Recent reviews by Nightvoid

- Crimes?
- Crimes.

Considering the recent communication from the devs, the current state of the game, and the fact it was released almost two years ago, I no longer believe this is a salvageable project.

My Skyrim alchemy addiction is back. I am collecting herbs and ingredients, storyline will move nowhere for the next 5 business days.

NEW REVIEW:

After completing the game several times, I can say that the game is an utter bland disappointment. I can close my eyes on horrible travelling system and tedious exploration, but the quests and RPG elements are so uninspired. Quests are dull, sterile of moral choices. Almost every NPC is unkillable, your choices do not matter, generated locations become repetitive rather quickly.

I doubt this can be fixed with any expansions or even mods.

RIP



OLD REVIEW:

18 hours in - this is a really good game.

The exploration is top notch, combat is fun, graphics are stunning, countless quests to complete.

This is the most polished Bethesda game release. I have not experienced major bugs.

It is starting quite slowly, but gets a lot more interesting hours in.

Will update the review more when I finish it.

This is going to be as spoiler free as possible and quite spicy.
I am going to start with negatives and end on a positive note. Or at very least try.

In my opinion the story is the weakest link of this game. I found the plot to be very annoying as if in cheesiest Hollywood drama movie. You have seen it in many movies I bet, when characters in these films point gun at each other and instead of shooting just talk until ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan, villain escapes, and we are back into the crapper. That sort of thing. I am not sure how to describe it, but I felt it was written in a very safe way. Nothing unpredictable. Cliche phrases and decisions by the characters. Predictable plot "twists" if you can call them that.

I finished the game with the feeling that most of the story decisions were made to simply extend the gameplay time. Cannot tell much more without giving any spoilers, but I have a bruise on my forehead from face palming way too hard from the story.

Also, Jonah should have just stayed home for real. You were as helpful as the boner during the class presentation. Thanks for nothing, my dude.

Dunno why AAA developers still cannot reach out to any Russian speaking person to add a proper Russian translated text for the textures. I am literally right here and ready to take your money for proofreading all the text. It is not a big problem for people who do not speak Russian, but for me it was breaking the atmosphere quite often. Simply because most of the signs are misspelled or translated as if Bing Translator sponsored this game.

Climbing walls and jumping around (or if I may call it “parkour”) is a core element to any Tomb Raider game. It is working very well at most times. But at some point, I felt that there was so much of it here that I was thinking "please, not again" each time I had to do any climbing.

At times Lara is too eager to jump off a cliff and perish, which is a relatable content (you go girl), but at the same time it may get irritating. Possibly this is not an issue when playing with the controller, but on keyboard there were many cases when Lara just decided to hit the bucket instead of climbing where I wanted her to climb.

BTW these climbing arrows are a real pain in the ass. And the perk that gives you the ability to place them in mid-air with “F” button is not making it any better. It rather led me to pressing “F” to pay respects for the Lara’s lifeless ragdoll falling down the cliffs after failing to jam that arrow in that birch wood.

Stealth is quite enjoyable in this one. It did not change the fact that I suck at stealth, but it was my preferred way to play this game and I think it was done well here. Lara automatically goes into the sneaking mode when you are undetected around enemies and game gives you many ways to dispatch hostiles around you.

I have tried just shooting everything without a care as well, but I did not find it as fun.

I found bow, revolver and shotgun to be the most fun weapons to play with.

But no matter which way you prefer to play, there are several alternatives for every weapon type as well as upgrades.

Perks are quite straight forward and easy to understand, not much to say about this.

There are many upgrades for your ammunition, weapons, and gear that can be crafted from the materials / boxes found on the map.

Locations in this game are gorgeous. It feels that a lot of care was put into them. There are many tombs and optional areas that you can explore or skip completely if you wish. These can also be explored after the end of the game, therefore do not feel the pressure to do everything right away.

My only minor gripe with this is that game cockblocks you from many areas in the first half of the game due to missing equipment that you get only at a later stage. You will have to return to old locations to complete them 100%.

Cannot say anything about performance because it ran well for me, and I experienced no crashes.

Recommend turning off the motion blur, lens flare, bloom in graphic settings. I turned on less shaky camera option as well, but it still shakes in many places so much I get sea sickness.

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It is tough to rate this game on Steam because if I could I would have put a mixed review rating. Since I do not think it deserves to have a negative one, I am choosing a positive one. But overall rating for this game would be 6/10 from me.

It is like my old PC from 2005 came back to life to give me those glorious 20 fps at 1080p and imminent fire noises from the case. Nostalgic.

DLC has warehouse bug that does not dispatch trucks with goods to unique factories even though warehouse is right next to the factory and full of materials. Unique factories end up standing idle most of the time even if you have tons of warehouses nearby. No matter if warehouse is set on fill/balanced/empty.

Wanted to leave a positive review, but it turned out buildings from university and park DLC's cannot be placed on the new roads. Possibly other DLC's share the same issue as well.

You can befriend a giant jar with legs

Pros:

You can build an airport

Cons:

I suck at building airports