standalone expansions rarely make sense from a profit margin perspective - or so ive heard - but the chance to safely iterate on and tinker with systems nevertheless has strong allure for many a design team. and for my part, ive grown to appreciate what these AAA novellas can bring to the table, not only for their occasionally radical departures from convention but also because they recognize that most players will have completed the entry the expansion stems from, and therefore no longer have to spend as much time establishing stakes, outlining the pace in staccato rhythm, and overtutorializing players to their chagrin.

these three traits are endemic to naughty dog's seventh-gen-onwards gameography and each and every entry in their canon suffers immensely for it, while something as contained and compact as the lost legacy is able to flourish as the chaste tomb raider spinoff this franchise was always meant to be. in a fraction of the time a regular entry in this constipated series takes, you'll contend with more varied setpieces and encounter design, more experimentation (chiefly in the form of an open-district level, my vote for the most traditionally enjoyable segment in any of these titles), and more controlled direction than ever before. the narrative dimension here continues to err towards shallow but its simplicity is honestly complementary rather than transparently ingratiating. it's as close to a thrilling action romp as any uncharted game has ever been, and for its efforts in finally getting me to tolerate this series it's worthy of my respect.

and look, im not blind, one of the strongest contributors to my bias here is playing as arguably one of the most attractive ladies ever created for vidcon purposes instead of a character who constantly irritates me and whom i would purposefully pilot off cliffs into steep ravines. naughty dog should return to this level of Understanding i think.

⌚ Time to finish - 9h (70% complete - I tried to play through crushing for about an hour+ and found it very unfun so I stopped. Rest are into the main game and trophies).
🤬Difficulty - easy unless you play crushing, then its unfairly crushing. Crushing requires a bit of stealth where in a game stealth is somewhat of an after thought at higher difficulties.
🔊 Soundtrack - awesome! On par with the main series.
🌄Graphics – Drop dead gorgeous. This is the first game in series apart from uncharted 2, but more so here, where i felt they had both outdoor and indoor beauty. I come from the india culture so I could appreciate the love and fine details they put into the interior of the temples and buildings. The art work is authentic but not a copy. So they learned things about the Indian architecture, ingested, and created something unique. absolutely mind blowing. I stared at the architecture and art work for a long time and even showed my family.
🌦 Atmosphere – Awesome.
📚 Main Story / Characters – Story was simple to follow unlike other in series and I appreciated that. They had a short time to tell everything and they kept it crisp. Chole returns as her best version ever and I was unhappy to not see her in 4, and poorly show in 3. Other chars that show up are great too! It does NOT feel like an after thought. I love playing as Chole, and the best part is all the color commentary she adds about the Indian mythology and symbolism. Its stuff most Indians don't even know about. I am glad they did this and just didn't represent Ganesha with the common cliches. Go Naughty Dog!
🤺 Combat – Awesome! On par with rest of series.
🧭 Side Activities / Exploration –Definitely worth exploring and completing fun trophies. Plat does require collecting stuff so I did all the trophies except collection.
🚗 Movement/Physics – Super fluid.
📣 Voice acting – Excellent. Infact the side conversations the thugs have very much represent some of the sentiments Indian people feel. Wow! They captured that too!?
🥇 Best thing about the game - Mind blowing architectures and interior designs. Culture sensitive and informative commentary. Very memorable set pieces that are even better than the main series. Sure some of them are a rehash of things they know work well, but I don't care. If something works well do it again.
👎 Worst thing about the game - the damn truck and slipping on mud. Its fun to drive that truck. But....
💡Final Thoughts:

I maybe a little biased being Indian, but this is the best game in the series. I could clearly see the attention to detail that went into this game from design to cultural representation that it took a 4.5 game to a 5 for me. They even mention the name of the snake around Shiva's neck, which majority of Indians don't even know. Indian kingdoms before invasions were mighty, but no one knows much about it, this game brings that to light as well. I am glad they didn't do the Indiana Jones temple of doom or Simpsons Apu racist bull shit. Everyone should play this game! What a cool and unique setting. I hope others also see how great this setting can be and make more games in this setting. Egypt, Norse, Chinese, Japanese ahs been done guys! As an indian person I 100% endorse this game.

Second best Uncharted game. This series really felt like it hit its stride on the PS4, I consider both PS4 games to be the best in the series. The gameplay still feels great and it looks fucking insane. The open world chapter is probably the highlight just because getting to actually explore is just really fun. The main thing that brings it down when compared to 4 is Asav, I just don’t like him as much as Rafe and Nadine. But I really like Chloe and Nadine’s dynamic in this game. If they bring Uncharted back I would love to see these two together again.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is a spin off title to the main series starring two returning characters of Chloe Frazer, a half Indian half Australian thief first seen in Uncharted 2 and Nadine Ross a South African mercenary introduced in Uncharted 4. To be honest while excited for the game I wasn't sure how it would fare without series regulars Nate, Elena or Sully but it turns out I shouldn't have worried, if anything I think I enjoyed this game more than Uncharted 4 getting to find out more about both Chloe and Nadine on their own adventure woven into a surprisingly well paced narrative.

The plot is hard to summarize without spoiling too much but essentially you take the role of Chloe who is back in India hunting after a treasure called the horn of Ganesh and has hired Nadine to help her who after Uncharted 4 is a little down on her luck and leapt at the chance for the money. Unfortunately for them India is in the middle of a civil war so things of course are not going to be easy.
I really liked the story, it allows for more depth for these side characters while at the same time having some good twists and moments both funny and emotional at times. The characters play really well off each other and the voice acting is superb throughout with both Claudia Black and Laura Bailey reprising their roles as Chloe and Nadine respectively. Claudia Black especially nails it as Chloe with some excellent subtle nuances in several of the cutscenes really standing out.

For the gameplay if you haven't played an Uncharted game before (and I recommend you do with either the first three games released in the Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection or at a push leap in with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End ) then what you need to know is they are third person adventure games with cover based shooting, light platforming and light puzzling. The combat has a good variety of weapons such as handguns, grenades, assault rifles and rocket launchers and has an incredibly smooth melee combat system that is very cinematic. My only gripe with the controls are that roll and take cover are still the same button which has been a problem to me for like ten years where trying to roll through a doorway will latch you onto the nearest wall and get you killed. How has this not been fixed by now?

When you aren't fighting you are exploring old ruins or jungles. The art design for the levels cannot be understated but at times I just stopped and stared, Uncharted The Lost Legacy looks absolutely amazing. Everything about the game from the particles effects, lighting and textures on top of the art design is stunning. The developer Naughty Dog just seem far ahead of almost everyone else when it comes to visuals, seriously impressive. The ruins sometimes have ancient puzzles to beat to progress. While certainly not brain taxing they are a little bit of a step up from previous games in design and quality. I would like to see more variety or difficulty but I enjoyed them for the most part.

Despite being a shorter game released at a budget price there is a surprising amount of content here, my first playthrough took me about eight and a half hours but I was looking around everywhere for hidden treasures and often just enjoying the view. If you rush through it you could beat it in six hours I should think. I would put it akin to the original Uncharted in length. It also comes with Uncharted 4's multiplayer on disc as well as the recent co-op survival mode you can play with both Lost Legacy and Uncharted 4 players which is a nice touch. Getting the platinum, finding all optional conversations and treasures are also nice reasons to replay the story. All this at a launch price of £25? Fantastic value.

In conclusion, this is a great game. If you like Uncharted and want something more then this is perfect for you. It fits in well after the previous games, looks and sounds amazing and is great value for money content wise in my opinion. I would happily buy a Lost Legacy 2 starring Chloe and Nadine if Naughty Dog were inclined to make it.

Recommended.

+ Chloe and Nadine are great characters with an evolving relationship.
+ Excellent voice acting and music.
+ The visuals and art are outstanding.
+ Fantastic value for money.

- Roll and take cover are the same button still. Why?

These Uncharted games are at their best when you're barely in control of them, which speaks volumes about their qualities as videogames. Lost Legacy is still that mix of rubbish shooting, awkward hand-to-hand combat and more of that horrible fucking vehicle stuff from Uncharted 4 in a bitesized chunk. I thought this was going to hit hard and fast - loads of those brilliant, spectacular setpieces that thrill for a minute or two and then promptly piss off before you realise you weren't really doing much but no, Lost Legacy still insists on the idea that the Uncharted games are actually fun to play when you're doing the minute to minute interactions.

They're not.

There's a bit at the end, when all you're really doing is moving forward while some absolutely wild, incredible looking stuff is going off all around you while the gang of heroes cheats death over and over as the stakes get higher and higher. I am genuinely not even sure I could've died during this sequence but I was on the edge of my seat. Sure the sub-Whedon dialogue grates a bit but these barely interactive moments are the thing that Uncharted arguably does better than anyone else.

Isn't it funny that people rip the piss out of the Sonic The Hedgehog games for being "hold forward to win" while these Uncharted games win award after award? Really odd, that.

At least it was short.

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy é um bom spin-off, trazendo à tona o melhor daquilo que se pode encontrar na franquia: sequências memoráveis, muita ação, exploração e aquela pitada de humor característica dos seus jogos.

A história segue o padrão Uncharted: sempre em busca do tesouro perdido de uma civilização há muito esquecida; apesar de sentir falta do Nate, é inegável que Chloe cumpre muito bem o seu papel de protagonista, sendo tão carismática e implacável quanto Nathan Drake.

Não há nada de muito inovador em sua jogabilidade, replicando o que já havia sido apresentado em Uncharted 4; apesar disso, consegue ser um jogo bem divertido e dinâmico.

Infelizmente, seu único defeito é ser muito curto. Mas é perfeitamente compreensível, tendo em mente a proposta do jogo e levando em conta que originalmente o seu conteúdo estava planejado para ser lançado como uma DLC de Uncharted 4.

Diante do exposto, o que se pode concluir é que Uncharted: The Lost Legacy acaba por ser uma ótima adição para a franquia, ainda que inesperada, servindo como uma "última dança" para os fãs.

I love dlc. There’s nothing better then having the one game you like be expanded in some way. Bioshock 2 had it, the last of us had it, and sonic origins certainly has it. But sometimes, dlc ends up becoming bigger than expected. A great example of this is the lost legacy, an uncharted adventure without Nathan drake and instead, drum roll, Chloe frazer! Yeah…where’s Charlie cutter? So because she didn’t appear in the main game they decided to give her a full blown game with the length of a dlc…good enough I guess.

So we play as Chloe frazer on her journey to find the tusk of ganesh. She is helped by Nadine Ross and Sam drake as they go against Asav to get the tusk first. Not the biggest plot but it makes sense why. They just wanted to experiment with how an uncharted game would go without Nathan being the protagonist and I guess they didn’t want to waste all the assets from uncharted 4.

Gameplay is practically the same as it is in uncharted 4 with a few differences. For starters, like 4 experimented with, lost legacy tries to be a lot more non-linear and presents a non-linear space for a big portion of the game. You can do certain fights in any order you want and can even look around for bonuses. Puzzles are also probably at their height here. Even though they are practically the same as they were in 4 they have at least given them a bit more of a centre point and they aren’t too annoying. Gunplay and fights in general are the same as they were in 4 and that’s basically it…

So…that’s it for the uncharted saga so far. I doubt we’ll get any more sequels from naughty dog who seem to have dropped the franchise for now which is a shame. There have been rumours but right now I think I’d rather just have a jak 4 not gonna lie.

Good little game, decent story, still great gameplay, I love pizza

I have definitively hit diminishing returns with Uncharted games.

I loved 2, liked 3, then got bored of 4. It had been five years since I had last tried one of these, so I thought I'd give Lost Legacy a spin. Turns out, this is the exact opposite of what I want to play these days!

I looked around at so much gorgeous realism; beautiful worlds carefully crafted to feel vibrant and alive, and I felt nothing but jaded. Look at all the money that went into creating an environment I'm only going to spend a few minutes in and can never return to. I don't think there's anything that strikes me personally as being more soulless in a game than a "scene" that acts like a movie. There's a set place you start from and often a specific path you must slowly walk to reach a single end point. It's barely a game at times, it's a walking simulator with shooting. I have no problems with on-rails shooters, but this is a game series based on themes of exploration and discovery that forces you to do as you're told, expecting you to buy into the illusion of choice that it lavishly lays before you. (Climbing sections remain the absolute worst offender here) If this was a 2D platformer, then that would be totally fine! Go from A to B without dying. Got it. But I just can't see the appeal of this vein of 3D game design anymore.

Immediately after giving up on this, I booted up Hot Wheels Unleashed and drove a toaster through loop-de-loops while learning to handle the nuances of the driving and drifting, and I had a big dumb smile on my face nearly the whole time. The haptics in the triggers alone engrossed me more than anything in The Lost Legacy did.

I guess linear realism just isn't for me!

In typical Naughty Dog fashion, the studio went above and beyond with Uncharted 4's DLC and it became an excellent standalone title in its own right. Excitingly, the game puts you in the shoes of Chloe Fisher- a fan favorite character ever since her first appearance in Uncharted 2. She sat out of the fourth game but that was only to get players more excited for her own adventure.

Chloe finds herself in an unlikely partnership with Nadine Ross, a bit of an antihero in Uncharted 4. They make for an excellent duo on this adventure, which is more of what we love about the series from the exploration, shootouts, and riveting chaotic setpieces. While we already had the perfect ending to the series, The Lost Legacy was a great cherry on top.

¿Cómo de irónico es que, tras más de 10 años intentando crear un estilo propio, Uncharted acabó su andadura pareciéndose a Tomb Raider más que los Tomb Raider de ahora?

Al margen de esta take, no hay mucho que decir de Lost Legacy que no se aplicara ya en Thief's End. El estilo de juego está más pulido que nunca, y la capacidad de saltar entre modo sigilo y modo acción se siente completamente implementada. Por desgracia, tu Chloe Frazer parece más susceptible que nunca a ir por donde no quieres que vaya. Una consecuencia inevitable de hacer tus juegos más "realistas", pero no más interactivos. El ritmo de juego, aunque un poco comprimido para mi gusto, mantiene una intensidad correcta todo el tiempo, y sus puntos álgidos parecen la conclusión más lógica de lo que Naughty Dog venía haciendo, a nivel de mapeado, desde Last of Us. El hecho de que se haga corto tal vez sea un punto a su favor.

No tengo mucho que decir con respecto a la historia. Como ya pasara con Uncharted 4, hay mucha promesa de profundidad temática, pero muy poca exploración genuina. Lost Legacy se sale con la suya un poco porque cuenta con personajes ya establecidos para contar su historia, pero me cuesta imaginarme a nadie sintiendo nada por Chloe y Nadine si no las conocieran de antemano. Sin ese soporte, lo único que tienes es una historia de acción competente con vagas aspiraciones a relato de empoderamiento femenino de etiqueta.

Con todo, se siente que hemos llegado al final de un camino aquí. Mi más sincera enhorabuena a Naughty Dog por alcánzar el cénit de su aspiración artística: parecer una película de Marvel.

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How ironic is it that, after more than 10 years of trying to create its own style, Uncharted ended up resembling more Tomb Raider than Tomb Raider today?

Aside from this take, there's not much to say about Lost Legacy that doesn't apply to Thief's End. The gameplay is more polished than ever, and the ability to jump between stealth and action mode feels fully streamlined. Unfortunately, Chloe Frazer is very susceptible to getting where you never want to, a sad consequence of making your games more "realistic" but not more interactive. The pacing of the game, while a bit too compressed for my taste, maintains its intensity throughout, and its climaxes seem like logical endpoints to what Naughty Dog had been doing, map-wise, since Last of Us. The fact that it's short is perhaps a point in its favor also.

I don't have much to say about the story. As with U4, there's a promise of thematic exploration, but very little of it. Lost Legacy gets away with it by using already established characters, but I have a hard time imagining anyone feeling anything for Chloe and Nadine if they didn't know them beforehand. Without that, all you have is a competent action story with vague aspirations of female empowerment.

Despite that, it's truly like we reached the end of a road here. My sincere congratulations to Naughty Dog for reaching the zenith of their artistic aspiration: looking like a Marvel movie.

Um Uncharted "menor", em todos os sentidos.
Nitidamente um spin-off sem pretensões de ser mais que isso. Um jogo com uma escala menor, com menor tempo de gameplay, com uma história mais corrida, com menos variação de cenários. Mas, ainda sim, um Uncharted.

A sensação de aventura, ação e descoberta, unida com ótimas cenas de ação e puzzle divertidos de resolver, tudo isso está nesse jogo condensado e reduzido. Dependendo do tempo livre, é plenamente possível começar e terminar em um dia jogando pela primeira vez.

A história é o maior ponto fraco, mesmo que o mistério e a descoberta sejam interessante, depois da obra que foi o último game, era muito dificil se manter a altura, e, de fato, não se manteve. Por focar em outra protagonista ao inves do Nate, e devido ao curto tempo de jogo, é complicado desenvolver completamente uma personagem e, pra mim, se provou ineficaz, eu não me conectei tanto com a Chloe como o jogo talvez esperasse, eu estava mais interessado no mistério dessa sociedade antiga do que do passado dela.

Por fim, gostei da escalada final do jogo, o vilão é só ok, a luta dele é legal, mas ele como personagem é fraco e muito pouco presente na narrativa. Os cenários são incríveis e cheios de detalhes, cada locação nova que a gente descobre foi uma obrigação parar e tirar uma foto no Modo Foto do jogo, perdi 1 hora nisso, no mínimo. Um bom jogo da franquia que não bate nenhum de seus antecessores (talvez o mobile, sei la, nunca joguei), mas, ainda assim, faz justo ao seu nome.