I just beat this game. Took about 14 hours (not including using the benchmark a few times). I did a few sides quests and challenge tombs, but mostly just the main game. I definitely liked it more than Rise, which I thought was kind of boring. This one was fun to play and had decent pacing. The story from the first one was the best though, in my opinion.
Pros:
+Pretty!
+I never felt bored with the main missions
+Challenge tombs are still fun
+I am a sucker for scripted running away from things sequences, and this had a lot of them
Cons
-The audio and video would occasionally desync in cutscenes, which was annoying
-The few side quests I did were boring
-Her. Hair. Never. Gets. Wet. For a game this pretty, it was just weird.
-The story was a little goofy. It felt like they wanted it to be serious, but it was cheesy.
The pros outweighed the cons a lot. Iād give it a 7/10 on our scale.
Agree on all fronts with that assessment. I did a bit more of the side quests and they all stunk. Low effort stuff. And yeah, for a series full of silly stories this one somehow was the cheesiest corny thing ever. But still fun Tomb Raider action/exploring/platforming. They need to make some big leaps forward if they make another one though.