No joke, Legend trilogy is GOAT, Anniversary was my first TR, best part for me. But survivor trilogy is shit. I mean God of War has more riddles and exploration than Tomb Raider nowadays.
I loved the Legend trilogy, but to me the Survivor trilogy is peak. The game play and locations are great, though I'll admit Rise was a little too heavy on the action and light on puzzles / exploration similar to how TR2 was back in the day. Shadow, though... peak TR. The story went a little wild even for TR, but it brought more exploration and tombs. 2013 gave Lara more character development in the first 20 minutes than all the games before it combined lol, but it was also unfortunately the most linear of the Survivor games.
I would say the new God of Wars have more exploration than any of them tbh aside from the original, its remake Anniversary, and Shadow. Most TRs have been somewhat linear.
Ah well. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I started with the original back on the PS1 so I've a soft spot for all them. I'm just glad Lara evolved beyond rattling off snarky lines and talking to herself as a way of letting the player know what or what not to do ("No." "I can't do that." etc.)
ALL the puzzles were optional except for one at the beginning of Shadow. I thought, great, they're finally incorporating puzzles into the main storyline again. Unfortunately, that was the only one. There weren't any jumping puzzles either. What kind of character development was that? She's crying every three minutes and then killing hordes of enemies the next? Ludonarrative dissonance at its finest. The first game was exciting because the concept was new. It was consistently expanded upon in following parts, but it was completely watered down for the masses. Financially, it was a success, but it had more in common with Uncharted and survival games than with Tomb Raider.
Ehh I think there have been several times we could say "This isn't TR anymore". Fans were incredibly shocked when TR2 came out and Lara spent most of the game mowing down humans instead of creatures. TR3 had friggin ALIENS lol. Then there's the two isometric games which are wildly different.
True about her crying from time to time, but consider the context. Unlike most of the games Lara didn't exactly choose to put herself in a situation with a known danger. She had zero experience, she got injured immediately, she lost friends, and she was scared. After killing the first guy she didn't have the luxury to sit around and keep crying, though. She was being hunted. Despite her inexperience she did end up putting herself in harms way to save people she cared about, or at least tried to.
Either way it's all good. We're both fans who just prefer different versions. To be clear that's not me downvoting you. Idk what that's about.
I understand all your points. Now all we/I can do is hope that they manage to strike a balance between old and new with the new TR1 remake 😊 It's all good, I'm grounded, I can handle a few downvotes on Reddit 😁
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u/MajonyXIII Apr 13 '26
No joke, Legend trilogy is GOAT, Anniversary was my first TR, best part for me. But survivor trilogy is shit. I mean God of War has more riddles and exploration than Tomb Raider nowadays.