Pretty much the same game as the last tomb raider just continued story, very cinematic constant cutscenes and melodramatic plot points. Combat was fun for the first half of the game when you were fighting regular soldiers but then halfway through every enviorment started looking fantastical like a mix between dark souls and Skyrim and all the enemies were wearing super body builder tank armor that took 4 headshots to kill, wave and wave shitty arena combat with really unsatisfying weapons. Theres only like 4 different weapons and only really one of them is viable - the hunting rifle. All of the weapons did too little damage so I had to use some single shot hunting rifle where the relooad animation barely worked half the time and just felt unreliable to use, sometimes the reload would be ready others not and I would aim for a headshot, shoot, only to reload. The damage on the weapons is totally off, theres some convuluted upgrade system that I kind of used but didnt really understand, dont know.
The game just got really contrived - the story is totally lame some religious divine mystical plot device about eternal life full of bible references and lame shit, all the characters sucked and were just corny and stupid . Laura herself is a tryhard stoic and is embarrasing to listen to more often than not. The graphics are pretty amazing so thats the main selling point and draw to keep playing to the end. Most of the game is climbing around enviorments with Assasins creed style forgiving 'platforming' thats basically just Quicktime events, the other 30% is combat or these awful forced stealth sections where its basically impossible unless you follow an exact specific route, and the other bit is cutscenes and story. It's overly cinematic at times, very casual and watered down, but it for some reason has this stupid difficulty system where it gives you 6 different options and playstyles,
I choose the moderate one which has no regenerating health and the mechanics in this game are just so ambiguous and stupid I could barely figure them out or care. For the first half of the game, I could never heal myself and just sitting around with a black and white screen being super careful, and the other half I always had 20+ heals and never ran out. Dont know why. The game its self is pretty damn hard, the combat is unforgiving and you can easily die in 3 or 4 hits. Just becomes a case of sitting in cover and trying to get headshots as much as possible as the enemies are all super strong wearing plates and plates of armor, looking like something out of mount and blade. Dont really get it. kinda stupkd. Some of the puzzles are fine but other times theyre just needlessly longwinded, boring, and ambiguous, like the catapults one or the exploding barrels in the water. Felt like a real lack of variation in the enviorments towards the last half of the game, all some super fantastical ice kingdom in the sky type shit, looked like Anor Londo or something. really just seemed like they were trying to keep up with the trends at the time. Overall game is decent overly cinematic, theatric 'platform' action game, but the combat grieveances, odd medevial enemies, and overly fantastical and mystical locations/story made it kinda meh for me.
6/10