I enjoyed the first Tomb Raider of the reboot series shockingly more than I thought I would. A few years later then played the sequel and wrote a big letter of complains in a review. Maybe I was a bit overly negative because of some frustrations, but overall it was boring, bloated. Skills weren't interesting or any game changing, collectibles were annoying but needed and part of the gameplay. There wasn't even interesting enemies, they were the same all over again.

It started fun, but overall was the same again and again, without interesting story parts, and always climbing and climbing. There was no challenge I liked to do. Too many checkpoints and all the hints what to do next if I get stuck just a little bit took any tension and challenge from the game. Especially the third half of game was a huge time waste. The "Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch"-DLC was actually pretty good.

And then after finishing it, the cliffhanger at the end... man that was frustrating ending without answering the questions.

Absolutely. And particularly it was is "batches" especially as you get to Shadow.

Collecting stuff as you go along playing is fine (I mean, I'd argue not because it's lazy game making but its normal). But going along and hitting a village that has 50 side quests in it just interrupts flow.

Plus, they made nested fetch quests so I felt trapped in a loop. OK I'll just do this one quest..."hey, now that I see that you are good at fetching arbitrary items, I want you to go get this for me too"