Rise of the Tomb Raider

Overall

Rise of the Tomb Raider™ Review

Pros:

• Visually stunning
• Heavily story based
• Features a realistic and young Lara Croft, it’s her origin story so it’s showing what is making her the seasoned explorer that most know her as
• Don’t need to have previous Tomb Raider experience
• Much more intuitive controls
• Relatively easy to run
• Something appealing to most people: collectables, combat, climbing, exploration, puzzles, lore/notes, little secret challenges, moderately open world, lots of different environments throughout the games
• The upgrade and skill tree aspects are very fun and rewarding → lets you tailor the game a bit to the weapons and play style you prefer

Cons:

• Much less focus on puzzle solving, the actual ‘tomb raiding’ is sort of an extra in the rebooted games (they’re actually called ‘optional treasure tombs’ or something), you can play the entire games only having done the 1 puzzle at the start of the games that it used as a tutorial/introduction to how tombs work
• Related to above: The puzzles in the tombs are very simple, I spent much, much less time solving the new Tomb Raider puzzles than the old ones
• The combat is fun but fairly easy, there are of course different difficulty settings though so this isn’t such a bad con :)
• Sometimes it feels a bit too much like the game is in control → there are lots of action sequences with quick time events and very restrictive camera angles (the camera isn’t free rotating in parts, it’s controlled to show the scenic parts of the games, this is especially true during the climbing sequences) → this can be a good thing though, some people (including me) don’t mind quick time events (even if they are a little stressful)
• It’s a bit of a kill fest, there’s a LOT more random shooting in the new games than the old, it kinda feels a bit unbelievable that one young woman is slaughtering hundreds of other people. The ability to progress without killing heaps of people is limited, you can’t really choose a playstyle very well.
• Related to the last point: there isn’t much character development for Lara when she kills all these people, she doesn’t seem to show much remorse or care for the people she killed which I feel is unfitting of her character and I personally found it quite unimpressive that this caring and driven young woman is just randomly shooting up hundreds of strangers. This is more of a personal issue though, I’m sure many don’t mind this.

Old games vs. new:

> The old and new games are both fantastic, it really just comes down to what you’re looking for. If you want more relaxed puzzle solving go for the old games, if you want a bit more action, gorgeous graphics, and some oddly interesting story lines go for the new games !

“Another Croft doesn’t have to die for this.”

Rise of the Tomb Raider

85% Personal Rating

I have mixed feelings about this game...

I just had way more fun with the previous title..

When you enter the world of Rise of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft is back again, and she's brought her bow.

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