Lara Croft is back in the finale of Square Enix’s trilogy of the rebooted franchise. Following the adventures of a rookie Lara from the new origins storyline, she finds herself against a race in time against paramilitary group Trinity as they travel to the legendary city of Paititi to stop the Mayan apocalypse she caused.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a 2018 action-adventure game, it is developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix. it is currently available on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

Editor’s Note: This review contains near complete to complete spoilers for Shadow of the Tomb Raider. An Amazon Affiliates link for this title is included within this review.

Eidos gives Lara Croft’s story one last go round.

After relaunching the Tomb Raider franchise to rave reviews in 2013 Square Enix successfully brought fan favorite character Lara Croft back into the spotlight. The original 2013 entry and 2015 follow-up “Rise” retells the origins of Croft and her many, often supernatural adventures across the globe. In the 2018 sequel “Shadow”, Lara must contend with the evil Trinity group to stop a Mayan apocalypse she’s responsible for.

As she continues to face increasingly dangerous difficulties, Lara becomes much more brazen in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

THE GOOD: Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a lot like the previous titles from a gameplay mechanics standard. You have your bows, guns, crafted, material gathering, etc, etc. Most of what you did in Rise of the Tomb Raider is pretty much present here as well. The story is a bit darker than the previous installments, going deeper into Tomb Raider’s supernatural ties with the Mayan connection. The relationship building between Lara and her long time companion Jonah Maiava is excellently produced throughout the game. They laugh and joke around with each other, but Jonah is never afraid to call out Lara when he feels she’s gone too far. He even flat out blames her for their current predicament. I actually found myself enjoying Jonah more as a character compared to Lara due to his being open to telling her about how she’s doing things wrong or when he doesn’t agree with her methods.

Jonah’s character building is one of the most enjoyable things about Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

THE BAD: The core issue with Shadow of the Tomb Raider is that it often feels too much of the same. While on paper this may not seem like such a big deal, but when you consider just how different the original and Rise of the Tomb Raider are from one another it becomes a bit of a noticeable problem throughout “Shadow”‘s run. However we do at the very least get some development on Lara’s character and personality.

While not the best entry, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is far from the worst of the long-running franchise.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Shadow of the Tomb Raider is fine for what it is; a finale to the rebooted story of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Unfortunately, things do tend to be a little bit too much of the same, which is a shame considering the last entries which preceded it evolved so far from each other. Because of this I think Shadow of the Tomb Raider is best enjoyed in small doses and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially when your biggest issue isn’t a lack of quality, but a lack of innovation in gameplay. The story itself is well enough to end the current storyline on with hints of a second trilogy coming eventually.