Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration

I'm really glad I played this game. What a masterpiece of a game, and a great sequel. Pros: - Story. Despite Lara's journey more or less still revolves around seeking artifacts that are said to hold powers to immortality, just like the first game, I'm happy with the fact that the second game finally focuses more on Lara's personal history with her father or just her family in general as we get glimpses of flashbacks of her memories about her relationship with her father in the past back when she was younger. This was really well done, especially with how the Blood Ties DLC gave to us the player together with Lara the opportunity to find out what actually happened to her parents in more detail than what was initially explored through the main story. About her father, and her mother, how they felt towards one another, and what the younger Lara saw in both her parents during her lonely childhood years. I was so emotionally invested in the story that I felt happy to know that I get to accompany Lara in her next adventure in the third game of her Survivor Trilogy - Journals. Finally, the devs fixed the issue that I had with the first game where it seemed like the individuals' journals (part of the collectibles) were racing with the main story in regards to which of the two gets to reveal the major plots of the game first. Without spoiling the first game, basically if you tried to collect as many collectibles (in this case, the journals being one of them) before completing the main story like finishing all the side quests before facing the final boss, you'll realize that you've been spoiled of the game's major plot points. And worse, in the first game, Lara would still act surprised whenever she discovered an unexpected development in her story, which also happened to be something that she should've realized had she read the journals she collected. This affected my immersion of the game pretty badly. But, this time, it didn't happen in this game. I'm glad the devs tried to pace the individuals' journals more properly this time while taking into account Lara's current progression in her main story - Great action sequences. There are quite a few levels in this game that happen to be my favorite, taking into consideration all the enjoyment I had with the first game. The underwater stealth, the 1vEveryone in a small room full of pillars, and a few others I refuse to include in the list for you to play for yourself - Puzzles. The puzzles and the tombs have definitely experienced an improvement since the first game. They're still not as many as the ones in Tomb Raider: Anniversary (I've never played the original Tomb Raider games), but the ones that are here are much better in terms of difficulty compared to the first game. So I really appreciate that - Stealth. Yes! Finally! The stealth in this game is just much better than the first game. It's been quite some time since I last played Tomb Raider (2013), so I can't quite recall if that game had any bushes for Lara to hide in against patrolling enemies. That said, I'm going to assume that that was a missing feature since I feel like the existence of bushes as part of the game's stealth mechanics has made the stealth gameplay a lot more enjoyable to take as an alternative to just going guns blazing at every enemies encounter. Back in the first game, it also felt that the map layouts just didn't really support for a stealthy approach. Either it was the awkward placement of covers, the rooms just being too small, or maybe the game just missed the opportunity to add bushes and TREE BRANCHES. Yes, I just remembered how such a wonderful addition the tree branches are to the game, both as a means of traversal and an ambush takedown feature during stealth gameplays. Last but not least, I also appreciate the new ways Lara can now interact with the dead bodies of the enemies she's just killed by putting things like a poison bomb, and more. Again, it's been quite some time since I last played the first game, so this feature may have already been implemented in the 2013 reboot, I'm not sure. Bottomline is, I enjoyed the stealth in the second game a lot more than in the first game - Graphics. The graphics just look gorgeous here. Love the visuals, the character models, the sceneries, and more Decent: - Side quests - Swimming. Why just decent? Because you can't dive deeper than what the game allows you to do. But hey, you still get to swim unlike in the first game Cons: - Graphical bug, where there were times when Lara, or even her environments would turn black for some reason. And after looking around the internet for a solution, it turned out that disabling the tessellation option in the graphics settings should eliminate this problem completely. And try experimenting with having the DirectX12 enabled or disabled in the game. For me, enabling DirectX12 helped with improving my game's performance - The game would sometimes freeze, but not long enough for you to have to resort to using the task manager to forcefully close the game. Still, a bug is a bug. It happened only in one or two levels out of many tho Despite the bugs I've mentioned, they don't take away from the fact that I believe this game to be a great game overall that I'll forever cherish :)

It didnt take long for this game to become a classic. it has a good balance of action/story/gameplay and adequate graphics even for today.

I've played this game on different platform a couple of years ago. I also plan to buy this game in the future to complete my collection on GOG platform. Rise of the Tomb Raider second game on this trilogy really all rounded awesome. Yo should begin to start the game and don't hesitate to take on hard difficulty such Survivor, even i play seasoned raider that still easy. don't try easy or normal that's too easy and maybe you gonna leave the game because of that.

Better than SotTR in my opinion, perhaps less grindy. Builds up the world of Tomb Raider a bit more, adds more detail. Lacks NG+ though. I know about chapter select, but that is not the same feeling. All-in-all enjoyable game.

This one is my favourite in the reboot trilogy