Funny, I thought Tomb Raider 2013 was an excellent horror game with a somewhat mediocre action game attached to it. I enjoyed the stealth well enough, but there are sections like shanty town where you have to play it as a full blast action game or it’s no fun.[1] Also it seemed kinda lame that the tombs were “optional” challenge tombs.
[1] It’s not too bad to play it like Wolfenstein, but the mechanics are more stealth-oriented.
It was especially lame that at the end of the tombs there was the same non-descript “treasure”.
My full-blast shooting skills are barely enough for Wolfenstein 3D.
I had a hard time beating the Shanty town and the Temple guards and the end of the game (even having 100% all my upgrades/skills).
Which isn’t bad, as it never removes the element of real danger. Only at the parts where you follow someone through a burning and collapsing building started to become too easy or unbelievable in the end.
The second game seems to continue that tradition with a totally unrealistic mountain climb, which would be much more exciting if they toned down on the spectacular and increased the odds of actually not making the jump or the hold.
I guess that’s modern gaming for you?
They may have overcompensated it a bit, but to be fair in old games I’ve experienced plenty of “I touched it! why did I fall!?”
I’d complain more about artificially restricted gameplay. I distinctly recall there’s some section in TR 2013 where you can’t go over to the other side while enemies keep pouring out from there. It reminds me of that annoying tentacle stuff in Half-Life.
Edit: btw, whatever flaws the games may have (largely the same “HI HERE ARE A FEW DOZEN ENEMIES” type annoyances combined with a worse story), the tombs in Rise and Shadow are much better.
Yeah yeah, I know it is 2026, but as I started putting more hours in the game in 2025, I can finally report here that I just finished Pool of Radiance after 61 hours (and probably more not recorded by Launchbox), spread over 112 play sessions and an unholy amount of save scumming on my behalf. (Reloading a save game requires exiting the game)
It is surprisingly true to the pen and paper D&D experience in that you can easily miss (essential) parts of the story or mess up your infiltration mission by grabbing a cursed sword from the enemy’s altar you’ve just desecrated.
Once you survive the brutally hard beginning where your party can die when one of the foes even sneezes at you, it does a very good job to keep every battle just hard enough that you can remain excited about winning it, without feeling you’re in god mode (although some battles near the end except for the very last one).
When the full party is wiped out, it is game over and reload. Otherwise you can haul back to the city to revive someone, but I generally never bothered as the risk on a random encounter wiping out more of the team is too high. The only reviving I did was after the final boss who took out two of my party members. No way you can beat that one without some casualties.
A lot of the items were bugged (protection rings +1 or +3…. same effect on AC for some characters, no effect on others….)