Rise of the Tomb Raider is better than Tomb Raider 2013, but it isn't as good as it should be. A lot of my problems with 2013 have been fixed in this title, but some really core issues have had no changes whatsoever leading to a somewhat mixed bag still. While I think I can find myself recommending this title much more than the previous, overall the game does little to keep itself from being more than just a Tomb Raider 2013 sequel.
If you haven't read my Tomb Raider review, here's a short recap of my pros and cons from that title:
1. Combat was a rich puzzle-like experience with the four weapons at hand and the multiple ammo types. However, melee combat felt sluggish and unrefined, making it exceptionally hard to choose even when it should be a must in a scenario. And shield enemies weren't really designed all that well.
2. Exploration felt very hard to come by because most environments were so distinctly linear and all of the actual collectibles and exciting stuff like Tombs were either way too short or such a small off-road that they didn't feel exciting in any way. Environmental traversal was pretty alright all things considered, very triple A in nature, but still interesting enough to not have me bored.
3. The story and characters were laughably bad. There was barely any down time so it felt like the game was treating me like a toddler, and the game couldn't be assed to give Lara a consistent characterization both in and out of cutscene. Both ludo narrative and narrative dissonance at its finest.
4. Context Sensitivity plagues the game, from traversal to enemy encounters and more. The main offenders being climbing, stealth kills, and crouching or the general stealth state. Cover was inconsistent because it hinged on you being crouched, which wouldn't always occur because it was context sensitive. Crouching while in stealth was also a complete gamble as the moment you are caught you cannot go back into stealth no matter what.
Ok, so with that out of the way let's get to the meat of this review. First off is combat, which has had a major rehaul taking it from good to great. The main four weapons make a return: Bow, Pistol, Rifle, and Shotgun. However, this time around not only do we have multiple unique ammo types for each weapon, we also have different types of weapon. This gives the player a great amount of freedom when it comes to discovering a playstyle for themselves. The plethora of weapon choices and their accompanying upgrades give the combat a real edge over the predecessor. Another great thing is the melee combat, it isn't perfect but they really refined the movement and weight on the climbing axe to feel much better this time around. Overall, melee still feels like a last resort, but unlike Tomb Raider 2013, it feels like a resort I can at least rely on. The finisher system is still not exactly all that great though, it still very easily leaves you open and up for attacks while you kill an enemy. Oh and of course shield enemies! One specific change was made to make these enemies far more bearable and it comes in the form of a specific skill on the skill tree. By the time shield enemies become prominent in the game, you will almost guaranteed have the necessary perks to take care of shields quickly and effectively, solving my problem with them entirely. Each new piece of this combat system laying on top of each other leads to a similar feeling but ultimately more rich combat experience in the long term, which helps when the core game is so similar. Finally, the biggest change to combat was the ability to craft healing, special ammos, and makeshift throwables during a fight. This really spices up combat encounters a whole hell of a lot. Each thing you can craft requires specific resources which are used for those specific craftables and also for upgrading your weapons themselves. This leads to a pretty fun risk-reward system in the heat of battle where a player has to choose between resources that could save them from losing a fight to keeping said resources so they can improve weapons for later encounters. The craftable healing is especially an interesting forced decision-making tool... but only if you are on hard mode or higher. On hard or higher, the game will not heal you in an encounter if you just wait, you have to be combat-free to heal naturally. In this regard, I find the game on hard to be the definitive and intended design experience. The difficulties higher than hard are weird edge-cases that go against the core design and the diffs lower take this intended play loop and softens it up.
Exploration is up next and wow did they clean this part up! Environments on the whole have been designed with an exploration-first-structure leading to a very natural loop of entering a new open zone and entering some caves and finding stuff. With these larger traversal zones, the game also made the addition of quests. Some NPCs will be stationed in specific zones with random objectives you can complete for rewards, these range from weapon parts, outfits, and even key items. On the whole I think the system is a little bit shoddy but in general still a good idea. The main issue with quests is sometimes they require certain materials or certain areas that one could already have/completed. Thus making the quest complete by default. This isn't always the case, but it happened enough times to where I stopped taking any more quests at all. Now one of the most important exploration experiences is tombs, the supposed meat of a Tomb Raider game I'd wager. 2013's were a goddamn travesty, but compared to those, Rise is far and away better. Tombs are still mostly single puzzle rooms, however, the puzzles themselves, the act of entering the tombs, and the tombs' unique visual designs give each one a large charm that was not present before. However, I think the puzzles still need some work, most tomb puzzles are still far too simple for my liking. In general though, a tomb as a whole piece of the exploration experience feels worth going for now not just because the act of doing one feels more rewarding, but the game actual rewards you for doing them as well. This is a consistent thing across the game too, when exploring you are more often rewarded with genuine pieces that add to the core gameplay loop. This can range from parts of new weapons to even skills. The expanded pool of rewards makes the act of being a damn Tomb Raider that much more worth while which is exactly what was missing from 2013. And as a last note, environmental traversal has also gotten a tiny lift in Rise. Only a tiny bit because while a few select environments feel designed with multiple future items in mind, many of these environments still feel segmented so that a player could clear through them with what they have on hand at the moment they arrive. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it does make it harder to want to revisit areas due to this, meaning one of the only reasons to revisit places is for the new questing opportunities that appear as you progress...but like I said the quests feel a lot more superficial compared to a more rich environment.
Story has not been a big part of the Tomb Raider series, even with their supposed revitalized focus on it due to the more apparent triple A nature present in the reboot series. Rise is no exception to this rule, but unlike its predecessor it is a lot more confident in itself enough to actually have some breathing room. It doesn't show this off at first though, which leaves a bit of a bad first impression. In fact, the opening to Rise feels eerily similar at first to 2013's opening. Big huge bombastic, zero attention span opening with crazy moments and huge music stings and all that. Then the game rewinds the clock a bit to give some context which is the first genuine breather moment, and luckily the context actually makes some sense and means something this time around. The opening of 2013 did no such thing and ended up cursing the game before it even began. In comparison, after the player comes back to the present timeframe in Rise, the game is more willing to let the player enter into an environment and actually take a break. This is huge because it was the biggest pitfall of 2013's story experience. In that game, there was zero breaks the entire time leading to every single encounter expected to have something go wrong. Rise also finds itself pulling a lot of fast ones, but not constantly which I appreciate. Now, the actual story content itself is...still very lackluster... By the end especially, Rise feels like it loses steam and starts to copy from 2013's story just so it can make it to the finish line. Both in Rise and 2013, the stories were very bland stories with very little narrative depth or nuance. Don't expect anything different here. However, something that is different is Lara, and thank god for it! Lara Croft feels genuine in this game, and that is something that cannot be understated. Compared to the wishy-washy cake-having-but-cake-eating Lara of 2013, Rise's Lara feels consistent throughout the gameplay experience. She has lived through 2013 and toughened up because of it, leading her to not hesitate when it comes time to pull the trigger or to do something she thinks is right. In general, she stays feeling like a badass rather than flip-flopping between badass and bitchass. And the other characters aren't all that bad either, except for the one they brought back over from 2013 who...honest to god they barely give a reason for existing here. If they left him out, I don't think a single person would've been upset at all. His plotline in Rise feels so forced it brings in some genuine nonsense that annoyed the hell out of me. But I digress...
Now, we can't talk triple A slop games without taking about the good ol Context Sensitivity. Man...am I disappointed that they changed absolutely nothing. Basically every single thing that was context sensitive in 2013 is the same here. And it fucking sucks. Once again, climbing, stealth kills, the stealth state itself, crouching, all fucking context sensitive. I discussed why these are all bad before but I really wanna dig deep on one in particular here: Stealth. Stealth has been and continues to be a context sensitive state that is the only time during gameplay when the game will put up its hands and go "nuh uh, sorry buster, but this is not for you to choose," leading to many encounters where either preferred stealth or optional stealth feels more like an impossibility to stay in rather than a good way to get rid of some enemies prior to an encounter starting. When in an enemy encounter, you start engaged in stealth, this means you can crouch behind small boxes as well as in bushes. During this time, you can stealth kill someone if you get up close to them without being spotted, however stealth kills do make noise. Here is the issue: if for whatever reason you are ever spotted or thought to be spotted, stealth ends for that encounter and cannot be regained. When I say thought to be spotted, I mean it, sometimes the game will decide to say you have been found when you are still very clearly in hiding in a place that no one has been close to at all and since the investigative state began you have not left or even peaked out of. This genuinely happens. Once any dead enemy is spotted, stealth is basically immediately compromised. This feels really bad when in action because sometimes you are doing extremely well at stealth only for someone to decide you can't stealth anymore. And of course, once you are out of stealth, enemies ALWAYS know where you are regardless of any kind of vision parameter being met or anything. Sometimes, just the fact that you, the player, see an enemy, can cause them to spot you and lose the stealth state and be consistently known in location the entire encounter. Which seriously ruins any kind of potential in a stealth experience. I am not asking for Metal Gear Solid, I am simply asking for better. And this is still not it. Because even without stealth being as poor as it is, crouching is still context sensitive! Meaning the only option you have to keep yourself safe from bullets and behind cover isn't even up to you as a player. It is a choice you don't get to choose. And hell while I'm still angry, I might as well shit on the fact that the wall cover-system is a complete broken mess and has been since 2013. Rarely if ever does the wall cover work as intended. Sometimes you can get away with shooting at an enemy while being completely behind the wall. Other times you might find yourself begging God himself to please make Lara peak the left fucking wall I am right next to it, IT SHOULD FUCKING WORK. But no, it never works. More often than not, if I ever found myself trying to rely on the broken cover mechanics I would simply abuse a wall that an enemy couldn't get near me on the left from and kill everyone. It wasn't fun, but hey, neither is not being able to decide how my character responds to the environment in combat.
Before I finish up, here's a little bit of a extra tid bits category of random pros and cons. The game's skill system and upgrade system far outclasses 2013 in many ways. The limited resource system that holds up the risk-reward factor in combat as well as makes the upgrade trees themselves inherently interesting was a good choice even if at times the specific materials required feel out of the way. And the skill system is a complete overhaul from the first game, all three trees feel a lot more in-depth with some genuinely really great skills that make progressing feel good. Also you get skill points really easy in this game, and I am slightly indifferent on whether or not it is good or bad. On the whole, the game feels so similar to 2013 in core mechanics and design, it at times feels very easy, maybe even rudely so, a "Big DLC". I think the level of changes within the systems themselves remove any potential doubts about this being a sequel rather than a "Big DLC," but the sentiment is still there and has roots. In general, I think the environments in this game are a good bit more diversified compared to 2013, but the snowy Siberia setting for a good half of the game doesn't do it any favors. At times it can feel more samey than 2013, which is not a good feeling, even when I know it isn't true.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is the second game in the Tomb Raider Reboot series. While it is undoubtably the better game compared to 2013's Tomb Raider, the quality of the content and the systems still feels remarkably held back from what should have been a higher standard. Even with the fact that this game was made in essentially two years after the first reboot game, they could have taken time to really flesh out the mechanics some more and actually give some more player agency in controls and encounters. If you were a fan of 2013, Rise will be great for you, but if 2013 was not your cup of pee then don't even bother trying. This is not a new attempt at Tomb Raider, but at a refined 2013 experience. Also this game is completely playable without touching 2013, so, give it a try if 2013's laughably poor character writing and story made you wanna die. Cause this one does a little bit better! Here's to at least hoping they at least add a goddamn crouch button in the next reboot game.....
If you haven't read my Tomb Raider review, here's a short recap of my pros and cons from that title:
1. Combat was a rich puzzle-like experience with the four weapons at hand and the multiple ammo types. However, melee combat felt sluggish and unrefined, making it exceptionally hard to choose even when it should be a must in a scenario. And shield enemies weren't really designed all that well.
2. Exploration felt very hard to come by because most environments were so distinctly linear and all of the actual collectibles and exciting stuff like Tombs were either way too short or such a small off-road that they didn't feel exciting in any way. Environmental traversal was pretty alright all things considered, very triple A in nature, but still interesting enough to not have me bored.
3. The story and characters were laughably bad. There was barely any down time so it felt like the game was treating me like a toddler, and the game couldn't be assed to give Lara a consistent characterization both in and out of cutscene. Both ludo narrative and narrative dissonance at its finest.
4. Context Sensitivity plagues the game, from traversal to enemy encounters and more. The main offenders being climbing, stealth kills, and crouching or the general stealth state. Cover was inconsistent because it hinged on you being crouched, which wouldn't always occur because it was context sensitive. Crouching while in stealth was also a complete gamble as the moment you are caught you cannot go back into stealth no matter what.
Ok, so with that out of the way let's get to the meat of this review. First off is combat, which has had a major rehaul taking it from good to great. The main four weapons make a return: Bow, Pistol, Rifle, and Shotgun. However, this time around not only do we have multiple unique ammo types for each weapon, we also have different types of weapon. This gives the player a great amount of freedom when it comes to discovering a playstyle for themselves. The plethora of weapon choices and their accompanying upgrades give the combat a real edge over the predecessor. Another great thing is the melee combat, it isn't perfect but they really refined the movement and weight on the climbing axe to feel much better this time around. Overall, melee still feels like a last resort, but unlike Tomb Raider 2013, it feels like a resort I can at least rely on. The finisher system is still not exactly all that great though, it still very easily leaves you open and up for attacks while you kill an enemy. Oh and of course shield enemies! One specific change was made to make these enemies far more bearable and it comes in the form of a specific skill on the skill tree. By the time shield enemies become prominent in the game, you will almost guaranteed have the necessary perks to take care of shields quickly and effectively, solving my problem with them entirely. Each new piece of this combat system laying on top of each other leads to a similar feeling but ultimately more rich combat experience in the long term, which helps when the core game is so similar. Finally, the biggest change to combat was the ability to craft healing, special ammos, and makeshift throwables during a fight. This really spices up combat encounters a whole hell of a lot. Each thing you can craft requires specific resources which are used for those specific craftables and also for upgrading your weapons themselves. This leads to a pretty fun risk-reward system in the heat of battle where a player has to choose between resources that could save them from losing a fight to keeping said resources so they can improve weapons for later encounters. The craftable healing is especially an interesting forced decision-making tool... but only if you are on hard mode or higher. On hard or higher, the game will not heal you in an encounter if you just wait, you have to be combat-free to heal naturally. In this regard, I find the game on hard to be the definitive and intended design experience. The difficulties higher than hard are weird edge-cases that go against the core design and the diffs lower take this intended play loop and softens it up.
Exploration is up next and wow did they clean this part up! Environments on the whole have been designed with an exploration-first-structure leading to a very natural loop of entering a new open zone and entering some caves and finding stuff. With these larger traversal zones, the game also made the addition of quests. Some NPCs will be stationed in specific zones with random objectives you can complete for rewards, these range from weapon parts, outfits, and even key items. On the whole I think the system is a little bit shoddy but in general still a good idea. The main issue with quests is sometimes they require certain materials or certain areas that one could already have/completed. Thus making the quest complete by default. This isn't always the case, but it happened enough times to where I stopped taking any more quests at all. Now one of the most important exploration experiences is tombs, the supposed meat of a Tomb Raider game I'd wager. 2013's were a goddamn travesty, but compared to those, Rise is far and away better. Tombs are still mostly single puzzle rooms, however, the puzzles themselves, the act of entering the tombs, and the tombs' unique visual designs give each one a large charm that was not present before. However, I think the puzzles still need some work, most tomb puzzles are still far too simple for my liking. In general though, a tomb as a whole piece of the exploration experience feels worth going for now not just because the act of doing one feels more rewarding, but the game actual rewards you for doing them as well. This is a consistent thing across the game too, when exploring you are more often rewarded with genuine pieces that add to the core gameplay loop. This can range from parts of new weapons to even skills. The expanded pool of rewards makes the act of being a damn Tomb Raider that much more worth while which is exactly what was missing from 2013. And as a last note, environmental traversal has also gotten a tiny lift in Rise. Only a tiny bit because while a few select environments feel designed with multiple future items in mind, many of these environments still feel segmented so that a player could clear through them with what they have on hand at the moment they arrive. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it does make it harder to want to revisit areas due to this, meaning one of the only reasons to revisit places is for the new questing opportunities that appear as you progress...but like I said the quests feel a lot more superficial compared to a more rich environment.
Story has not been a big part of the Tomb Raider series, even with their supposed revitalized focus on it due to the more apparent triple A nature present in the reboot series. Rise is no exception to this rule, but unlike its predecessor it is a lot more confident in itself enough to actually have some breathing room. It doesn't show this off at first though, which leaves a bit of a bad first impression. In fact, the opening to Rise feels eerily similar at first to 2013's opening. Big huge bombastic, zero attention span opening with crazy moments and huge music stings and all that. Then the game rewinds the clock a bit to give some context which is the first genuine breather moment, and luckily the context actually makes some sense and means something this time around. The opening of 2013 did no such thing and ended up cursing the game before it even began. In comparison, after the player comes back to the present timeframe in Rise, the game is more willing to let the player enter into an environment and actually take a break. This is huge because it was the biggest pitfall of 2013's story experience. In that game, there was zero breaks the entire time leading to every single encounter expected to have something go wrong. Rise also finds itself pulling a lot of fast ones, but not constantly which I appreciate. Now, the actual story content itself is...still very lackluster... By the end especially, Rise feels like it loses steam and starts to copy from 2013's story just so it can make it to the finish line. Both in Rise and 2013, the stories were very bland stories with very little narrative depth or nuance. Don't expect anything different here. However, something that is different is Lara, and thank god for it! Lara Croft feels genuine in this game, and that is something that cannot be understated. Compared to the wishy-washy cake-having-but-cake-eating Lara of 2013, Rise's Lara feels consistent throughout the gameplay experience. She has lived through 2013 and toughened up because of it, leading her to not hesitate when it comes time to pull the trigger or to do something she thinks is right. In general, she stays feeling like a badass rather than flip-flopping between badass and bitchass. And the other characters aren't all that bad either, except for the one they brought back over from 2013 who...honest to god they barely give a reason for existing here. If they left him out, I don't think a single person would've been upset at all. His plotline in Rise feels so forced it brings in some genuine nonsense that annoyed the hell out of me. But I digress...
Now, we can't talk triple A slop games without taking about the good ol Context Sensitivity. Man...am I disappointed that they changed absolutely nothing. Basically every single thing that was context sensitive in 2013 is the same here. And it fucking sucks. Once again, climbing, stealth kills, the stealth state itself, crouching, all fucking context sensitive. I discussed why these are all bad before but I really wanna dig deep on one in particular here: Stealth. Stealth has been and continues to be a context sensitive state that is the only time during gameplay when the game will put up its hands and go "nuh uh, sorry buster, but this is not for you to choose," leading to many encounters where either preferred stealth or optional stealth feels more like an impossibility to stay in rather than a good way to get rid of some enemies prior to an encounter starting. When in an enemy encounter, you start engaged in stealth, this means you can crouch behind small boxes as well as in bushes. During this time, you can stealth kill someone if you get up close to them without being spotted, however stealth kills do make noise. Here is the issue: if for whatever reason you are ever spotted or thought to be spotted, stealth ends for that encounter and cannot be regained. When I say thought to be spotted, I mean it, sometimes the game will decide to say you have been found when you are still very clearly in hiding in a place that no one has been close to at all and since the investigative state began you have not left or even peaked out of. This genuinely happens. Once any dead enemy is spotted, stealth is basically immediately compromised. This feels really bad when in action because sometimes you are doing extremely well at stealth only for someone to decide you can't stealth anymore. And of course, once you are out of stealth, enemies ALWAYS know where you are regardless of any kind of vision parameter being met or anything. Sometimes, just the fact that you, the player, see an enemy, can cause them to spot you and lose the stealth state and be consistently known in location the entire encounter. Which seriously ruins any kind of potential in a stealth experience. I am not asking for Metal Gear Solid, I am simply asking for better. And this is still not it. Because even without stealth being as poor as it is, crouching is still context sensitive! Meaning the only option you have to keep yourself safe from bullets and behind cover isn't even up to you as a player. It is a choice you don't get to choose. And hell while I'm still angry, I might as well shit on the fact that the wall cover-system is a complete broken mess and has been since 2013. Rarely if ever does the wall cover work as intended. Sometimes you can get away with shooting at an enemy while being completely behind the wall. Other times you might find yourself begging God himself to please make Lara peak the left fucking wall I am right next to it, IT SHOULD FUCKING WORK. But no, it never works. More often than not, if I ever found myself trying to rely on the broken cover mechanics I would simply abuse a wall that an enemy couldn't get near me on the left from and kill everyone. It wasn't fun, but hey, neither is not being able to decide how my character responds to the environment in combat.
Before I finish up, here's a little bit of a extra tid bits category of random pros and cons. The game's skill system and upgrade system far outclasses 2013 in many ways. The limited resource system that holds up the risk-reward factor in combat as well as makes the upgrade trees themselves inherently interesting was a good choice even if at times the specific materials required feel out of the way. And the skill system is a complete overhaul from the first game, all three trees feel a lot more in-depth with some genuinely really great skills that make progressing feel good. Also you get skill points really easy in this game, and I am slightly indifferent on whether or not it is good or bad. On the whole, the game feels so similar to 2013 in core mechanics and design, it at times feels very easy, maybe even rudely so, a "Big DLC". I think the level of changes within the systems themselves remove any potential doubts about this being a sequel rather than a "Big DLC," but the sentiment is still there and has roots. In general, I think the environments in this game are a good bit more diversified compared to 2013, but the snowy Siberia setting for a good half of the game doesn't do it any favors. At times it can feel more samey than 2013, which is not a good feeling, even when I know it isn't true.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is the second game in the Tomb Raider Reboot series. While it is undoubtably the better game compared to 2013's Tomb Raider, the quality of the content and the systems still feels remarkably held back from what should have been a higher standard. Even with the fact that this game was made in essentially two years after the first reboot game, they could have taken time to really flesh out the mechanics some more and actually give some more player agency in controls and encounters. If you were a fan of 2013, Rise will be great for you, but if 2013 was not your cup of pee then don't even bother trying. This is not a new attempt at Tomb Raider, but at a refined 2013 experience. Also this game is completely playable without touching 2013, so, give it a try if 2013's laughably poor character writing and story made you wanna die. Cause this one does a little bit better! Here's to at least hoping they at least add a goddamn crouch button in the next reboot game.....
ARTmanPlays
6 months ago