I'm a relatively new player of this series, so my view is not really influenced by nostalgia. (I do remember some friends of mine with a Playstation a long time ago playing these, but that's about it.) In fact, aside from some random memories of the very first title, I started off with the more recent "Survivor" reboot. With the exception of the TR 2013 reboot game, I think I prefer this over the more modern series. To be honest, "Rise" and "Shadow" felt like Ubisoft games with a Tomb Raider wrapping. Lara had no personality in those, and, to be frank, while the stories were fine, I felt like they took the collectible hunting to unnecessary extremes. Plus, there were large sections of intense shooting that I was not expecting to deal with. The Good (for me): There are large areas of just pure platforming and puzzles (even if they are a bit too straightforward in places), which is what I appreciate from the series. Combat is present but is not usually overbearing. Level design is streamlined and relatively linear, which makes for more convenient gameplay (I don't have infinite gaming time, so I appreciate this). The soundtrack is lovely and miles better than anything I heard in the Survivor trilogy. Exploring the Croft Manor with that lovely manor theme song was also a highlight. The Bad: The Kazakhstan motorcycle sequence is not particularly enjoyable (at least the Peru one has an awesome song to go with it), and that final boss fight was just absolutely horrendous. I somehow beat it on normal difficulty by spamming attacks and hiding behind pillars while madly dodging all of the energy blasts. Actually, I was trying to beat all of the game at the hard difficulty level, but I had to lower it for that last fight. It felt more like a Dark Souls boss but mostly because the targeting system would not lock on to or reliably hit that Amanda-monster thing. In short, it's fine for what it is. A solid action adventure game with some unnecessary jank.
It's okay if you don't find this review helpful as you may disagree with my thoughts, but I just want to share my experience with the game. It's a typical Dark Souls clone and, since it was made in 2014, it shares a lot of elements with that series. You have crystal campfires, leveling up based on certain key stats, bosses, suicide runs for items, and so on. Armor weight affects rolling and dodging ability. Pretty much everything you would expect from the first couple of Dark Souls titles. The story is just kind of generic fantasy - overly ambitious guy wants to take evil out of the word but messes up everything after doing so. Nothing groundbreaking, though I did like the environments in the game world. The levels were designed fairly well but recycled a bit too much. I could live with the passable story if the gameplay were more exciting, but it just isn't. Everything seems to move at quarter speed by design. Even the first Dark Souls felt more fluid [a better point of reference might be Dark Souls 2 actually!], which surprised me. You have to adjust to this and give yourself an additional 4-5 seconds just to take a swig of your health potion; this also means you have to be extremely careful about when to take a swing since it's REALLY easy to get interrupted by a boss or enemy. As a result, I found myself having to do strong running attacks most of the time to take down bosses or break shields. This slower pace really killed it for me. You might like it, but I've played too many games like the third Dark Souls, Lies of P, and Sekiro and expect a reasonable pace of combat. Dying repeatedly just because I failed to time a light attack correctly is incredibly frustrating and became the real boss of the game for me. My system is not great as well (GTX 1060), but it should be more than enough to play this one, and the DLC often crashed. That's also a slightly negative point about it. I would say only get it on sale.
To be honest, I had very low expectations for this game, but I saw it was ridiculously cheap during a sale for only $3 to $5, so I thought why not? [I think I purchased the deluxe edition]. Overall, I'd recommend it if you are into so-called "Soulslike" games. You will find it to be a reasonable challenge, especially that temple boss that you will inevitably meet later in the game. It's pretty much a tribute to that whole genre of gaming. My favorite part about it that makes it stand out is the use of different shells and upgrading your preferred shell to match well with your weapon choice. If you get the deluxe edition, this should feature one bad*** dual katana/axe that can probably carry you through most of the game. I know it made a huge difference when I was fighting the final boss and sped up that fight considerably. There are definitely some generic elements to it -- the art design is clearly influenced by the DS universe and even the name of the world is a bit silly ["Fallgrim"], and it generally follows time-intensive dodging or parrying combat much like you would find in a typical From Software title. Nothing new there, but I wasn't expecting it to be "the next big thing" in this genre, so that's OKAY. I'd like to mention one last thing - a lot of games can waste your time in some fashion [grinding and leveling up characters to be able to pass certain areas of a game world, fetch quests, etc.]. Even "Elden Ring" more recently was guilty of this even though it was a fantastic game. I'm happy to report this game doesn't do this to you that much. A little bit of grinding is useful when you want to get a ranged weapon or the ability to fast travel, but you can generally find a shell you like and upgrade it with a minimum amount of grinding tar since the game itself usually gives you enough as you progress. (The lute music in it is also great - it can actually lead a pretty funny ending!)
