Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the only mainline Tomb Raider game I ever put down before seeing the ending. I think I made it like 30 or 40% of the way through the game. I expected the story to be disappointed since Rise was so lame in that regard, but I thought they'd finally be moving past the daddy-baggage stuff so things would HAVE to improve right?
Also yes, the gameplay design is horrible. I really do appreciate that there's a much bigger emphasis on puzzles compared to TR2013 and Rise, but there's so little going on in the game. Shadow is seriously "picking up garbage" the game. In 6-7 hours it really felt like I spent the vast majority of the game just picking up crafting things and opening stuff that arbitrarily gives me EXP, and it's all worthless because the TR games aren't properly designed to be compelling RPGs/immersive sims, and the upgrades don't even matter because there's practically no danger anyway since fights and enemies are so infrequent. They play up Lara as a "jungle predator" but in 7 hours I had probably less than 5 moments where I could actually stealth enemies. The "side quests" are the most trite, banal shit I've ever seen and it seriously feels like a fucking joke that Lara is even bothering with helping random townspeoples' dumbass problems. This is the advent of "modernizing" game design choices that Tomb Raider absolutely did not need.
Rise was already a kind of flat, underwhelming game, but I still managed to play through it twice, and while TR2013 has some problems and is way too linear/action focused, at least that game has a sense of fire, energy, and actual stuff happening. The pacing and direction is there for the first game, is seriously waning in Rise, and I don't even know what Shadow is supposed to be, except that the devs
really liked the idea of the player constantly picking up garbage.
