I never played the game before, although I heard high praises about its gameplay and narrative when it released on Playstation. I was tempted to buy the game on Steam since it released. When I saw it came out on GOG I decided to buy the game instantly. The game's narrative is well crafted with good exposition and pacing. It does not rush to tell it's story and succesfully balance narrative and action. Too many games attempt to pursue a rich narrative experience at the detriment of the gameplay. However, as it has become the trend for Sony, this game delivers a remarkable story telling with phenomanel gameplay that just feels right. The combat in the game is similar to the Tomb Raider reboot, especially RoTR and SoTR., but feels more polished and the enhancements feel well thought out. There are a lot of additions to the aforementioned example that make it stand out. The game flow is good and the game world is beautiful. Performance is a mixed bag, I run the game at 3440x1440p at 80% render scale with a Ryzen 7 2700 and RX 5700. In general I avg about 60fps at the high preset. The performance impact from high to ultra is not that much, but when you are on the border of 60fps it is meaningful. I did not try tuning the settings manually as the experience was very good out of the box. It is also worth noting that I am using the Radeon Pro drivers so they are not game optmized. Your millage may vary the game performs better on Navi than equivalent RTX 2000 series card. I only encountered one crash, but again, this could be because I am using Radeon Pro drivers. So far, - Narrative: 9 / 10 - Graphics: 10 / 10 - Gameplay: 10 / 10 - Voice Acting: 7 / 10 - Performance: 8 / 10 - Graphical Options choice: 9 / 10 (supports UW and HDR) NOTE: the game works on Linux but the performance is terrible. Performance might improve with DXVK and proton updates who knows. For best experiene Windows 10 is required.
