In many ways, Tomb Raider 2 represents a quantum leap forward for the series, and it's the title that cemented Lara Croft as an icon of pop culture. The first one build a foundation of glob trotting adventures, the sequel erected a monument. A quickly glued together monument as I soon found out. A monument that manages to amaze you but dont look too close or it will clearly show its many cracks due to a blazingly fast dev cycle. With design decisions that lead me to absolute controller snapping frustration at times. I was still determind to see it through to the end, be it do to my new found love for the first game or my general couristy for retro games. And as much as TR2 turned out to be a very cruel mistress, I wanted to see for myself why so many fans see this as the peak of the series.

Tomb Raider 2 starring Lara Croft has you follow the British adventurer to the Great Wall of China, where she hopes to uncover a mystical Chinese dagger. Upon finishing the first level, we are treated with a similar cutscene to the end of the first game's stage. Lara is ambushed by a henchman, and we get a brief exchange explaining what the goal of the rest of the game is going to be. Turns out theirs a Venetian cult after the Dagger as well, led by a man named MARCO BARTOLI! So the race is on to find the artifact before they do. The story is more fleshed out than before, but not by much in my opinion. There is more of a through line for the levels, but by the end Core Design have made it clear that this is only a vehicle to drive the exploration. You are here for the badass Girl on the cover and her no fucks given attitude. You bought the game to explore spectacular locations and shoot bad guys, and that's what your getting.

And spectacular locations they are indeed. Tomb Raider 2 tops the first game in big ways. From the Great Wall of China in the opening to giant underwater ship wrecks, the leap in quality is honestly incredible. The latter being my absolute favorite level in the game. Many people may pick Venice or the Temple of Xia as their number one but for me, it's the Maria Doria. Swim to the bottom of the ocean and enter an upside down wreck of a cruise liner ? Get out of here, that's too good. It represents the absolute gold standard Core Design can achieve with excellent level design. They really have managed to strike a great balance of linear levels and sprawling key hunts the player can just get lost in. Other highlights include the entire set of Venice stages, the Barkhang Monastery and the mad gauntlet when returning to the Temple of Xia. The atmosphere once again kills across all the levels. The finale in the Temple of Xia is especially strong, and it also represents the perfect segway to talk about the best and worst aspects of the gameplay.

There has been an overall increase in difficulty, and it expects much more from the player in terms of knowing Lara's improved move set. Croft Manor has therefore been greatly expanded. There are better opportunitys to test your skills in high stress situations with additions like the new assault course, and the manors many new secrets. I highly recommend you not skip this tutorial stage, not only because it will help teach you the controls, but also because it's a tone of fun. Don't forget to lock the butler in the freezer. Going into the actual levels though, as much as I applaud the new movement options, midair roll and all, the level design often seems to utterly hate you. There are many, many instances of traps you can't possibly see coming unless you died to them at least once. A specific slide in Offshore Rig comes to mind. Where Lara will slide straight into a spike trap unless the player knows to slide down the exact right way the designers intended and grab the ledge. Your ability to tolerate the many similar situations in almost every level is what will make or break the game for a lot of people in my opinion. I can also extend that olive branch of shit to the less than stellar vehicle segments. The boat in Venice was a neat idea, but I have to give a big shout-out to the fkn snowmobile in Tibetan Foothills. A seemingly weightless snowmobile made out of paper and fueled with dynamite that loves to send you speeding off cliffs when you just want Lara to go in a straight line. Hope you saved a lot. Tibetan Foothills is by far the worst stage in the game, and it even manages to be the shining lowpoint for another bad aspect of TR2: The combat. Combat needed serious improvements, Combat has in fact seen no improvements. Pretty much all it comes down to is that they increased to amount of enemies present in each stage aswell as how much ammo they tank. You do have more weapons now, like the M16 and Grenade Launcher, but that doesn't help when litteral armies of angry Italian men, various wildlife and ancient Chinese warriors have it out for you. You will see many familiar scenes of Lara being pushed into corners, riddled with bullets and getting speared to death followed by reloading. Hope you saved a lot.

Even all that controller snapping frustration, I still came away loving the game more than the original by the time I reached the surprisingly cheeky ending. Maybe I contracted a sever case of stockholm syndrome but I think it once again speaks volumes about Core Designs masterful ability to make absolutely engrossing levels, a compelling main character and a journey that clearly showed me why Lara's fan base has stayed so loyal to her. Tomb Raider 2 kept me deeply hooked like no other game and while I'm still going to take a break from the series for a bit, I can not wait to return and see what Tomb Raider 3 has in store for me.

Tomb Raider II is a step up from the first game in terms of level design and pacing, but the untouched combat somehow got even slightly worse.

The game starts off in familiar territory, ancient ruins that contain your fair share of Tombs, but what blindsided us back in the day was now we are also going to populated city levels such as Venice. TR2 has such a nice variety of locations that the pacing feels right, and you're in the same type of underground environments for the entire game, which keeps the game feeling refreshing.

The levels are much better designed too. They feel more like Zelda dungeons than a hodgepodge of rooms with switches. This time levels can feel pretty long, but at no point did I ever feel like I was stuck or did not know what to do next. I was always running to my next objective.

One of the worst things about the first game, which almost ruined for me was the combat, which remains untouched here. The problem here now is that you are fighting humans as the majority enemy, which isn't fun since they are all bulletspoge hitscanning enemies. The worst kind of enemies in anygame. Especially a game where movement is not the strongest suit, hitscanning enemies made this almost a frustrating experience. Good thing the game gives you enough health packs and resources to deal with them if well managed.

I liked the direction of where the series was going with Tomb Raider II, and just like the first game, it shines when you're exploring/platforimg and solving puzzles. Unfortunetly this time around there is a lot more combat with the worst enemy type ever. However due to the great level design, I still fairly enjoyed my time with this.

Why the fuck is 50% of this game set on a fucking shipwreck? Why is there so much combat? The combat is ass. Later in the game they start putting like 6 dudes with auto aim into rooms or just have Snow Leopards spawn around corners in pairs. The controls are still jank as fuck too. The Level design is thankfully still really good. I do not get why they make you explore things that aren't tombs for half of this. TR1 had this great balance of exploration and combat, everything felt well laid out. TR2 has you doing jank ass vehicle sections while exploring mostly buildings while 45 guys show up to shoot at you. I do not get it at all.

I had a rough time with Tomb Raider II, I am not gonna lie. Mainly, my expectations and other persons nostalgia was the main reason why I felt like I was betrayed by Core Design.

Tomb Raider II seemingly loved by many, and hated by few, is considered a worthy follow up, to the legendary platformer that was the original game. I had a rough time with that one too, mainly because of the controls, but I finished that game and I had my fun at the end. Tomb Raider II however is not just a poor sequel, but a rushed one.

The second entry seemingly forgot what made the original an enjoyable experience, despite being a janky PS1 platformer. The overall atmoshpere was the reason that everyone remembers fondly to those PS1 days of raiding tombs with Lara, and while II certainly has it's own charm, the open levels and the combat filled gameplay drags it down to the mud.

The game introduces human enemies, who are either useless or terribly overpowered compared to Lara, as they have very precise aim and can kill you in seconds. Focusing on the combat was a big mistake here, as the game's combat mechanics were never good in the first place, even the original knew this and only featured small fight sequences with bats or bears.

Not only that, but the actual tomb raiding was shrinked down to feature varied locations and settings that are just not that charming. The occasional vehicle segments were appreciated, but they were not fun at all.

Core Design seemingly wanted to make an action game, but they also threw in some puzzles to make you feel like you are playing a Tomb Raider game.

Despite this, the soundtrack is still awesome and some of the charm of the original is still here. I do not think that Tomb Raider II is that good of a game, or a worthy sequel as it does not improve on the original, but to be honest, knowing the history of the franchise, this led to the eventual downfall of Core Design.

I feel like such a hypocrite playing Tomb Raider II, as all of the things I enjoyed about the first game seemed lessened, whilst the things I hated there were more of. Yet for some reason, I had so much more fun with this game than the prior.

For most of Tomb Raider II, the atmosphere of isolation and the unknown is completely missing, replaced instead with a fun variety of environments, from the canals of Venice, to the interior of an abandoned Opera House, to the wreck of a ship at the bottom of the ocean, and beyond. The level variety meant I was never bored, always finding it a thrill to explore the different environments, with a much greater variety than the slightly different shades of brown and grey you'd find in the first outing.

The platforming was equally as satisfying here, with very fun to solve puzzles in environments that weren't as tedious to explore when lost, and very creative use of the same control systems that really rewarded you experimenting with all of the movement options available to you.

In the first game, I found combat very frustrating. At first, I felt my stomach drop at the amount of human enemies this game featured - very much fearing for the worst at the new action focus. Yet for some reason, with the change in environments, I found it nowhere near as annoying as the first game. The new weapons, and increase in medkit and ammo drops meant the combat was way more fun. I still found movement during combat an issue, especially towards the end of the game, but overall, an improvement.

One noteworthy level was the Barkhang Monastery. Fighting alongside the monks and exploring the very open level was an absolute highlight for me - probably my favorite in the franchise so far.

The main criticisms of this game probably fall to the last few levels, where the fun did start to wane a little for me. I found the end level especially fairly unsatisfying, though this may just be to playing it all in a reasonably condensed amount of time.

This game has left me thoroughly excited to explore more of this franchise, and really cemented why these games have had so much staying power throughout the years.

For an entry that I didn't play all that often as a kid this turned out to be my favorite game in the series so far. Collected every secret, too! Never done that before for any of these games.

It improves upon the first game in every way possible and the level design is just impeccable, so much creativity and ambition is showcased here. The vehicle segments can be a little janky but still satisfying to pull off successfully. I also have to appreciate the secrets being more simplified for this entry, only having to find 3 of them in each level for a much bigger supply of rewards is a lot more doable and worth seeking out.

I have to comment on the visuals and soundtrack as well. The graphics and art style feels a lot more polished and have better direction overall than the first game and the soundtrack is pretty iconic. Once you hear the violins of Venice you'll never forget it.

It might be an intimidating entry for newcomers since the controls are still tough to master and the levels are incredibly huge and challenging, but once you get used to it you won't find any platformer as precise and rewarding as this one.

Tomb Raider II ditches the measured, procedural quality that made the first game special to make an action-heavy sequel, and while the results don’t compare to the first game, this is still probably the most the action-blockbuster direction for the series has ever paid off. This is a shotgun blast of a Tomb Raider game. Setting the oil rig levels and the warehouse levels aside, everything in here is cool as hell: the pseudo-James Bond cold open sequence at the Great Wall of China, the abandoned opera house, the temple full of monks in Tibet (the series’ first friendly NPCs!), the bizarre metaphysical space temple at the end – A+. Tomb Raider II isn’t the best game in the series, and it contains approximately 300% much combat as it needs, but the stuff that’s good here is really, really good.

The best sequence of levels in Tomb Raider II all center around the Maria Doria, a shipwreck lodged within a massive rock under the ocean. A clear sign that the Core Design team were into the Titanic craze surrounding the James Cameron movie, these levels set a decidedly haunting tone. I think there are four or so levels in the Maria Doria sequence, each one taking you deeper and deeper into the ship, starting Lara just outside the wreckage of the ship with nothing other than a diving suit, then progressing through the engine rooms, living quarters and into the captain’s cabin. While the original Tomb Raider went underappreciated for how vivid and dynamic some of its levels could feel, the quality of the visuals during these levels is undeniable. Once you encounter the collapsed hallways and you’re trudging through the ship at a sideways angle, looking up out of a window to see the open ocean, with all the deep blues of the ship and the worn, muddy reds of the furniture, the game starts to feel almost impressionistic.

Unlike the first game, though, anything nice I have to say about this game is complimented by the caveat that it is sometimes ridiculously difficult and obscure. After having played through the first game only occasionally turning to a guide to figure out where to go, I completed probably like half the levels in Tomb Raider II with a YouTube playthrough. It feels like Core Design got the impression that everyone who would buy a sequel to Tomb Raider would be like a hardline, expert Tomb Raider fanatic or something, which I am not. The game punishes you for not remembering the location of every switch, hidden passage and locked door – getting stuck on a puzzle is therefore bleak, because anything other than a perfect mastery of a level means you may as well be totally directionless.

Tomb Raider II is also the game that makes the best use of Croft Manor, which is an open-ended tutorial area where the player can explore and learn the controls. In the first game, Croft Manor was a linear sequence, but in the sequel it’s a fully featured space with its own hidden secrets, challenges and puzzles. It makes a re-appearance at the very end of the game, in which the remaining bad guys do a home invasion, shutting off all the power and converging on Lara in the middle of the night. It’s an amazing little twist, taking the tutorial area and giving the player a bunch of ammo and supplies to not only prove their mastery over the game, but also to reinforce how dangerous Lara Croft is in her own element. At least, it makes for a more dramatic use of the space than, say, blowing it up for pathos’ sake, which is what many of the later games do.

Tomb Raider II focuses more on cool action scenes than the first one, which, I think, can be to its detriment. I thought the human enemies in the first game were pretty bad, and this game is just chock-full of them! It's definitely something that takes getting used to.

However, Tomb Raider II's levels are to die for! Nothing beats the start of 40 Fathoms. The entire sunken ship section is just delightful, and something that just sticks to me. The opera house! Venice! The Tibetan Monastery! It's all so good.

And, of course, Lara plays like a dream, doing exactly what I want her to (so long as she runs across a full tile first)

A classic platform-exploration adventure, packed with puzzles, secrets and redundancy.
Gamplay: dated. This is not a game you can casually suggest. Back in the day, Lara's controls were fascinating or unique. The geometry of the levels was precisely design around Lara's agility, meaning that a deep knowledge of heights, distances and timing could turn out a stress-inducing experience into a fun and exciting gauntlet. This can't be said, however, about combats: exploitable.
Soundtrack: finely served. Tha game is mostly silent, but music designer really know their game in this title. Intrumental tracks really fit Lara's character and every time they play they really sound nice and rewarding.
Occasionaly fun, if you're up to time travel.

Отличный сиквел. Левел-дизайн стал сложнее и интереснее, в первой части уровни бывали прям минималистичны совсем на мой взгляд. Появились новые механики, расширяющие платформинг. Стало больше сюжета и катсцен, добавляющих истории эпичности. В этой части правда разработчики уже стали непоследовательны в геймдизайне, ожидая от игрока действий, которые он вообще не знал что можно делать. Сразу можно вспомнить злополучные окна (которые теперь оказывается можно разрушать) и поворот в прыжке (который в туториале в доме не обьясняется и без него не пройти две секции на последних уровнях). Но даже так, Tomb Raider II это очень фановое приключение даже сейчас, если привыкнуть к управлению и быть готовым к порой филигранно точным требованиям к платформингу.

Recently, I watched The Passion of the Christ, a film that re-enacts the last few hours of Jesus's life. Whatever your religious beliefs, it's hard not to be inspired by the stoicism and fortitude of the man as he endured untold suffering with nary a sob.

I needed some of that Christly forbearance to beat Tomb Raider II, which makes its predecessor - which was no cakewalk - look like... well, a cakewalk. To put it simply, this game knocked the stuffing out of me. It may well be the hardest game I've ever beaten. When I finally got to the credits, my stats showed a playtime of 11 hours and 25 minutes. My Steam playtime for the game says 20 hours. Even if one subtracts the hour I spent setting the game up and testing out different modernizing patches, that leaves 7 and a half hours in limbo. Guess where they went? That's rights: deaths and wasted progress. This ain't your goo goo ga ga 'press X to not die' reboot-ass Tomb Raider. This is hell.

I have very fond childhood memories of Tomb Raider II (locking the butler in the freezer is as universal an experience as believing Marilyn Manson had a rib removed), but as with the original, it's only 20 years later that I'm actually finishing this game. After Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, this one was my childhood favourite. It certainly has a remarkable array of improvements over the first game. The graphics are much better: Lara has a braid and actual boobs now, instead of the infamous triangle. While the NPC models clearly didn't have the same care lavished on them, there seem to be a lot more polygons in everything else this time around.

The levels are huge in scope and well-designed, creating a myriad of memorable moments. It's a testament to the skills of Tomb Raider II's development team that they managed to create a convincing facsimile of the deep dark ocean - complete with terrifying great white sharks - in a 1997 game; and rework the limited engine of the original to add vehicles (including a delightful tribute to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade's motorboat scene); and heck, that they managed to complete this game at all, in its extremely contracted six-month development schedule. These people slept under their desks and splashed their faces with cold water to keep working on this game. I salute them.

The only gaffe: an overabundance of combat. This is not the game's strong point, and while new weapons are welcome and the old ones' sound effects have been punched up, the M16 and the harpoon are cumbersome to use. I do like the focus on combat from one perspective - it furthers Lara Croft's characterization as a badass, take-no-prisoners heroine.

The gameplay has also been expanded, and trust me when I say they'll make you use the full range of Lara's new moveset. This is a game where the final levels expect you to backflip off a ladder, do a mid-air somersault and grab onto another ladder while dodging a swinging blade, all at a height where the fall damage alone could kill Lara ten times over - but for good measure, there's a lava pit beneath her too.

But therein lies the appeal of classic Tomb Raider. If you get drawn in, it's impossible to let go. TR II does a good job of satiating this appetite for tribulation with its epic length, sprawling environments and brutal platforming. The only caveat is that it's clearly designed for expert players. I strongly recommend that newcomers try the first game to find out if they're willing to tackle this one.

I didn’t write a review for Tomb Raider 1 but I enjoyed it quite a lot. It had some rough patches that obviously were a result of its age but it’s still a solid 8/10. I went into Tomb Raider 2 with pretty good expectations considering this is a lot of TR fans’ favourite entry of not just the classic games, but the entire franchise.

Tomb Raider 2 is a game that I think has even more explicit highs and lows compared to TR1. At its best you got great levels like the Great Wall, 40 Fathoms and Barkhang Monastery where it has fun puzzles in impressive settings with brilliant set pieces but at its worse you get boring levels that focus way too much on the combat or gimmicks that aren't well thought out (such as the awful Tibetan Foothills) than the actual tomb raiding with areas in some levels being designed in ways that you legitimately cannot avoid taking damage (such as having to drop down and take fall damage somewhere to progress) to the point where the games gives you medpacks afterwards because they are aware of it. I don’t understand why people defend this because why couldn’t these levels be designed so you don’t take unavoidable damage instead of slapping down a large medpack and calling it a day? That brings me onto my next issue.

Most of this game you aren’t raiding tombs, but more modern settings, with pretty much 85% of the enemies being humans. The combat in TR1 was not very good, so I have no idea why TR2 pushes the combat so hard with gun wielding enemies around most corners without doing anything to improve the actual combat in a game that clearly wasn’t designed for heavy combat to begin with. If I wanted to play a game where I dual-wield pistols and smgs killing dozens of henchmen I’d boot up Max Payne, not Tomb Raider, and Max Payne has fantastic combat unlike these games.
Additionally, the middle portion of TR2 starting from the Offshore Rig definitely drags on for too long and pulls the “you lose all your weapons” trick way too early into the game. I hope you like the same rusty looking shipwrecks because you spend a lot of time running through them, even if some of these levels (40 Fathoms, The Deck) look very nice at times.

But even with these lows, TR2 has some of the best highs. The new weapons like the M16 and Grenade Launcher are extremely useful. The M16 has great range which lets you snipe enemies before they can retaliate and the grenade launcher is a great “fuck-off” button against enemies that you really want dead. Some levels like Venice and Tibetan Foothills have vehicles. The boats in the Venice levels were good. The snowmobile in the Foothills… not so much. It overstays its welcome, controls like complete shit and seems to explode over any minor drop or bump. If you couldn’t tell I REALLY don’t like this level. An over abundance of bullet spongey hitscanners on top of a janky vehicle section is not my idea of fun. However, the high points in TR2 are even better than TR1. Fighting alongside the Monks in the Barkhang Monastery is awesome. Other levels like the Monastery such as the Deck and the Catacombs of the Talion introduce this almost immersive sim level of "just go wild and complete your objectives in whatever order you like" which was a nice change of pace and because of how brilliant the level design is, you almost never get lost.

Overall, Tomb Raider 2 is just as good as the first Tomb Raider and I can see why it's viewed as the best in the series by many.

Me empurrei ao extremo pra terminar esse. Mesmo se vc domina o controle tanque desse jogo a gameplay ainda continua extremamente lenta, a ponto de eu ter ficado cansado sem nem ter chegado na metade (o ápice foi as fases de baixo d'água por mim cortava aquele trecho do jogo inteiro).
De longe o combate é a pior coisa desse jogo, e pra dificultar mais ainda os caras enchem as fases de inimigos humanos q dão um hitscan INSANO.
Mas enfim acho que a Eidos deveria fazer um remake pq o conteúdo dele (temática, cenários, história) tem MUITO potencial pra ser um jogo foda

(First time playthrough as part of Tomb Raider I-III Remastered)

Tomb Raider II is an improvement over the first game in just about every way, but not a dramatic improvement.

One of my biggest complaints about Tomb Raider was the lack of variety -- there were only four different locations, with some of the locations running far too long. Here, Lara gets a chance to visit several interesting, though largely less "tomb-y" locales. From the canals of Venice, to an underwater shipwreck, to the Great Wall of China, Tomb Raider II feels much larger in scope than the first game, and with exception to the aforementioned shipwreck levels, even the different levels in each location feel relatively unique. The level design, too, plays much better than before; levels are more linear and tightly designed, but they are not overly-simplified to the point of triviality. I especially love the final set of levels in China; they're weird, wacky, difficult, and stand out after a series of less interesting levels in Nepal.

The combat was another sour point in the original game, and though Tomb Raider II is mechanically identical to its predecessor in that department, there are two key band-aids applied to make the combat less frustrating than before. Firstly, the (primarily human) enemies are slower and more predictable than the fleshy beasts that filled the Egypt and Atlantis levels in Tomb Raider, so less time is spent fighting the camera to focus on an enemy racing around you. Secondly, Lara has a larger arsenal this time around: an M16, grenade launcher, and automatic pistols add some additional variety to combat encounters. All of the guns feel weightier in their sound design, and blasting armed thugs to bits with is a blast, though the bullet sponge enemies in the last few levels zap some of the enjoyment out of the kickflipping action. Still, it's preferable to the unrefined and frustrating encounters of Lara's previous outing.

One unfortunate casualty of the heavier focus on combat is that there aren't any memorable puzzles in Tomb Raider II that compare to a setpiece like St Francis' Folly in the first game. There's a few sliding block and switch-based puzzles, but they feel like an afterthought. This may be a limitation of the simple mechanics, but the lack of puzzles is a glaring omission that would elevate the game that much more.

Overall, I enjoyed Tomb Raider II a good bit, and it is more refined than the first game, but it doesn't feel like the best version of a Tomb Raider game that it could be. Playing this immediately after the first game, the simple mechanics feel like they're being stretched thin -- some more movement abilities, complex puzzles, and a trimmed runtime would have cemented this as a classic for me. As it stands, it's an improved version of the first game that still has not nailed down the pacing and gameplay variety.

TR2 is a really annoying game because I feel so torn on it. On one hand it’s a genuine improvement over the first with much more variety and a improved sense of scale and spectacle, and on the other it’s just as frustrating, not fixing things that a sequel should aim to sort.

The story is very minimal again, in fact I had even less of an idea what was going on this time. But the cutscenes are animated better and are definitely more action packed.

There were some gameplay improvements however the remaster added these to 1, so not really noticeable for me. However Lara can now climb certain walls… very slowly. No control or camera issues were fixed, and level design is still a massive double edge sword. The variety is much better in terms of the places you visit, and this helps inspire more natural feeling stages. But they are still jam packed with instant kill beginners traps, awkward jumps that feel extremely inconsistent and plenty of dark rooms where flares can only help you so much.

Combat is once again awkward, and they throw so many enemies at you It often feels completely unfair. Lara’s arsenal has grown, and I like some of the new weapons available, but it doesn’t really help when the enemies swarm you before you get a chance to use them, making the Uzis still the best choice as Lara can fire them to her side.

I think they handled level secrets a lot better, instead of just finding a random place to stand in, there are 3 artefacts in each stage that will grant you a boatload of ammo if you manage to find them all. I prefer this due to the fact that they can been spotted from a distance, and the reward feels more worth it.

I have to credit the vehicles again too, they control remarkably well and really vary up the gameplay, I wish there were a couple more.

There are bright spots, such as a couple of vehicle sections, but I felt the need to save constantly just to not lose progress.. and that’s not fun.

It’s a shame that despite these positives, the levels get too long and complicated, it doesn’t feel like they really learnt anything from the first game, and things that I will excuse TR1 for don’t get the same pass here. It’s better, but not by much - 6.6/10