Fast-food of video games. A competent but ultimately very safe reboot of a beloved franchise that does everything ok, but never stands out.

For an action-adventure-collectathon game it never really does any of those things particularly well. As an action game it's fairly mediocre with very few enemy types and really easy enemies. Most of the game you will just fight Men (somethimes Men will have Shields), with a rare Boss who also acts just like A Man but has more health. The first level of Tomb Raider 1996 had better enemy variety with bats, wolves, and a bear, and while the game starts on a survival note with a few wolves stalking you, it ultimately goes to human enemies and never comes back.

The adventure part of the game is probably the best thing about it. The game is divided into one-time corridor action sequences and bigger "levels" you can return to which contain a multitude of secrets. The set-pieces are gorgeous and very cinematic, but I wonder what I'd feel replaying this game. Even on the first time the amount of times you just hold W and jump sometimes was overblown, and I can't imagine those scenes feel much better the second time around.

Collectathon parts are very underbaked. Not only do most items you collect fade into the background and are hard to notice unless you mash the "Lara vision", but in each location the game gives up on secrets whenever you find a "Secret Tomb". I use the game's wording here, but none of the optional tombs are secret. They are the most obvious things, contain a single Half-Life 2 tier puzzle, and give you out a full map of the area.

The game has a lot of moments like that where it gives you the option of being less frustrating. Throughout the game everything gives you exp which you spend on some of the most boring options imaginable. Do you want to get slightly more exp or make the game less dull is effectively your only choice at any point. Weapon upgrades are a little nicer, but the RPG system feels like a bandaid on a flawed game that's designed to give you good number up chemicals.

The story is fairly boring and only makes me wish the game had more weird enemies in it, because if you were to skip all the cutscenes nothing would stand out as strange up until the final area which has magic happening. No t-rexes here.

Lara as a protagonist is also extremely boring, which I assume is why the game tortures her on every opportunity. Sorry, doesn't really work on me, just because she's a sick puppy who gets eaten and pierced every 2 seconds doesn't make me like her more.

I still would say I've enjoyed my time with Tomb Raider. It's got some great set-pieces and wonderful-looking levels, and the shooting and climbing around can be fun. However just because it's not a bad game doesn't mean it's any good. I probably won't return to it and I've got no desire to check out the sequels.

A mostly very fun roller coaster ride that keeps getting in its own way.

Replayed this over the long weekend as a companion to playing through the old TR I-III remaster.

As a re-imagining of a post-Uncharted Tomb Raider, this hits a lot of high points. At its best, it's thrilling, but it keeps stumbling and undermining itself. Dramatic cinematic scenes sometimes just cut away at a key moment, like they didn't have the technical capability or budget to animate what they wanted to, so they just... didn't show it? Exposition is also oddly clunky and abbreviated at times. Ludo-narrative dissonance is common in games like this, but here it reaches the level of plot hole: e.g. Alex's courageous self-sacrifice is more confusing than dramatic since we just got finished destroying a damned fortress and wiping out a small army as a righteously pissed-off Lara, so why is she letting the computer geek who can't shoot for shit take one for the team when we've battled our way out of tougher corners than that several times over?

The games tendency towards torture-porn has been commented on many times, and it can be a bit much. For me, it's so extreme it kind of tips over into comedic. The island is practically carpeted with skeletons. There's thousands! And way more recently butchered corpses and pools of viscera than makes any kind of sense for the population of this island. Where did they all come from?!

Mechanically, it's a lot of fun. The platforming can feel a little floaty, but it still feels kinetic. Combat is satisfying, probably the biggest point where it surpasses its influences, although the game is not long enough to justify the size of its skill tree: I feel like several abilities I got to use, like, once, max (a problem that got worse as the trilogy wore on). That's not a complaint about the length, I'm perfectly happy with a 10-15 hour main story in a game like this, but the progression systems should be balanced to fit the game. On the downside, this being a collect-a-thon of mostly-pointless "challenges" and GPS trackers and what-not is an unnecessary distraction that I guess we got because skill trees and collect-a-thons is what AAA games are nowadays.

So it's a good time, but it can't quite reach the heights of the better Uncharted games it's influenced by.

So this game is by no means a masterpiece, it's fairly slow and the story and setting will only really appeal to Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, but it just so happens that I am a HUGE fan of the anime and manga and grew up playing the card game as well as the video games, so it's perfect for me! The game has three separate campaigns, with each one having a fairly different series of events until the end. The second to last level is still boring and slow but, overall, it's always a blast controlling the Egyptian Gods in an SRPG!

Man this game is weird.

It feels unfinished or with very little content in it. The combat can range from decent to bad. It's visually pleasing though, being the only Yakuza game in the Kiryu Saga to this date built from scratch with the Dragon Engine.

It feels a bit forced too. I wish I could like it more, but everything falls apart in retrospective. Some story bits were really cool though. I believe Haruka gets dumber each game.

SPOILER

I really did cry at the end ngl it was beautiful and I though Kiryu was really dead at the end by stupid Baby Iwami.

This game...well, it exists. It's a very lackluster, broken mess of a game with a story just as nonsensical and still baffles me that this is a sequel to one of the best RPGs.

This game reeks of being a cash grab, wanting to ride ToS's success while it was big because a lot of the game is lazy. Example: they hired a new artists for new character concept art but all the old characters have their old art from the first game so when there are skits it's jarring. A lot of music is reused from ToS 1 and if remixed it's barely a different sound or feel idk

There's so much, too much that went wrong here lol Just know the story is a joke, the voice acting was very medicore and while it starts the conversation of interesting themes and plot points after ToS they fumble with it so badly. Contrived af but the only hilight is Zelos is best boi. Only character who has some sense from the previous game.

Emil's voice is also hit or miss--very high pitched and at times grating. His character also leaves a lot to be desired. Not because he's shy and perceived as weak but how it's written. Very surface level and the conclusion to who he is feels cheap. This game did not give af lol

The gameplay is almost as bad as the story, locked to broken motion controls. Due to the limitations of the wii over world exploration was scrapped for menu travel. The game leaned in hard into the Wii's unique controls and didn't implement them well.

A positive: The new art is nice. Uhh, the battle music was catchy. I can pretend it doesn't exist.

I know this game was remastered as a bundle with ToS so not sure if they fixed anything but the initial release was a shit show.