Rise of the Tomb Raider Review

This sure takes me back. I remember enjoying the 2013 Tomb Raider so much at the time that when I heard it had timed exclusivity on Xbox, I was really annoyed. I eventually did play for the first time on Steam and would so again on PS4. I recently finished the 2013 game for the 3rd time, I might as well follow it up with a 3rd playthrough of Rise. As a whole the gameplay is mostly refined and improved but the story while not terrible does bring in the arc fatigue that the Survivor Trilogy is infamous for.

The story is where I feel Rise takes two steps forwards and two steps back. Two steps forward in that Lara in this game does feel like she has gained experience since her last adventure and acts smarter more resourceful now. Two examples is when Konstantin shows up at the end of the 2nd level, Lara decides to hide and then eventually steal his explosives. Another example is letting Jaccob out of his cell when she could've chosen to let him stay there. The audio logs and guard conversations do a good job at fleshing the guards and the main antagonists too. Lara's monologues at the campfires after a story milestone also does a solid job at giving an idea at what she's thinking and feeling at the current moment.

On paper, I do like the idea of Lara becoming more and more obessive and crazy like her father and the idea of long buried secrets should stay that way.

There's the two steps back in that Rise introduces a bizarre overarching story arc where Lara is up against a secret organization known as Trinity which just felt like a continuation for the sake of it. A guard conversation even says that they were even connected to the island incident in the 2013 reboot and that is the kind of sequel retconning I've come to strongly dislike since now apparently, Trinity was connected to was supposed to be an isolated incident.

Jonah also leaves for a while then comes back.

The game's ending has Lara learns the same lesson she did from the last game in that she accepts the overly obessive and negectful antics of her father and moves on. This is unfortunately the arc fatigue that carries over to the next game.

In terms of gameplay, traversal has mostly remained the same. It's still automated with everything Lara can climb being magnetized to anything the game deems fit. There are issues in that this time around I did encounter a few instances where it felt like the grabs Lara did on hand holds should've registered but they didn't. Everyone's milage will vary regarding this however.

You do get some cool new abilties this time around like the ability to use a rope to grab a nearby ledge, using your bow to swing across, or using compact arrows to climb on new footholds. They do make the myriads of scripted set pieces exciting this time around.

Puzzles are requires more steps this time around two examples smashing two bars to open a big locked door or burning two wooden areas holding up a statue to create a bridge to get across.

The major improvement in Rise is to some degree the stealth and especially the combat. With the former there is more of a timing window before guards can spot you. Guards will also start suspecting things the player does in the game world instead of detecting the player right away. You can also use bottles to distract and use gas arrows to knock out multiple guards. The AI still isn't amazing since you can spotted out of nowhere with a white arrow popping up right after a player is spotted rather than having it slowly fill up.

With combat, you can do quick heals through bandages. There's also creating smoke bombs and molotov cocktails. You can customize the way you approach fights more with the different weapon loadouts like having a rifle that does high damage but needs to have the shot reload after firing and an auto shotgun that's really satisfying to fire at enemies with but chews through ammo. You can also use explosive arrows and these are so fun to use.

As a result, Rise's combat has a lot of moment to moment decision making. Take care of enemies at long range then worry about them coming up close. Use some molotovs to get quick kills to conserve ammo, use smoke smoke bombs on occasion to get quick melee kills if cans or bottles or nearby. Use explosive arrows to get quick kills. Upgrade the dodging QTE windows to do a perfect dodge and get a quick kill on a nearby enemy.

Combine this with the bandage system where the need to wait for the health to regen is gone and eventually bumped up combat to Season Raider. Due to this, I have to use bandages more often in combat since on normal I would just ignore this system entirely.

The only big massive problem with I can say is that the final one on one encouter again Konstantin can be cheesed pretty epicly with the crafted smoke bombs even on Seasoned Raider.

Overall, in spite of questionable story decisions here and there and the aforementioned arc fatigue, the gameplay in Rise is improvement over the 2013 Tomb Raider.