The game looks great, and it ran very well on my 21:9 widescreen monitor, which was surprising considering that back in 2013, widescreen monitors were not very common.
The gameplay fell short of my expectations. Quick time events are terrible as always, and there are a few instances which take the irritation to a new level with button prompts so short that I barely had time to react to it. There is absolutely no creativity in approaching a boss fights because of quick time events.
The crafting system is a pointless addition to the game. As such, it seems like busy work to hide the fact that weapon selection is very slim. The RPG elements also fall flat. Personally, I feel that this is a sign that the game lacks core design (no pun intended) principles, and went for a feature bloat, which looks good on paper, but adds very little to the gameplay.
I like the new dark and gritty tone of the game, but the setting was boring. The older games often took place all over the world and sometimes in fantastic locations. The exception being Tomb Raider 4: Last Revelation, which largely took place in Egypt, but they managed to have very distinct locations with varying color palettes. In this latest installment, I found Japan to be uninspiring. I remember the names of some of the levels in older Tomb Raider games that I played almost 20 years ago. I couldn’t say the same for this game, and I played it two months ago.
The story did not make any sense, but in all honesty, the older games did not have a great story either. I am generally not a fan of exploring the origins of well established characters, because writers rarely do justice. This attempt was no exception, in my opinion. There was nothing endearing about the origin story, and it certainly is not the reason I would play this game.
All said and done, it's not a terrible game, just not worthy of the legacy of the older games. It's worth playing if you can find it for under $5.
