Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

great graphics , and there is great story there i can tell after 6h playing

This is easily the weakest game of the trilogy. It seems like the writers decided they hate Lara and make her spend the entire game feeling depressed and sorry for herself because she hates everything she has done in the games.

I 100% completed the first two games. I love them to death. I won't finish this game. That's how bad it is. The progression from inexperienced young woman just trying to survive to confident and prepared adventurer in the first and second games was great. Now, they decided that the end of her arch should be a jaded, overly emotional whiner who hates herself. Playing as a constantly crying, depressed, self-loathing protagonist who seems to hate everything that makes this series what it is just isn't fun.

I happened to be visiting Peru in real life as I was in the middle of playing this game, and I can tell you this - do not wear shorts in the jungle. All I gotta say about that!

If you thought Lara in previous games "oof"s and "argh"s were top-tier before, just wait until she's caked in mud, dodging traps and casually kickstarting the apocalypse (again)

Just played through the whole trilogy in 2025. This installment builds on the formula. Better puzzles, ads more to combat, exploring and traversing the buildings feels more fluid. The relationship with leading story characters feels real, they knock it out of the park with world building as always. and exploring feels fulfilling. The Byzantine empire aspect as well as the cold war references are fun. I loved finding the voice acted journal entries that expand on the story and history of locations telling their own stories.

good game not the perfect too many boring locations.

Amazing Graphics and Story line. A great way to continue the game series!

This time, the jungle isn’t just a backdrop — it’s alive, ancient, and watching.
Lara faces the cost of her choices, and the story turns inward, darker, and more personal.
The ruins are breathtaking, the puzzles are deep, and the world feels sacred and dangerous all at once.

10/10. Would dive into forgotten temples and buried guilt again.

The final part of the Tomb Raider series of games... The plot is captivating until the end of the game! Many interesting mechanics! The graphics are pleasant to perceive! The atmosphere of the game is conveyed amazingly! I like the additional content in the form of tombs and exploration of the world, customers! I recommend buying a video game!

Amazing game mechanics, and a fun story line.

the story is a 4/5 and would play the next game if one comes out.

Combat is fine, story okay so far and graphics beautiful.

not a very interesting story and very buggy. you will encounter some gamebreaking glitches that have weird solutions like messing with random things in display settings or just trying over and over again. the only things i liked about this game are the graphics and murder

One of my favorite games of all time. It has it all: action, puzzles, great visuals…
I’ve finished the story multiple times and keep going back to it whenever I feel like reminiscing.
100% recommended!

"Lara Croft: Queen of Climbing, Looting, and Causing Mildly Inconvenient Apocalypses"

So yeah… I played this game a little late. Like, “the world already ended and got rebooted” kind of late. But wow, was it worth it!

Let’s start with the obvious: this game is gorgeous. The jungle environments made me want to go outside — and then the jaguars reminded me why I don't. The lighting, the textures, the ruins… it’s all so good, I kept getting distracted from the actual missions just to go sightseeing. If Lara had a travel blog, I’d subscribe.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a glorious mix of:

stealth takedowns that make you feel like a jungle ninja,

climbing sessions that defy the laws of physics (seriously, that grip strength could bend steel),

and puzzles that made me question my IQ more than once.

The tombs? Absolutely on point. They’re atmospheric, clever, and just hard enough to make you mutter, “I totally had that… eventually.”

The story picks up right after Rise of the Tomb Raider, and follows Lara as she tries to stop the apocalypse… which, uh, she kinda started. But hey, we’ve all had rough days at work, right? There’s character growth, emotional moments, and a surprising amount of scenes where you’re like: “Oh no. Lara, what did you do?”

Combat is smooth, especially when you fully embrace the “predator in the trees” playstyle. Just paint yourself in mud, perch in a vine wall, and become the foliage. 10/10 would scare mercenaries again.

Final thoughts: This is like National Geographic meets Uncharted with a dash of mild existential dread. If you love climbing, looting, ancient curses, and totally-not-accidentally triggering end-of-the-world scenarios, this one’s for you.

Rating: 9.5/10 – Played late, but Lara waited for me. What a legend.

Fun and entertaining! Worth if it's on sale.

this is the definition of a mixed game for me, on one hand it has the best exploration and gameplay mechanics in the Survivor Trilogy, on another hand it has a painfully mid story that lead to the worst assassination of Lara's character in the TR Animated Series, i don't really like her design in this game either, it's mid even in comparison to the other two games in this trilogy, only thing i like about it is the necklace and the fact that her muscles are more defined, but other than that it's just.... boring, which is the worst thing a Lara can be imo, but then on another nother hand it's highly replayable because of new game+ and said depth in the gameplay, but on another nother nother hand it has a pretty average setting especially for TR, and it gets boring to look at pretty quick because everything is just jungles and green, this game is the definition of a mixed bag, kinda awful depiction of Lara that lead to an even WORSE depiction of her later building off this in the TR show, great gameplay, boring world, interesting mythos, kinda bad story that peaks in it's first act, unnecessary side characters tacked on, i like Jonah, but Jesus Christ can we stop acting like Lara's helpless without someone in her ear telling her what to do? why is she so incompetent in this game? where are her dual pistols that you teased in TR2013? why can't she do cool flips and shit if this is supposed to be the "experienced" Lara? why does this game feel so much like Uncharted instead of TR? again WHY is Lara so incompetent in this game? idk dawg, this game is great if you ignore the story and just explore and do combat, but the second you start to use your brain a lot of this game crumbles in front of you. and it sucks because i really am a fan of this game, but it's missing so much of TR's DNA that it almost feels like it's part of an entirely different series. once again the biggest cardinal sin is just Lara not really being Lara at all in this game, she reminds me more of someone like Uncharted 3 Elena, and that's a REALLY bad thing when Lara was what made this series iconic and i just flat out don't like her sometimes in this game, idk dawg. still a 7/10 for me, but it's not a good TR game by any stretch of the imagination, it's just a really good hunter based stealth action game, but that's not really what we come to TR for, should've just done another IP entirely if you wanted to make a game like this imo, still solid enough game, just very flawed to me.

Bought this game despite reviews about older Rise of the Tomb Raider being the best trilogy. Personally, I prefer Shadow of the Tomb Raider because (1) better graphics, (2) better game mechanics and (3) balanced combat vs tomb raiding.

Whilst weapons and skills carry over to NG+ with less Steam achievements, the window to unlock some achievements is restricted to 1 or 2 scenes per NG.

Great game cant wait for the next one
atunning visuals and story

Don't take control of the camera from me.
Don't force me to walk.
Don't ever make cut scenes unskippable.

Literally did this in the first 15 minutes of playing.
Also had a chest that needed a lockpick in the first tomb with no way to open it. After looking it up you have to go back once you can fast travel and have to lockpick. Now here is my problem with that, the place was destroyed so how does that work? You do all this crap for immersion and then you can just fast travel to a destroyed tomb underwater? Right...

EDIT* Lara won't shut up when using survival instincts. Seriously everytime you use it she says something like "I have to cross blahblahblah." or "There must be a way to break blahblahblah.".
How stupid do these devs think people are?
I'm out.

This is the most unimmersive tomb raider i have ever played. I mean it looks great, and all the artifacts with their little background info show that there actually is some nuanced worldbuilding going on at a deeper level, but on the tangible surface, the gameplay feels like a downgrade from the previous one, the skill tree feels optional at best, weapon upgrades are downright useless, the pacing of the story is SUPER WEIRD, and the side quests feel like they were crammed in after the fact. I would have loved to have more actually engaging fight or stealth situations, but most of the time you just go places and come back.

Also there is some consistent visual bugs, the voiceover is not triggered at the right time rather often, and.. oh... yeah... headshots are not counted sometimes... WHICH IS SUPER annoying thankyouverymuch!!

It still looks stunning, the world and atmosphere are great at times, and you can see in every little detail that there WAS a lot of work by talented people put into this, but i just cannot recommend it as a third part in a series.. Not if you played the other ones and expect the same immersion, or as big a step up as the 2nd was after the 1st.

Too bad.

Not the best in the series, but still lots of fun. Most of the gameplay challenge centers around traversal, exploration, and puzzles - with a much lower reliance on combat. I liked that, but imagine not everyone would.

It's not without flaws (forgettable antagonist, bonkers story, too much time spent in one game location) - but I had a good time.

The best Tomb Raider in terms of environmental design and tomb exploration. The worst Tomb Raider in terms of everything else.

Collectathon with good set pieces. Enjoyable, but nothing groundbreaking.

how did we go from an absolute masterpiece that is tomb raider 2013 to this garbage. writing is atrocious making the dialogues often sound awkward, which also made half the side characters unbearable. gameplay is meh (pretty much the same as the previous games) except they added a grapple which in my opinion is fucking stupid because most of the time that shit doesnt work and i just end up dying. there are also MANY parts of the game where its just tedious as fuck, like u have to WALK and listen to the villagers yap about whatever lol. they also added a part where u get to play as child lara which i think is completely unnecessary and the entire child part is just fucking boring. some parts of the game also doesnt make sense like 1) how can lara walk through a hostile crowd with no disguise whatsoever without getting detected lmfao and 2) theres a part where she has to swim in boiling hot water and she somehow doesnt die from that lol. and HOLY CUTSCENES this game has SO. MANY, CUTSCENES and most of them r just long and boring. and for some reason this game visually looks worse than the previous game???

i dont understand how yall can make such a good first game then fuck up the second one, then fuck up EVEN MORE for the third one that it made the second one look good. literally had ZERO fun playing this game except during that one stealth part. what a sad way to end the series

Absolute shit gameplay. Played it for 6 hours and not a single moment I found it exciting.

Compared to the rest of the series, this one feels a bit slow. There's not much action, but the atmosphere is great. It's still worth picking up though.

Just a mid game, it doesnt do anything perfect. if you find it less than 10 euros its a good choice. A price above 10 euros is too much for this game

It is running with solid 80 FPS on GTX-1070 with pretty much all on max {except RT, of course}
Only issues I have are sound problems with the newest Nvidia gfx drivers {that thing is somehow messing with my sound card with literally all games. Sound is working fine when i use youtube, listen to music etc.}
Game itself is great... I mean, no need to say anything extra.
Wasn't boring one millisecond so far!

Best one yet; been playing since the first version one, and am amazed at how incredible these games have become. If you like 3D platformer, puzzles, exploring, and killing bad guys, it's just a great game. Every time a new one comes out, there's more things that Lara can do, and the way they pace you to learn it becomes muscle memory in no time. The expansive worlds, the details, the hundreds of objects you can find and examine is just phenomenal. I love these games; always will.

9/10.

It's a fun game, the exploration and combat mechanics are the best from the 3. The levels are pretty cool and the puzzles and tombs are very well done.

Lara is an awful protagonist, though. She is selfish, whiny and obtuse and she has actually regressed from the previous games. She has no relevant character arc and her making knee-jerk decisions is the cuase of like 90% of the problems she has to solve. Even Jonah lost his cool with her on this one.

The internal logic of the game is also pretty bad (from a caucasian lady with a heavy british accent passing as a local figure just because she is using a costume is actually hilarious - also, for a Village with little contact with the outside in the middle of nowhere, a LOT of people just speak english pretty fuently, huh?), so calibrate your suspension of disbelief accordingly.

I cant really explain what it is, but this game has mostly just been a drag. It felt so incredibly repetitive and was such a snoozefest. i couldnt really enjoy it anymore at some point and just wanted to finish. too many cutscenes and boring gameplay. the puzzles are okay but thats just not enough. get it on sale if you played the previous two games but otherwise just dont

This is one of my absolute favorite games of all time. I enjoy the puzzles in the tombs, and have played the game a few times on different consoles. It's still an incredible game worth playing and replaying on PC! I love this game!!

Classic Tomb Raider. Mostly about exploration and arcade style acrobatics, with some combat. New mods continue to pop up that give the game (and Lara) a makeover. Worth.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a poignant action-adventure game that dives deep into the final chapter of Lara Croft's origin story.

:)

Excellent game lots of fun, play on deadly obsession for a true challenge, albeit a very tedious one.

I like this game but I beat the first two within a month of its release.... I still have not finished this one. I'm not sure why but I'm not compelled to finish this game. I'm going to buckle down and finish it this week!

If having controller issues, disable Direct X12 in settings.

Ah, man, what a mess... It's like it doesn't even belong with the other two games of the trilogy.
The game has a lot of weird decisions, such as:
- un-skippable cutscenes that are not directly related with the plot but instead with 'character development'; I'm not against having characters evolve emotionally as you play, but why did we make the main plot cutscenes skippable but these ones not?
- there's A LOT of resource gathering in this one
- there's A LOT of side quests from random characters that just involve you going from point A to point B
- customization is ok but you spend 80% of the game in an area that makes you wear traditional clothes instead of TB exploration gear, which feels weird, and makes me wonder why they even allow you to change clothes at all
- gear with buffs try to fit the theme of "jungle" and don't fit the aesthethic of Tomb Raider and the perils of exploring stuff

I mentioned on the review for Tomb Raider (first game) that you could tell that that game was done in a different era and the same can be said about this one; there's just too much to do - you speak with tons of npcs that have nothing to add, you walk around a city where the npc lines are always the same ones, the side quests are dull, the customization fits the environment but doesn't fit the character or what they need to do, the map is a confusion of things to pick up, explore, check and try to complete

I wish this was more like the first game and less like the modern AC games

Immersive experience. Just started really playing 2025-04. Can recommend if this type of game sounds something you would enjoy. Especially with good graphics and PC. If you want RT shadows with max settigns and use Nvidia, you will most likely need to revert back to December 2024 drivers (with clean install option during setup), not to crash the game. Also prepare to limit max FPS to 120 or some puzzles get glitched and are unsolvable aka not working at all. (have a bug some sort).

pretty game but not as good as the other 2 also big bugs with dlss ultra settings

good graphics, great story, good side missions.
overall good game.

thank you shadow of the tomb raider for being the worst and hardest game of the franchise this actually pmo dont play on the hardest gamemode if you dont wwant to grow greyhairs early icl ts js pmo fr ong omg jst sybau this game is so ass i cant terrible dlc aswelll pmo pmo pmo pmo

The game is beautiful and runs really well for the most part (I had an issue with no voice during cut scenes. Google shows this as an old issue, and the solution for me was to change the language from something not English, and then change back to English). Gameplay and story - this is my least favorite of the trilogy. It's not a bad game by any means. But I found it to be a bit dull. And the story clunky. Still, easily would recommend to anyone looking to try an action-adventure game!

This game. This trilogy. First of all, I must say that I never played any of the older Tomb Raider. So I can only comment on the three most recent games.

But this is about Shadow. This have to be one the most gorgeous games I've seen in the last few years. The jungle and temples sceneries are beautiful, and even though it's mostly what you will see -jungle and temples-, the devs have detailed it very very well. And, it's one of those rares games where they actually included flora that move when you move through them.

The gameplay is fun, a lot more stealth oriented than the previous two games, although there is still combats and hunting. Some annoying moments, for sure, especially against a certain type of enemy. The puzzles and plateforms moments, although sometime very complicated (or I was very tired) were usually fun, more than a lot of moment in the previous games.

The story is good. Not the best in the trilogy in my opinion, but that's ok. I don't ask every chapter in a serie to be better than the last.

To me, this game is a solid 8.5/10. But, I think you need to at least have finished the previous two games, because as the closing chapter of the trilogy, a lot is build on the previous stories, and a lot of references are made.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying (some bugs)
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ Replayability }---
☐ One and done
☑ Maybe after a year
☐ Worth a second run
☐ Played it 20 times and still not bored

---{ Microtransactions }---
☐ None
☑ cosmetics and other stuff
☐ Slightly pay-to-progress
☐ Pay-to-win
☐ More shops than gameplay
☐ Casino Simulator

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

I just finished playing this absolutely amazing game. I would certainly recommend this great game to any and all Tomb Raider fans, the game doesn't disappoint. While I played the Definitive Edition, I played all of the DLC's and each and every chapter is a whole story all into itself also gives some side characters the ability to give you a few extra missions with really good gear and outfits to help you in your additional quests in the game. It is a heck of a lot of fun and the New Game plus let's you play the game with all your skills unlocked and you can play the game as many times as you want.

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Definitive Edition is the most amazing game I have ever played I cannot to continue to play it again really soon.

Overview

Shadow of the Tomb Raider concludes the survivor trilogy, but I was honestly disappointed by it. The storyline is the weakest of the three, disjointed and inconsistent, making it hard to get into. But why do I still recommend this game even though it has the worst storyline in the trilogy? because of its improved gameplay, which I will discuss more in the "Gameplay" section. In my opinion, Mathias was the best antagonist in the trilogy. Konstantin was decent too. However, Dr. Dominguez felt underwhelming in comparison. I was hoping for a more intimidating villain, but it felt like a downgrade. They didn't change Lara's character model this time (which is a good thing), but the skin textures looked less detailed than Rise of the Tomb Raider. On the upside, there's noticeable improvement in hair rendering. Camilla Luddington delivers a decent performance, but the dialogue occasionally feels weak.

Gameplay

This game focuses more on exploration and has less combat compared to the previous one. Though I had fun exploring Peru, as the world-building and environment are gorgeous, and I believe they have been very consistent with it throughout the trilogy. It turns into horror for a bit, with an eerie atmosphere executed effectively. Combat mechanics are largely similar to the previous game, and I had fun taking the stealthy route. Lara can camouflage herself with mud, use fear arrows to turn enemies against each other and perform brutal stealth takedowns from trees or underwater. The expanded skill tree offers diverse playstyles, and weapon customisation remains robust. The best part of this game are the tombs, there are a total of 16 challenge tombs (including DLCs) in this game. They are more elaborate and challenging than Rise of the Tomb Raider, often requiring players to engage with multiple mechanics and think critically to progress. The increased difficulty and depth of these puzzles offer a more rewarding experience. Additionally, the atmospheric design and the environmental storytelling contribute to a more immersive and engaging experience. "Howl of the Monkey Gods" was my personal favourite.

Downsides

While this game excels in atmosphere and exploration, the narrative execution was quite bad (as mentioned in the "Overview" section). Other than that, there's not much to talk about here, except some occasional texture pop-ins and camera glitches.

Conclusion

Personally, the trilogy could have ended in a better way. The tombs were amazing, I would go so far as to say one must play Shadow of the Tomb Raider once, just to experience the tombs. With the new Tomb Raider game being in development for quite a while now, I hope we get some updates soon. Until then - keep exploring!

After playing Tomb Raider, Rise Of The Tomb Raider and Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, I can say that this series improves with every addition. Shadow Of The Tomb Raider will remain as the best within the series. Showcasing Lara Crofts past and choices leading to many lives being saved. The exploration was the most noticeable improvement and combat mechanics. Great game and series and I would highly recommend this series to anyone looking for an adventurous time.