A Bit Disappointing
Being a fan of the first game in this trilogy, I was somewhat excited for this game. By the time I had reached the half-way mark, however, I found myself quite bored instead. I ended up dropping the game shortly afterwards.
The gameplay of the first game was never its strong suit. There was always a bit of handholding. However, in RoTR, the developers have clearly tried to make the gameplay more engaging, and have also added more mechanics. However, this only seems to make the inherent scripted nature of this game more apparent and broke my immersion several times. This also impacted tombs because I found the controls to be finnicky, leading to quite a few frustrating moments.
By far, the story, atmosphere, and environment design have had the most drastic reductions in quality. The first one was more of an action thriller. It was exciting and kept me on my feet. While the story wasn't anything that hadn't been done before, it was delivered spectacularly. The environment was also amazing, and had a sense of verticality in the landscape that few other games had.
On the other hand in RoTR, I saw many of story beats coming before they happened. It was way too predictable, and that kind of killed the mood entirely. Also, most of RoTR occurs in the Siberian Wilderness, where its covered in snow. This leads to most environments being bland and looking quite similar, even though the graphical fidelity itself has improved. Even the areas which aren't covered in snow just doesn't look as great as what I had seen in the previous game.
The one part of the game I found really engaging, though, was "Endurance Mode". There, the game kind of captures that sense of danger, suspense, and adventure which is so sorely missing in the story mode. "Endurance Mode" really transforms the game from feeling scripted and boring to something more exciting. It really encourages you to play with many of the gameplay mechanics and rewards creative solutions. Even exploring tombs was far more interesting here than in the main game.
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