Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Since Crystal Dynamics were busy, after having been tasked -- punished -- by Square Enix to make Marvel's Avengers, was the final Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy game developed mainly by Eidos Montréal instead. They didn't really take any risks and Shadow of the Tomb Raider turned out pretty much what I would've expected had it been made by just Crystal Dynamics. The gameplay felt instantly familiar, even down to keybindings. There are however some differences that I think show the Deus Ex prequel studio was handling the reins in this one.

A safe trilogy finisher

One criticism/praise you see often for Shadow is how there's less combat than in its two predecessors. To me that was a big negative because I had previously enjoyed the third person shooting action immensely. For the longest time in Shadow I was definitely noticing the lower amount of encounters while I was doing everything in order in my completionist style. However, towards the end combat seemed to increase in frequency. I reckon the developers had heard the criticism and made sure the DLC tombs they kept releasing (7 in total) also included combat.

(As a whole the DLC actually add a pretty hefty amount content to the game. And doing all of them also rewards you with an outfit that has a nice combination of effects for your New Game Plus run.)

While the amount of combat got plenty enough, it was included in a different format. In the 2013 game and Rise of the Tomb Raider, you more often meet hostiles in exploration areas. I especially liked how in Rise when revisiting the Soviet Installation, you'd have encounters at different locations of the map. But in Shadow, you mainly fight in specifically purposed combat arenas. While those were a thing previously as well, too many of them make things feel gamey, not as immersive.

I guess it might have been somewhat silly if they had repeated the escalating combat approach to the final boss in this one. But I'd say it would have still felt better than to not have it. Instead you only get your usual climbing and platforming that ends in an unnecessarily prolonged boss fight. I think it goes on just a bit too long, Lara has to stab the villain just a couple of times too many. Not saying the previous games had particularly great final showdowns, but they were definitely better. The Baba Yaga DLC boss fight in Rise also still is one of the best in all the games I have played.

Another aspect that I think shows the different developer is the much larger amount of NPCs. Shadow's prologue happens in some Day of the Dead celebration with a whole lot of people and then the main hub of the game later is an actual inhabited city. It's not necessarily a bad thing but definitely different than running about mostly abandoned locations before.

Shadow also lacks the victory theme that previously played about every time Lara slid down a rope, which is pretty much out of every tomb. In this game you rarely get to do that and the few times you do slide, the disappointing lack of the tune is very noticeable for someone who has replayed the 2013 game and Rise more than a couple of times.

One change I enjoyed was the lack of multiplayer/co-op achievements. As a result Shadow was quite effortless to 100%. Even the score attack achievements for the DLC tombs required only bronze medals to unlock. The hardest achievement is probably beating the game on the Deadly Obsession difficulty, which is the same as One with the Jungle (Hard) with the difference that you get saves only at campfires.

Rise had the same difficulty and I knew it was better to not try it on my first run. It's rarely the combat that kills you but the instant deaths during platforming. Shadow also appeared to be the most prone of the games to not register your less-than-perfect input for mid-air actions and Lara then proceeding to fall to her death. Having gone through the game once prepared me with knowledge of what was expected of me but I was still dreading the first cinematic running section with crumbling environments because the very first campfire is beyond it. On my first run I had serious trouble at few jumps in it and I really didn't fancy doing the whole slow prologue over and over.

Fortunately, despite what difficulty setting says, you do get autosaves at the start of those cinematic escapades. I found that out because I still failed the same jumps once each. So my thanks to the developers for not making the difficulty as punishing as it could have been. I didn't take my chances with optional content though and just beelined the main story on the NG+ run for the achievement. And there wasn't much of a point to do the side stuff anyway because I already had everything, with the exception of the new perks and weapons you get on a NG+ run -- that was a nice surprise feature. You get to choose one aspect of three for free at the start and I chose the Jaguar one because one of the perks gives you damage resistance for few seconds after a kill -- something extra to protect you from having to restart from the previous campfire.

Related to platforming, I have to mention one incident of how I couldn't get out of a crypt close to Kuwaq Yaku. I got the crypt's loot and backtracked to get out but then I found I couldn't make the jump off a ramp: Lara just couldn't reach the top of the wall to grab on the ledge. I tried a few times and started to doubt it was the right way. Since I was playing on maximum difficulty, there was nothing to guide me: no white paint or survivor instincts to highlight stuff. Eventually after exploring all of the small crypt, I came to the conclusion that I was just failing the jump and the reason turned out to be that it was a wall you can jump up off after Lara has touched it. Now, that shouldn't be a hard thing to figure out at all but the thing is that every other such wall in the game is obvious. Either there are planks or it's a smooth wall -- not the edge of a half crumbled down one. I thought it an interesting level design failure.

Also, another fumble -- and this is on me -- was how I didn't properly read what Owl's Wisdom and Eagle's Sight perks do which is highlight various collectibles and challenge objects while using survival instincts. I thought they would do nothing since on Hard and above survival instincts are disabled. I saved these "useless" perks for last and my 100% run took a bit longer than it should have due to that. Even without survival instincts you're not completely out of highlighting because Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a Far Cry style herb system, one of them allowing you to see enemies through obstacles. You can also customize the difficulty of combat, exploration, and puzzles individually but that wasn't much use to me (since everything was maxed). I did appreciate not having to listen Lara constantly commenting on the current puzzle at hand like she does in the previous two games whenever you activate survival instincts.

If the franchise is to continue featuring climbing -- more than likely -- I wonder if a stamina mechanic would add anything to the experience. I read that the Uncharted series tried something like that in development but the feature was abandoned before it got to release. But it would definitely make the climbing sections have more depth if you had to plan your negotiation a bit.

The developers have patched the game to fix bugs but there were two slightly annoying 100% completion hampering glitches. The first one is how in Oil Fields, reloading checkpoint at which you get poison arrows will stop collectibles registering as picked up. You have to load a save before that if you want to things to count properly. Another is how Mission of San Juan map doesn't seem to show you having gotten last two collectibles or so but that got fixed by simply restarting the game. I also had one main story puzzle glitch out and require a reload to fix. Lucky that it didn't happen on the Deadly Survivor run because it would have meant going back quite a bit.

What's next?

I wonder what's in the future for the Tomb Raider series. Lara's current arc got some manner of emotional conclusion in this one and she's ready for new adventures. There were recent rumors that the next game might be some sort of multiplayer title. That doesn't sound that great to me: I'd rather take more single player action adventure.

In May, the Embracer Group announced they had acquired the franchise as well as the whole of Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal studios from Square Enix. And that is good news. Western developers saved from their Japanese overlords. We might actually see a continuation to the Deus Ex franchise as well thanks to that.

Edited 2022-08-04: Added stuff about climbing, bugs, and missing victory theme.
Edited 2022-12-29: Fixed some odd error in the text.