The very beginning seems pointless in terms of injuring Lara, unless like Joseph Anderson posits, it is to establish the unrealistic amount of sense of disbelief.

I very much enjoyed the beginning forest area. Hunting is a great safe space for a tutorial while keeping the mystique of the area and discovering the layout of the land is also enjoyable while learning about the lore.

The area with the plane crash is returned to multiple times, and it changes after the plane crashes, which makes the area feel so much more real. Getting the climbing pick was also great because I didn’t realize how much bigger the area actually was until we received it.

You’ll notice that, until now, I haven’t talked about plot or characters, and that’s because I don’t think it’s very remarkable. I think it’s disappointing that the enemies are a stereotypical russian trope even though the game takes place in ancient Japanese ruins. The only remnants of anything Japanese are the architecture, the artifacts, and the undead samurai. The Russians don’t seem to be there for any other reason than bad luck in the sea or greed after the treasure, just as Lara and crew were. it would make more sense there were more Japanese there since it’s closer to their country and the story about the queen was probably more prominent in their legends and folklore. The whole WWII era stuff seemed out of place as well. I think it would’ve been more interesting if we could see how modern Japanese people would be reconciling with their past and present values, learning about their ancient culture and forced to confront the curse of their forefathers. Instead this is only hinted at in the documents left behind. Another point of interest might be how the Japanese might’ve lured or forced the allied troops to this island because they know the storms of the area and knew they would never escape, rather than the allied troops willingly sending soldiers and researchers there to leave them to their doom.

Climbing the radio tower was an incredible sense of vertigo and made my palms sweaty. The sound design for the cinematic pieces were exceptionally well done.

Make maps of the progression path. I want to illustrate how much freedom to explore we had in the beginning and middle, while after the beach section, it becomes a straight and narrow path. At that point, the storytelling should be stronger to push the player along this path, but the story simply isn’t that interesting at that point and I wasn’t very attached to any of the side characters. I certainly did not care enough about Sam to want to finish the game to rescue her, especially on the second play-through. Even in the fighting sections, I had to run forward, then run back when there were too many enemies, and that’s when I really noticed that I had nowhere to go but backward.

Speaking of fighting sections, some of the more interesting fighting arenas, especially Shantytown, feel like they would’ve been great fun for sneaking around and killing off enemies. It is such a wasted oppurtunity because the first section of the arena forces you into hiding behind cover and shooting down a wall of enemies. When I tried to run from cover to cover, they were all too far apart, and ended up punished by far-away shooters when I wanted to change my angle. I think it would’ve been better if they didn’t all come at you at once and the waves were smaller so you had time to advance and get to your next spot. But obviously this is how they planned it because the firepit is right beside where you enter.

I especially disliked the straight running sections becaues there isn’t actually much to do to match the amount of things happening on the screen. Melee fighting options have a lot to be desired. On my first playthrough, I found myself just mowing down enemies with the assault rifle since there was so much ammo and it was fast. This makes me think that the weapon balance is unbalanced. On my second playthrough I used only bow and shotgun. This made the long-distance fights much more difficult, but having to time my shots deliberately made combat somewhat more engaging.