Well I beat it and well I think it's the worst one of the three. It's not terrible or anything, but I just don't really know what they wanted to do with this game. I guess they wanted to tone down the action and add more exploration, but did they really? There's more tombs and stuff to find in the world sure and I guess you can turn off hints which makes everything more challenging. Yet honestly the the challenge tunes and world structure aren't much beyond what Rise did. So I don't really think they went beyond that game. Which kind of adds to the feeling of "yeah they just made another game". Now I like the challenge tombs in Rise and Shadow. They are amazing to look at, fun to complete, and thankfully pretty short. I mean in general this game is amazing looking with fantastic texture work and attention to detail.
That said I still found most of the game kind of boring. There is a lack of combat and well Rise and the Reboot had pretty fun combat. Here it feels honestly tacked on and lame when it happens. The gunplay never feels tight almost as if the aiming is pretty wonky, not responsive, never aiming where you want it it exactly. Enemies don't respond and feel like you've hit them. But it's also weird that there's an emphasis on not shooting and the game makes it clear. When it wants you to chose stealth during those combat sequences gunplay is'nt a fun choice. You die really quick and the enemy ai rather just charge you anyway. It dosen't work in these aim down the shoulder type shooters which need enemies to be positioned in front of you and when you need to retreat, you retreat to potions that can place the enemy in front of you. During these "please use stealth" parts the enemies come at you all over and it's annoying. The arenas don't feel built for shooting as they lack say the vertaicality of Uncharted 4/Legacy and the cover of a Gears like game. Yet the few times the game does say fuck stealth the game adheres to how you do these type of shooters.
I guess I just wanted more solid shooting and cool set pieces. I feel the other games had these in spades. While also having solid platforming and tombs. Which this game has, but dosen't have anything else to make up for what it dosen't.
And man is the story stupid. I don't really care about these native people where the important ones speak English. There poorly defined rebellion that seems to be basically be out in the open. I don't care about the Trinity leader who I guess is only a Trinity leader on the weekends or something. The end of the world stakes and character stuff Lara goes through seems to sidetracked by some tribal conflict that is lame and dosen't at all mesh with the Trinity plot line at all.
It was ok, but I probably won't be replaying it like I have the others.
