Austrobogulator: Some of them can get pretty egregious. I would actually disagree with Leroux, they aren't really that rare - there are QTEs during scripted sections; however, there are also QTEs during combat and in order to pry open chests and doors you need to do a fair amount of button mashing.
I will agree with Leroux though in saying that the game is definitely worth playing despite the QTEs and extremely linear sections.
dirtyharry50: Well that's kind of a drag but I thank you for telling me. For all the good things I've heard I would like to try it but maybe I will just wait for a good sale price so I don't feel too bad if I wind up not liking it too much. I guess sometimes you just cannot know until you dive in yourself.
Well, it depends on your definition of QTEs. Of course, strictly speaking, Austrobogulator is right, but I kind of made a distinction there between the tolerable or hardly noticeable button pressing integrated in the gameplay and the random "Press button now or lose" QTEs.
If e.g. you make a bad jump and Lara doesn't get a firm grip, but you can save her by pressing E in time, than that's a QTE I don't mind at all. I think it's preferable to games where you'd fall to your death right away. Repeatedly pressing E to pry open a door might not be the most enjoyable gameplay element, but I don't perceive it as distracting either and certainly not worse than opening chests in Gothic. I can accept that it's simulating the effort it takes Lara to open that thing. It's not hard, it doesn't take long and I can always interrupt it whenever I want. Then there's the possibility to finish enemies off quickly in melee by pressing Q under certain circumstances, but I didn't make use of that very often and I also don't see a big difference between that and timing your jump by pressing Space when you're close to the edge or something. It's all still integrated in fluent gameplay that you as the player have control over.
The QTEs I don't like are when there's a cutscene and during the cutscene you suddenly have to press or mash random buttons and if you fail, the cutscene starts from the beginning, because that's hardly what I'd call gameplay and it doesn't feel like you're really in control of your character. It's just a game of Simon Says, and if you don't have quick reflexes, it's still not that challenging, because you can just learn the sequence by heart. But it's freaking annoying to watch the cutscene over and over again and try to do what Simon says. Because that doesn't make the scene more dramatic and exiting, but on the contrary more aggravating and tedious. That's the kind of QTEs I was talking about, and that happens very very rarely during the whole game. And when it happens, it's only two or three buttons you need to press and after that you can continue with the game. It's nothing like the stupid QTEs in Fahrenheit, for example. Before I played TR, I was sceptical about the QTEs, too, I'm not a fan of these mechanics either, but I still had lots of fun with the game and I hardly ever got annoyed.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game isn't using that many buttons, compared to previous Tomb Raider games, which is another reason why I liked the platforming and controls in this one better. And I believe even the bad kind of QTEs are only using Q and E mostly, and those are the ones you also use during regular gameplay all the time, so you won't have to search your keyboard for the right buttons to press. The QTEs aren't really meant to be a challenge either, they won't obstruct you in continueing with the game.