Raider titles don’t fall into the same mistakes.
Tomb Raider games ranked (2013-2019):
1. Rise
2. Shadow
3. Tomb Raider 2013
This is a shortened version of my full review, which you can read here: https://backloggd.com/u/Mooncrow47/review/5046956/
