Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review (Essius Sartalius)
First thing i need to mention is that this game is not a bad product but it has serious problems that i can't recommended it.
This game suffers from lots of miss directions in balancing Combat and exploration and also not telling a interesting and grounded story, lack of Crystal Dynamics as lead developer and also lack of Rhianna Pratchett as a lead writer really shows SOTR short outcomes.
Warning: spoiler for ALL reboot Tomb Raider games
Pros:
1- Tomb challenges and side missions that got tomb sections are the strongest part of SOTR, they offer amazing amount of variety
2- Graphics and environment art design in this game is truly beautiful, there was lots of time that i couldn't stop myself using the photomode
3- Good PC port, i didn't really had bad performance issues
4- Hunting the animals for outfits and overall upgrades is rewarding
5- The 1 story mission playing lara croft when she is just a kid was really good
Cons:
1- This game is like 70% exploration with non-lethal gameplay and 30% Combat and getting into gunfights, just like i wrote earlier is not really balanced
2- Because of very little combat engagements using skill tree is pretty much pointless, why put your skill points in Warrior and Scavenger category when they have almost no use for you?
3- Having the option for natives to speak with their own language didn't executed properly, apparently they all can understand perfect english that Lara and Jonah speaking?
4- Most of side missions that don't have tomb sections are really boring and they always ending with "hey Lara thanks for your help i have this garbage that i'm not using anymore pls have it"
5- In TR 2013 and ROTR all the notes where narrated by different voice actors but SOTR all is narrated by Lara Croft
6- Most of side and main characters in SOTR don't have anything interesting about them, in Rise of Tomb Raider there was just 3 main characters (besides Lara and villains): Jonah your friend and Jacop The prophet and his daughter Sophia and all of them written 10 times better, even role of jonah in SOTR is really weird because there are times that it feels like writers constantly force him to be in this "Big Brother" relationship with Lara and there is nothing more in his character, like this guy survived all the insanity in ROTR after he and Lara where separated by avalanche but in this game we have climbing section that shows he's afraid of heights?
7- Villains story and their motivations in this game are a absolute comedy, early on we introduced to doctor Dominguez who is the head of Trinity and also rourke a military commander and second-in-command to Dominguez, now if you read some notes and listening to Trinity soldiers speaking you will learn that most of them are not loyal to Dominguez and there is a dual loyalty question in Trinity camp, however unlike ROTR Which Villains got their own cutscenes to better explain their motives SOTR explaining for villain motive is only from Lara perspective and answer is always "Trinity is bad". when progressing the story further we will finding out this twist that Dominguez is just a title name for head of Trinity and real name of Dominguez is amaru and beside Trinity he is also leader of Cult of Kukulkan and he just want to save Paititi and he is also a sympathetic villain and after that twist revealed i was basically couldn't take the story seriously anymore, like in ROTR Trinity goals where simple: control a supernatural power to rule the world, Ana wanted to cure her terminal illness and Konstantin was a religious fanatic freak but all those villains where written far better than Dominguez and rourke
8- Lara Croft character development in this game is absolutely shallow, like we still dealing with "trauma from dead parents" and "all the bad things happening is my fault" from ROTR, is like the events that happened in previous game didn't have any impact on her, what was the point of all of those talking with Jacob about Lara needs stop being selfish and obsessed about his father dead? Rhianna Pratchett wrote a really grounded and human story for Lara Croft in ROTR but in SOTR she comes of as unlikable, it feels emotionally she is still stuck in events of TR 2013, i know this thing i'm going to write is a taboo conversation in the community because of infamous Eidos Interactive marketing tactics for OG tomb raider games but maybe adding a love interest (in a mature and respectful way of course) could've helped her personality to grow more