A terrible game. It symbolizes everything wrong with the modern (2013) game industry. The writing is awful and it's made by torture fetishists so it's really awkward. The gameplay is terrible, there's so many QTE's, the guns have no impact. It's an incredibly boring, unfocused mess.
The game is written so poorly that Lara's "badass moments" are entirely undeserved and almost insulting in how they hit you over the head with them. She starts out as a uwu softe girl who can barely do anything then at the end she's heckling people as she's shooting them. And I have to ask why? How? What happened to her to make this change? It certainly can't be how many people she's killed, because she's been doing that since the start of the game. The disconnect between story Lara and gameplay Lara is atrocious. Why is there a survival mechanic, where Lara has to get food, that disappears literally the second you kill a deer and then never appears ever again? Why are there berries to pick that give you 10 exp? Why are there random animals to kill?
The writing is so bad that it's honestly insulting. The puzzles are insulting, if they're even there. Tombs are made up of the most barebones "puzzles" ever conceived by man and what do you get out of it? 250 money, I mean scrap, I mean salvage. There's no reward for exploration or doing anything.
You only get the currency you get by doing literally anything in the game. Imagine if in Dark Souls you open a chest and you only get souls, not even an item to save them for later, but literally just currency. Also you can't skip the tediously long tomb chest opening animation. There's LITERALLY TREASURE PHYSICALLY in the chests and all you get is salvage. It's a joke.
The game speaks down to you like a child through overexplaining of basic concepts (Lara sees a bow, "That bow, I could use that bow! I need to find a way to get that bow."). If a game has a button that highlights all usable objects / tells you where to go, that means the devs fucked up.
It's actually incredibly racist despite how it's a "feminist" game. You have the Spiritual Aboriginal Guy who's also fat and half his dialogue is about food. You have the Angry Black Woman who is angry. Why is she angry? Who knows! But then she stops being angry during the last hour of the game for some reason. You have the Cowardly White Guy who only cares about his career I guess and betrays everyone despite being the only reasonable one here. I mean, who are you going to listen to in this situation? The people who've captured you and will kill you if you don't listen to them or your colleague who just so happens to be stronger than god and can kill everyone (no one knew about this before)? The only good character was Roth cause he was voiced by Robin Atkin Downes so it was nice to hear Kaz Miller again (this is the only reason why he's the only good character).
The fact that 95% of the enemies are random white guys who formed a cult who I think are supposed to be Russian (one of them is named Nicolai, and two others have Russian names but I forgot what they were) yet have thick American accents despite the entire game taking place on a Japanese island. The fact that these white dudes formed a cult around a Japanese princess and then the first Japanese women they meet just so happens to be a descendant of the princess just seems so weird and contrived and kinda racist.
The environments are so goddamn ugly and colours are washed out and are mostly varying shades of grey and brown. 20% of the game takes place in a self-described shantytown. Why are we here? Are we not supposed to be on a Japanese island? Why is the palace section 20 minutes long and then it's on fire and you never return there? A real missed opportunity for anyone who likes to look at things.
All those reviewers from 2013 who gave the game "critical acclaim" should listen to the black man with the lightning.
What a waste of time.
The game is written so poorly that Lara's "badass moments" are entirely undeserved and almost insulting in how they hit you over the head with them. She starts out as a uwu softe girl who can barely do anything then at the end she's heckling people as she's shooting them. And I have to ask why? How? What happened to her to make this change? It certainly can't be how many people she's killed, because she's been doing that since the start of the game. The disconnect between story Lara and gameplay Lara is atrocious. Why is there a survival mechanic, where Lara has to get food, that disappears literally the second you kill a deer and then never appears ever again? Why are there berries to pick that give you 10 exp? Why are there random animals to kill?
The writing is so bad that it's honestly insulting. The puzzles are insulting, if they're even there. Tombs are made up of the most barebones "puzzles" ever conceived by man and what do you get out of it? 250 money, I mean scrap, I mean salvage. There's no reward for exploration or doing anything.
You only get the currency you get by doing literally anything in the game. Imagine if in Dark Souls you open a chest and you only get souls, not even an item to save them for later, but literally just currency. Also you can't skip the tediously long tomb chest opening animation. There's LITERALLY TREASURE PHYSICALLY in the chests and all you get is salvage. It's a joke.
The game speaks down to you like a child through overexplaining of basic concepts (Lara sees a bow, "That bow, I could use that bow! I need to find a way to get that bow."). If a game has a button that highlights all usable objects / tells you where to go, that means the devs fucked up.
It's actually incredibly racist despite how it's a "feminist" game. You have the Spiritual Aboriginal Guy who's also fat and half his dialogue is about food. You have the Angry Black Woman who is angry. Why is she angry? Who knows! But then she stops being angry during the last hour of the game for some reason. You have the Cowardly White Guy who only cares about his career I guess and betrays everyone despite being the only reasonable one here. I mean, who are you going to listen to in this situation? The people who've captured you and will kill you if you don't listen to them or your colleague who just so happens to be stronger than god and can kill everyone (no one knew about this before)? The only good character was Roth cause he was voiced by Robin Atkin Downes so it was nice to hear Kaz Miller again (this is the only reason why he's the only good character).
The fact that 95% of the enemies are random white guys who formed a cult who I think are supposed to be Russian (one of them is named Nicolai, and two others have Russian names but I forgot what they were) yet have thick American accents despite the entire game taking place on a Japanese island. The fact that these white dudes formed a cult around a Japanese princess and then the first Japanese women they meet just so happens to be a descendant of the princess just seems so weird and contrived and kinda racist.
The environments are so goddamn ugly and colours are washed out and are mostly varying shades of grey and brown. 20% of the game takes place in a self-described shantytown. Why are we here? Are we not supposed to be on a Japanese island? Why is the palace section 20 minutes long and then it's on fire and you never return there? A real missed opportunity for anyone who likes to look at things.
All those reviewers from 2013 who gave the game "critical acclaim" should listen to the black man with the lightning.
What a waste of time.