This is a tough one, as these are very good remasters of fairly mediocre games. That lovely mix of platforming, puzzles and action still feels excellent, but you can feel the formula fatiguing throughout each title. Tomb Raider 4 & 5 adheres far too rigidly to the original trilogy. Angel of Darkness reinvents the series, but suffers from an unsteady development, and abandoning the strongest aspects of prior titles.

I don’t want to undersell the excellent care that's gone into these remasters. Aspyr has done an incredible job tweaking these games for modern audiences, without compromising their original feel. They’ve gone the extra mile with Angel of Darkness, fixing the game's technical issues and restoring unfinished content. But a fresh coat of paint, no matter how excellent, cannot fix the core of these games.

I enjoy these titles, but it's hard to justify their value outside of fans who want to revisit these classics, or just really want more Tomb Raider. Nearly every level in 4 and 5 falls short of the variety found in the first three games. While the sixth game features neat ideas, the attempt at modernising Tomb Raider is outclassed by the fantastical parkour and flashy action of the Legend trilogy. Each title still gets the essence of Tomb Raider right, there's just a lot more issues this time around.

Read the full review here [checkpointgaming.net]

Final Fantasy XVI deviates heavily from previous games by embracing a low fantasy setting & real time action combat. Both are mostly relatively unexplored territory for the series and have been quite divisive. There's plenty to love in the gameplay and story, but there are a lot of broader design decisions that hold the game back from being one of the series’ best.

FF16 is worth full price, although your mileage may vary. The DLCs aren’t essential, you might be better off waiting for a sale.

Combat both looks and feels great. Clive cleaves through enemies swiftly, and chains awesome magical abilities together effortlessly. The ever growing arsenal of abilities makes the combat so fun and varied. Every eikon brings a new style of play, and the build variety that comes from mixing various abilities together is incredible. You’re bound to find something that suits you, but I loved being able to change my powers as much as I wanted.

The best battles in the game are undoubtedly against the monolithic eikons. Although their gameplay is more simplified, the spectacle of taking on these elemental giants is so captivating. Their tremendous visuals and breathtaking music are perfect climaxes to story arcs, I just wish there were a few more of these battles.

Normal bosses are still very fun, particularly against dominants that turn the arena into a frenzy of hazardous spells. The giant monsters were also cool, although these battles would occasionally feel like repetitive punching bags, especially in sidequests.

Despite my endless praise, FF16’s combat is frustratingly simple. Clive has all these cool abilities, but most enemies pressure the player or use smart tactics, they cannot counter an offensive player. With hard mode locked behind a second playthrough, the lack of enemy variety becomes such a burden in the latter half of the game, making normal battles tedious when you aren’t testing out new powers.

FF16’s visual beauty isn’t just in combat, but also its gorgeous environments. Every level is filled with details as you see a variety of rich locales across Valisthea. The loading screen renditions of the major cities are just so stunning, and the amazing soundtrack brings these locations to life while perfectly reflecting the story's tone.

I just wish more of these locations were freely explorable, you spend brief moments in these beautiful cities only to be whisked away into combat hallways far too quickly. The actual open areas are quite barren in comparison. The game dissuades exploration in general, There are no secrets or useful items to find and the settlements you do explore are quite small, and don’t contain much aside from merchants and sidequests.

The RPG elements are also annoyingly restrictive. Gear progression is so uninteresting and straightforward that it may as well not be there. Side quests, while sometimes expanding the story in interesting ways, mostly feel like unenjoyable fetch quests or checkbox tasks that aren’t unique or memorable.

These are baffling choices, and where FF16 clearly fails to live up to the series the most. While mechanics such as the ability system can partially substitute for gear, there is a notable lack of RPG feel as FF16 juggles being an Action game and an RPG, failing to fulfil the expectations of either.

Like many aspects of FF16, the main narrative diverges heavily from series traditions, but that doesn’t stop it from being incredibly captivating. The story is carried by our protagonist., Clive is one of the series’ best leads, the strong focus on one main character results in a fully fleshed out main hero, and Ben Starr’s stern but emotional performance is legendary.

The supporting characters, major and minor, are all highly memorable and develop enjoyable relationships with Clive. There are a couple major characters that unfortunately feel very undeveloped and end up being thorns in the story that should’ve been expanded further

The main narrative is quite intriguing and I liked how it twisted and developed. In series tradition, it starts getting unnecessarily complicated in the last third or so, and sometimes characters commit to big decisions or beat you over the head with simplistic messaging (did you slavery is bad?), but it's still an enjoyable and exciting journey.

I love the focus on political drama, the world is so thoroughly fleshed out with details on every major faction. I was enveloped in reading about Valisthea’s history, but the ability to bring up relevant information mid cutscene is a revolutionary feature that stops the player from getting lost, and should be in every big RPG like this.

The crucial flaw of FF16’s story which bleeds into its gameplay, is its horrendous pacing. Much like FF14, the story will build up to a climactic moment, the follow with far too much down time. This wasn’t great in an MMO but it's terrible here, the story will slow to a halt after major moments and often take far too long to pick back up, sometimes even forcing you to do tedious side quests.

As a result this game is simply far too long, and even the great combat begins to wear thin in the games final hours. You could easily chop a fair chunk of this story out or retool it heavily for a tighter adventure, but the game's notoriously slow pacing makes me hesitant to ever do a full story mode replay.

The DLCs suffer heavily from only being accessible after completing almost all of the main story and a large chunk of side quests. The game has truly run out of steam at this point, and the DLCs are too similar to the base game to counter this issue.

Echoes of the Fallen is a short dungeon wrapping in a dull story that fails to innovate on the base game. However, the gear is significantly more interesting and the final boss is one of the games best (and most challenging!).

The Rising Tide is a much stronger package. It houses new locations, boss fights, sidequests, an eikon power and more! Mysidia is one of the most beautiful locations in an already beautiful game and the story was quite good. Still, I wouldn’t say this is an essential purchase that completes the game, it's just a nice cherry on top.

FF16 is a good action game and a GREAT Final Fantasy and it's well worth playing if you’re a fan of the genre, or the series. While I do hope future titles borrow from the older games more, the unique strengths of FF16 are so great that they outweigh its flaws, even if those flaws are many.