When comparing Shadow of the Tomb Raider vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” NieR: Automata is ranked 43rd while Shadow of the Tomb Raider is ranked 125th. The most important reason people chose NieR: Automata is:
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Realistic stealth gameplay where you get to stalk and hunt through the shadows
Shadow of the Tomb Raider gives you a lot of ways to sneak around and hunt your enemies compared to the previous games in the trilogy. The biggest feature is getting to cover yourself with mud as camouflage to hide in the bushes. Sneaking from bush to bush and planning out your attacks is intense, since you have so many options of hiding in this bush or that shadow as you stalk your targets. Getting the drop on your target is satisfying, especially when you kill someone and disappear right back into the bushes before anyone spots you. It's some of the best stealth gameplay around because of how real it feels.
Pro Aggressive third-person shooting and melee combat
The combat in Shadow of the Tomb Raider shows more of Lara's raw and aggressive fighting this time around. Shooting with guns or arrows feels satisfying with plenty of feedback, especially the hard kick from the game's many different shotguns. The enemy AI is active without feeling cheap, keeping you moving from place to place as you take down everyone in your path. If you choose to be more predatory before jumping in with melee combat, Lara has some really bloody and brutal kill animations with a huge knife. Combat is fast-paced and fun, constantly keeping you on your toes.
Pro Lots of opportunities to explore the world and solve challenging puzzles
Compared to the first two games, Shadow of the Tomb Raider gives you way more chances to roam around the environments and solve some great puzzles in various tombs. The lush forests are perfect for exploring at your own pace, climbing around and taking in the beautiful view of the world. There's a lively hub city filled with plenty of people, with markets for you to barter at and NPCs to talk to in order to learn more about the history of the location. And solving puzzles inside of tombs is a welcome challenge, rewarding you with unique gear and loot that's absolutely worth going after. If you don't want to spend most of your time fighting enemies, you have plenty of freedom to skip that and take your time to look around and soak in the world instead.
Pro Great cinematic cutscenes
Like the first two rebooted Tomb Raider games, the overall presentation of the plot in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is gripping in how cinematic it is. Some of the set pieces are wild, like Lara wrestling with deadly marine life in the water and managing to break free and survive. The way she thinks herself out of tough situations is also impressive, such as with the way the camera follows her with closeups as she wriggles her way out of traps or takes down enemies who seemingly have the upper hand over her. The direction and acting are similar to those in action movies, telling a grand and intense story.
Pro Fast-paced, action-packed combat
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Pro Unique storytelling with a real emotional impact
NieR: Automata's outlook on storytelling is incredibly special. To get the full experience, you have to run multiple playthroughs of the game, each of which offers a new experience and perspective. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight.
Things take a real turn on your third playthrough, putting you on an emotional roller coaster all the way to the true ending. The plot twists and knocks on the fourth wall elevate the story to a truly unique place. Getting all the way to the very end can be a religious experience from how much heart and meaning you discover in the symbolism.
Pro It's got a hauntingly beautiful environment
NieR: Automata is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape after Earth has been overrun by hostile machines, and the artists really nailed what that would feel like. Abandoned and overgrown cities litter the landscape along with old refineries, graveyards, and eerie forests. When you add the beautiful soundtrack to the experience, it fills you with a bittersweet mix of loneliness and hope.
Pro Varied genre-spanning gameplay elements
NieR: Automata has different types of gameplay to keep things interesting. From the very start, you're on an on-rails bullet hell section, and then you switch over to the more traditional action RPG style of fast-paced combat. Things change up again not long after with some side-scrolling platforming from a 2D view. Later on in the story, there's a hacking mini-game where you navigate a tiny ship through a short puzzle, with the music changing to a charming retro sound to fit the theme and mood. This is a game that doesn't stay boxed in a single genre.
Pro An incredible amount of content
Outside of the main story, there's plenty of optional content to dive into. The side quests are the best way to get to know the characters and lore of the world, with some of them giving clever and subtle foreshadowing of the game's most critical events. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. And after reaching a certain point in the story, you get access to Chapter Select that lets you go back and replay whatever you want. You can easily spend 60+ hours exploring the world and still have much more to do.
Pro Gorgeous, ethereal soundtrack with amazing vocals
NieR: Automata's music is out of this world. It's so stunning and elegant in a way that nothing else can really live up to. The soundtrack manages to emotionalize the game through music, from the action-packed tracks with hard-hitting wind instruments and percussion, to the softer, somber songs that encapsulate the hauntingly beautiful environments and story moments you encounter. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. This soundtrack is definitely one that you can go back to again and again without getting sick of it.
Cons
Con Bland story
The story in Shadow of the Tomb Raider is just okay. There are some exciting action scenes and impressive setpieces, which is great. It's more that the writing is too boring and safe. The plot picks up two months after where Rise of the Tomb Raider left off, with Lara trying to stop an apocalypse that her main nemesis wants to bring about. There are a few interesting ideas here, like showing a darker side to Lara in how far she's willing to go to do the right thing, even if it means turning into her enemy. Sadly, the writers didn't do enough with this concept, since the rest of the narrative is standard and uninspiring. It's too bad, because this plot had plenty of potential to show off a lot more.
Con The gameplay hasn't changed much from the first two games
If you've played Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider, then you might find that this one is way too similar. Aside from the neat changes to stealth and melee combat, too much stays the same. The same story beats, the same feel to the gameplay, and basically going through the same motions as the first two games. It just feels like the devs didn't innovate nearly enough for this big finale to the trilogy, keeping things safe and familiar without taking meaningful risks.
Con Limited open world
Even though NieR: Automata is technically an open world game, it doesn't always feel like it. It's more that there's a big open space in the center of the ruined city you explore, with branches that lead off to vastly different environments, like a desert, a village, and a few other places. These locations aren't that spacious, either, and it's a bit of a stretch to even imagine all of these places being so close together in the first place. It's not too much of an issue as long as you find the story and combat engaging enough.
Con Second playthrough can get repetitive
Once you get to Route B, your second playthrough, you may find that too much is the same. There are some big differences, such as the new way you get to see things play out, but a lot of it rehashes Route A, your first playthrough. There's a ton of hacking you have to do as well, which gets pretty boring after repeating it over and over again. But if you stick with it, Route C and onward are absolutely worth the time spent getting to that point.
Con Some boring fetch quests
The pacing gets messed up when you're forced to run certain fetch quests near the start of the game. This is somewhat forgivable after the fun and action-packed introductory level, but the quests themselves are still a drag to play through. Some of the side quests can also boil down to the same thing. Even though these quests give a lot of useful information about the world, they're not all that fulfilling, and you may dread having to repeat them when playing through the game again.
Con Buggy on PC
Some players complain about the game crashing, freezing, their save files mysteriously disappearing, and more. As of June 2018, over a year after the game's initial release, there is still no patch to fix these problems. Not everyone on PC will have these bugs, but it's still quite prevalent. If you continually run into issues, your best bet is to find a mod or play the console versions instead of waiting on an official patch that may never happen.