A solid conclusion to this rebooted franchise. Decent (though underwhelming at times) story and atmosphere, but not much is new here.

While this game did not wow me, it was a solid conclusion to this new trilogy, albeit not as epic as I was hoping for. I enjoyed the characters, world building, and atmosphere, but something was missing. The mechanics didn't really offer anything new, but were a bit more streamlined.

The game mostly takes place in Peru, so we get a major change of scenery from the frozen lands of Siberia in the second game. It is once again semi open world with numerous zones you can fast travel between. Lara's goal is to stop a Mayan apocalypse that gets set in motion. You travel through Peruvian jungles and villages, as well as numerous Mayan ruins. All of which are a site to see. Making allies along the way you have to solve the mysteries and riddles that will prevent this Mayan apocalypse from occurring.

Gameplay-wise there wasn't really anything new here. You have the main quest line as well as side missions, challenges, and collectibles in most zones. It really is more of the same in a new setting, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but would have been nice to see something new here. Like previous game you start will next to no weapons and gear and must collect them as you go. You can still upgrade your weapons and gear as you with items you collect or purchase along the way. Traversal and the puzzle mechanics are more of the same which are mostly satisfying, but again nothing that wowed me. Combat was again passable like the prior game, but did not feel as engaging. The stealth mechanics were ok, but not really able to be used effectively most of the time. All of this to say the gameplay and mechanics were almost a copy and paste job from the prior game with some updated graphics and a new environment.

I played the game entirely on Steam Deck and it ran pretty well. I set it to high settings with 40hz/40fps. It dipped a little in some of the bigger zones/villages and during some cut scenes, but was by no means impacted gameplay.

Overall, I am glad I played the game, but it was not as good as the first two, and did not have the epic conclusion I was hoping for. Not a bad game by any means, just not quite what I was hoping for. Definitely recommend if you're a Tomb Raider fan and played the prior two.

A decent sequel that offered some interesting mechanics and story, but did not live up to the original.

Working my way through this franchise definitely brings me a new appreciation for them. Having played during the PS1/2 era, this one was a refreshing take, but did feel like it lacked in combat. I still enjoyed my time with it and a looking forward to the rest of the series.

The story was pretty standard for the time ... a big bad takes over the land and you and your crew (a group of nobodies) take it upon yourself to set things right. You have a core team of three characters and a fourth will join your party for different parts of the campaign. This was a nice change of pace and allowed you to experiment with different builds, however there wasn't much incentive to do so.

Gameplay was completely changed up in this one. All of your characters can use any type of magic and there are no character levels. I think the idea was to give the player freedom to build their characters how they wanted, but it really just made everyone feel bland. The one thing I did like was that you levelled up a weapon type or magic by using them. It definitely had a different feel, but I mostly just ended up equipping 2 weapons on each character and only levelling up some starting magic (fire, thunder, blizzard, cure, life, and ensuna). There wasn't really a whole lot of need to do much else. I found focusing on weapon proficiency had the most gains for me, so I didn't need to have any magic specialists. The map was fairly sized, and monsters were "level capped" to different areas. This made it so you could go up against impossible scenarios right out of the gate if you weren't careful, but made it extremely grindy in the beginning to level up any of your weapons.

The overall feel of the game was similar to the prior one, but definitely felt more streamlined. Each section had you travelling to a destination which end in a dungeon (or series of dungeons) with a boss. It got a little repetitive, but the story was engaging enough with some twists and turns to make it worthwhile.

I played this entirely on Steam Deck and it ran flawlessly. 60hz/60fps and didn't break a sweat (not surprising, but still nice). I had 0 crashes or frame dips. The deck is tailored for this kind of experience. It took me just over 18 hours to complete.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the game. It had it's ups and downs, but was a net positive. I highly recommend for anyone wanting to experience the entirety of the franchise or someone who wants to see a different take on certain gameplay mechanics in an RPG/JRPG.

A short but decent sequel that streamlined some of the franchise's mechanics, but failed to live up to it's predecessors.

It was fun to be able to play the conclusion of this story, and while I did not enjoy it as much as the first two games it was not a bad game by any means. In this one we play as Billie Lurk (captain of the Dreadful Whale, from Dishonored 2), and we are looking for our mentor who the Outsider had previously given powers to. The scope of the story is pretty narrow and there are only 5 missions. They are all pretty solid, but the game is short in comparison to the previous two.

Gameplay wise all the main mechanics return with sword combat, projectile weapons, traps/grenade, and void powers. They did streamline how the void powers work and took away the skill tree to obtain more powers, but the main ones were still there (blink, foresight?, and semblance). You also don't need to recharge void power with elixers anymore, it restores automatically after a few seconds. I didn't mind the trimmed mechanics but it did feel like a step down. It would have been nice to customize the powers a bit, but the core of the gameplay was still there.

I overall really enjoyed the feel of the game. It felt like a Dishonored where you could approach things in a stealthy or bombastic way. The choice was yours. It was just shorter and leaner on the main mechanics and not quite as good as it's predecessors.

I played this entirely on Steam Deck and it ran near flawlessly. I set it to 40hz/40fps with High graphics settings and it only dipped into the 30's a couple times. Overall the game played great from start to finish with 0 crashes. It took me a little over 8.5 hours to complete.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. It ran well, played well, and the story was different enough to keep it fresh. Definitely recommend if you liked the prior two games, but just know it is not as good, is shorter, and progression/mechanics are a bit simplified.