Rise of the Tomb Raider™ Reviews

On steam deck you can't run this game, Linux unsupported pop-up is impossible to close!

What a masterpiece. It takes everything the already great Tomb Raider reboot did and pushes it to a whole new level. Well written story and characters, beautiful and diverse world, the exploration and specifically the optional tombs are really memorable, gameplay is much deeper with more tools and weapons and finally graphics that look way ahead of their time. Must own

Nothing more to say other then I love this game. The story is better then the last and the visuals are amazing.

Played on Survivor and I expected more TBH. A lot of the climbing in this game is linear and filled with unnecessary "jump-scares" that make the gameplay more slow and QTE based (although in this case the QTE isn't some annoying reflex thing but more of a bureaucracy). I felt like there weren't that many animals to hunt, nor any good rewards to keep hunting after a while. Also, the dodge button is really broken against the animals that attack you (wolves, bears and leopards), as they don't punish you for spamming dodge, so you can easily create distance and shoot them again. There's not much creativity to be had with the crafting system, as all recipes for special arrows come from tutorials in the main story and the special ammo recipes (that you unlock in the skill tree) have similar effects to the special arrows. Talking about it, the leveling up system is too bloated with unnecessary skills. And lastly, the human enemies don't feel compelling enough. Nine times out of ten I felt like it was easy to stun lock them by shooting them repeatedly (since their hurt animations even popped them out of cover), a lot of enemies trying to flank just walked in my direction without shooting, making them free targets, and the shield variety of enemies, that could have been interesting, throw explosives and walk right into it, committing suicide. So, I think this game could have been great if 1: The climbing was more optional and filled with more than 1 path. 2: There was more variety of animals to hunt (think MGS3 or Far Cry 3) and harder combat for dangerous animals. 3: The crafting system allowed you to create more random stuff, unrelated to story. 4: The leveling up system had fewer upgrades but each was more meaningful. 5: The human enemies used smarter tactics of trying to kill you, either by not blindly running at you without aggro, not managing cover badly or not committing suicide by being the shield variety and walking into their own grenades.

I wrote a long critique, but after I changed my mind, so I just summarized it. Rise improved a lot in gameplay: the bad side: the story is so terrible. The first game had a fairly okay story, setup, characters, and even some plot twists, here all I remember is Lara is whining about her father or the divine source. (and Jonah is just a decoration) Rise gives and takes away: Side missions, fetch quests, more weapons, and a crazy amount of collectables - but I felt this is all just filler. If you are willing to skip the story, it is an okay game, but why would anyone play it then? I personally can't convince myself to finish it. At the end, the TR13 was enjoyable and felt compact - with simple gameplay and dumb button mashing here and there - if you want a decent story, play that instead.

Tomb Raider 2013 had some of the best gunplay I have ever experienced. Sharp, impactful, snappy and fun. Rise gunplay felt squishy and not fun at all. I really did not enjoy the game. The game is flat, the story is boring, Tomb Raider 2013 made me want to research more about Yamatai, this game I don't even remember the story properly. Tomb's are boring. Crafting and such are just methods to bloat the game. Graphically one of the best games I have ever seen... but that is it.

Great story and gameplay. Glad I finally got to play it.

Very fun and adventures game for action seekers. I really love the video scenes and the storyline

Probably the best of the 3 games, even though all of them are 11/10, so theres really no difference. The balance between combat and puzzles is perfect. Storyline is insanely good.

Now this is a proper game, it doesn't feel 9 years old at all. It builds on top of the previous one so well (not story wise, those have nothing to do with each other). It is a massive improvement 2-3x in every aspect imagineable. A proper AAA title, if modern AAA games were half as good, I wouldn't be complaining about them. Also you do get to raid some tombs. STORY An insult to one's intelligence, so many plotholes and absolutely retarded character decisions that you can just skip all cutscenes. GAMEPLAY Most importantly, the game is fun - you can hunt rabbits with a deagle. Compared to the previous game, it is waaaaaay better. Overall it no longer feels like a console experience, but a proper PC game. Progression system has been taken to the next level. More of the skills feel useful. Hunting, tens of crafting resources, some of which obtainable from appropriate places - e.g. bear hide you get only from killing bears. Upgrades of weapons and inventory feel good. Environmental puzzles are really nice and diverse. Going out of your way to do side quests, pick up items, complete tombs is (usually) worth it. The game offers way more content than the previous one. For 18 hours I completed the game with 75% completion, compared to tomb raider 2013, where I did the same for 10 hours. You are given new tools to play with throughout the entire campaign, so it remains fresh. There is even a grappling hook. Movement and parkour feel great. Sprinting, climbing, jumping, swinging, grappling all very nice and responsive. Stealth is also improved, feels fair, I never felt scammed during stealth. Combat is also fine. Game rewards skillful play (e.g. extra exp for stealth kills or headshot kills). However, it does feel to easy even on survivor difficulty. There is some pay to win - DLCs award you with weapon skills, which also unlock the weapon itself before you collect the parts for it. Also there's DLC outfits which give you a passive skill. This is a minor issue, given the game with all DLCs on sale is like 5 EUR. GRAPHICS Game looks great, there's many modern games that don't look any better (but run at 1/4 of the FPS). You can't tell it's a very old game really. Where it feels a bit dated is maybe fire effects, explosions and a tiny bit in the lighting. Beautiful scenery is also available. Native ultrawide support, thank you. Cutscenes are 16:9 though. Motion blur can be turned off, depth of field can be turned off. All BS post processing can be disabled. Except for camera shake, but is way less noticeable than in tomb raider 2013 and does not ruin the experience at all. I would still disable it if given the chance though. And the blurry slop called TAA is not an option in this game. Thank god. So many modern games force this garbage that makes 4k look like 720p at best. Seriously try this game and some modern title and see how crisp it is in comparison. And the game looks just fine even with AA off. PERFORMANCE Overall decent performance. At native 3440x1440, radeon 7900 XTX (4080 super equivalent), ryzen 9800X3D, maxed out settings, SMAA - I get 130 to 250 FPS depending on the area. I get avg 183 FPS in the benchmark. Which for how great the game looks, feels fair. Had 3-4 crashes while loading into the game, but never during gameplay. It's sad how bad modern games perform without looking any better really. This game is proof that developers could optimise their games properly 10 years ago, but somehow nowadays they refuse to do so.