My heart is breaking for this game and for the people who worked on this. It has suffered from corporate greed and it killed classic era of Tomb Raider and almost killed whole franchise in general. While it was noticeable in Tomb Raider Chronicles that developers were tired of pushing Tomb Raider releases on yearly basis, this game was the final headshot for killing classic Lara Croft.
While first 5 games were made on the same engine and could at least build upon previous games, this one was build for whole new platform at the time, PlayStation 2, and thus they made this on whole different engine, adding a lot of extra work for alrady ambitious idea of a game. The result is very tragic.

I will first start with positive aspects of the game. I do enjoy Lara's sassiness and attitude in this game. Character model is brilliant. Jonell Elliott did fantastic job in bringing Lara to life. The whole atmosphere of the game is cool and I liked some locations. New Lara's moves, such as proper stealth and commando crawl were fine additions. But that unfortunately ends here from positive aspect of things.

While the story of previous Tomb Raider games were never the selling point, it definitely was not for me in this one. The game has 2 major locations where the events take place - Paris and Prague. Pacing was very off, especially because of Paris and beginning of it. While in the previous Tomb Raider games Lara was into tomb raiding action right from the getgo, here she is busy avoiding police and talking to parisians. Having an option to talk to NPCs and beign able to choose dialogue options was interesting to see in Tomb Raider game, but that first Paris section was way longer than it needed to be. She gets into her gear and is ready for action only about 2 hours into the game, if you are playing on normal pace and know what to do. And when you finally get to do what Lara Croft usually does, it is mostly disappointing.

Puzzles are lackluster, locations are bland and unfinished, such as Louvre Museum. There is no point of stealth mechanic if guards do not care if you get spotted. They will only attack and will never sound alarm or call for backup to punish player for not being stealthy. Cameras can spot you and all they do is summon 1 guard that can be easily defeated and will not repeat this process afterwards. Laser room was more punishing, by summoning a guard and locking the next area you need to go to and making you to progress through the room from the beginning. That would be interesting, if it was not so easily avoidable by relaoding your save before laser touches you. I did enjoy Bio-Research Facility's garden area and sea monster area, but wish they were fleshed out more. Rest of locations are not that memorable.

Enemy variety is very basic. Humans, skeletons and mutants. They do not bring anything interesting to the gameplay, especially when battle controls are terrible. Bosses are quite lackluster. Few of them do not indicate whether you are hurting them or not, and another boss requires player to switch targets on its weak spot, which also does not indicate the player whether it is getting damaged or not until it is damaged completely. Adding to target switching problem is that the game does not teach you how to do it. Supposedly "switch target" button is the same as your roll button and you will not swith targets with that, you will always roll. All you can do is trial and error until you get the boss down. Attacks are hard to avoid with all the clunkiness as well.

While tank controls made sense for grid based system in Tomb Raider 1-5, Angel of Darkness is not made on grid based system and adding them here in this state is wild. They are very unresponsive, both for platforming, climbing and fighting. Swimming felt fine in my opinion, but it is annoying when jumping into the water the camera jumps up. In battles you do not have that much flow of the movement as it was in previous games, here it feels very clunky. When climbing, Lara would just randomly stop and you need to press your buttons again. Lara cannot climb pushable objects anymore like she could previously. Now she needs to do precise jumps to get onto them and it is not as easy as it was on grid based system. She either makes jumps too far away or does not jump far enough. It gets even more terrible when the game has stamina system, and I am not talking about running like it was in Tomb Raider 3, 4 and 5.

Introducing arbitrary leveling up system was not a good idea. Lara cannot grab a ledge for too long or push heavy objects anymore because she is not strong enough. If you need to kick some door, shimmy aross the ledge or make a bit bigger jump, Lara will not do it until you will move a block elsewhere, or open a door some place else, anything like that. It will allow her to advance her abilities and do stuff that she always could do in previous games. The reason why Lara is weak and recovers throghout the game is explained in cut content.

Angel of Darkness has cut so much from what it was intended to have. Official release does not have proper explanation why Lara is weak and how did she survive after Tomb Raider The Last Revelation, Lara's iconic dual pistols are missing, training area to figure out controls better is absent. And there is so much more that is missing. Angel of Darkness was intended to be a first game in new trilogy, and that did not happen.

Cutting so much intended content and making half-baked game also gave so many bugs. Lara getting stuck in infinite loop in a conversation with NPC by repeating the same dialogue over and over again with no means to stop it, and soft locking your progress by not allowing Lara to open doors with appropriate keys just because a cutscene did not play and bugged out.

I played this game with Restoration mod, with some cut content restored and with some quality of life improvements. I do not even want to know how actually broken is the official PC port for this. It is very sad. I really wanted to love this game, I like the vibe of it. The game is beatable and in a way playable, but it is very broken and very unfinished. I unfortunately cannot recommend this game to anyone who is not hardcore fan of classic Tomb Raider era and unless you are interested to see what caused the downfall of classic iteration of Lara Croft.

We can only hope that Tomb Raider 4-5-6 Remastered will make things better and will be able to give this game justice after 20+ years of being a piece of clunk. It deserves being a proper game. We will just have to see.

Rating: 2/5

Overall Rating: 2/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 6.7/10
Story: 10/10
Music and Sound: 9/10
Personal enjoyment: 5/10

Sorry Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, I wanted to love you, but your great story alone won't be enough to save you. This game was highly anticipated back then as the next big adventure for Lara Croft, but it unfortunately fell short of expectations. While the game's storyline is brilliantly written, and the atmosphere and art direction are undeniably impressive, these positives are overshadowed by a myriad of issues that hinder the overall gaming experience. I remember playing this one as a kid and I did enjoy it despite not making it far, but playing it now, I realize just how many issues it has that sadly prevent it from being a good game.

The game's controls are, quite frankly, horrendous. Navigating Lara through the game feels more like a chore than an adventure, it's sluggish, and Lara is very unresponsive at times, meaning that more often than not you will find yourself jumping off a ledge or unable to line yourself up to a door to make it open. and the camera system only adds to the frustration! It never shows you what it needs to, and during the combat the camera starts moving around frantically so its nearly impossible to work with. It’s as though the camera has a mind of its own, often leading to disorienting and awkward gameplay moments.

Additionally, the game is plagued by a significant number of bugs and glitches, I mean ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this is practically a terrarium for bugs! This multitude of technical issues can seriously detract from immersion, making it difficult for any player to stay engaged. Problems with Lara's animations, enemy AI being messed up, weird ragdoll glitches, and the list can go on and on. Moreover, the presence of cut content and missing textures only further detracts from the game's potential, there are a lot of objects you can pick up throughout the game that serve zero purpose down the road (For example Werner's staff or a random dude's gold watch, these stayed with me all the way until the end cutscene, why the ♥♥♥♥ do I need them?) or for example, cash, which was supposed to let you buy upgrades for your weapons but was another features that was cut from the game which means the cash features is essentially pointless.

The one thing I can say for a fact is that what the game excels in, it excels in it really well. The story is by far the best written story in the classic games, if not the entire franchise! From beginning to end this is a story that undoubtedly captivates players and was meant to kickstart a brand new trilogy for miss Croft, but as we know, that never came into fruition. I also enjoyed the ability to have multiple dialogue options during conversation, and also the fact that there's multiple routes to be able to complete certain tasks, like getting the box for either Bernard or Pierre, or depending on if you're nice or rude to Madame Carvier, she either gives you the notebook, or you will have to search for it yourself.

I know this game is a cult classic amongst the Tomb Raider community, and believe me I wanted to like Angel of Darkness flaws and all, but said flaws are far, far too big to be ignored and they hindered so much of the experience, the bugs and glitches in particular ruin so much of the game for me to the point where it's unplayable, in fact, "Unplayable" is the perfect word to describe this game, as the only way you can truly play this game in my opinion is with the usage of mods. I highly suggest waiting for the new IV-V-VI Remastered collection coming this February as this version of the game is unplayable and a chore to get through, do not recommend.

Arguably, Lara's greatest adventure, which was overshadowed by an unfinished mess. I have very fond memories of me playing this game from when I was a kid, and although flawed due to its unfinished state, the good outweighs the bad. The lore-rich story based on gothic mythology, the immersive atmosphere and the amazingly orchestrated soundtrack by Peter Connelly, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, always have me on the edge of my seat. Hearing Lara reading about the Black Alchemist, the Lux Veritatis and the Cabal at Von Croy's apartment always gives me chills. The Sanitarium, Maximum Containment Area and Boaz Returns used to give me nightmares back then. Angel of Darkness was this franchise's horror game, and I love it! Murti Schofield, the writer for this game, is the reason there is a cult following to this day, thanks to the thought and care he put into this detailed and complex story. Personally, I feel like our beloved classic anti-hero peaked as a character during her final appearance, and this game still has the most lore-rich and carefully thought-out story in the franchise. I'm sure this would be considered the best Tomb Raider if it wasn't released in an incomplete state with cut content. The fact that we will never see this game reach its full potential is bittersweet.

END OF REVIEW. I FEEL STRONGER NOW.