My Review for Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam / PC):http://steamcommunity.com/id/mysterd/recommended/391220/MYSTERD'S VERDICT:EXTREMELY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
REVIEW...For both Rise of the Tomb Raider (base-game) & Baba Yaga DLC:
INTRO:Tomb Raider (2013) was a great game, despite having a few flaws, still took the Tomb Raider Franchise in a new + different direction paid off majorly. TR 2013 reinvented + rejuvenated the entire franchise. Despite its few shortcomings, the TR 2013 Reboot was a little bit short of greatness.
With much improved combat, upgrading-style RPG mechanics, lots of platforming, and a semi-open world experience - TR 2013 absolutely soared to new heights in the gameplay department. While its character development, story + plot wasn't anything really special, it was still solid.
Enter Rise of the Tomb Raider, which fixes most of the issues that players likely had with TR 2013.
IMPROVEMENTS + TWEAKS EVERYWHERE:Rise of the Tomb Raider (RotTR) has much better pacing overall, way less usage of quick-time events, and actually has a pretty good plot + story to it, when compared to the previous entry (TR 2013). A lot of the puzzles got moved over to the optional Tombs that you can explore in TR 2013. While some of the early Tombs in TR 2013 offered up not much of a puzzle and/or difficulty (unlike earlier TR games), RotTR right off the bat offers up a Tomb that is bigger + has more puzzle pieces to it than early Tombs in TR 2013 did.
Besides the fair amount of Tombs found in RotTR, there are both Collect-A-Thons and Find-A-Thons in RoTTR, there are also fetch quests that NPC's even offer up in RotTR (destroy X items, find X items, etc), offering up a bit more of the kitchen sink + variety here. Lore consisting of all kinds of stuff (audio-logs, ancient relics, etc) is also littered all over the place, for the player to gain more information + insight on characters, the game-world, and environments, to keep the player invested in Rise of the TR here.
Platforming, especially when using a gamepad, absolutely feels great. It feels quite liberating, being Lara out there in the semi-open world, running around, leaping, jumping, climbing, hunting, and moving around these environments. She can find items, salvage things, craft equipment, and other items + equipment. Lara can upgrade her skills + abilities at Campfires, so she can improve herself so she can survive in this very harsh game-world.
If this all wasn't enough, Rise of the TR also takes on the smart approach that made certain sequels like Assassin's Creed 2 + Half-Life 2 so fantastic. Both of those games, they often have you play around with a new skills, item, or gimmick for a little while, in many different ways & shapes & forms. Once you might feel like you're just about to get tired of this feature or it's just starting to get over-used, a new one is thrown at the player to use for a while to keep the variety and fresh-ness in the game going. Never do you really get enough time to get tired of something b/c Rise of the TR often introduces something new at the right time + place.
COMBAT:The combat from TR 2013 feels as good as ever, but with more tweaks and additions to it. Feeling more like a typical third-person shooter, it feels great with its cover-and-shoot system (like Gears of War and many other 3rd person shooters) and you can also use stealth tactics to sneak + take down enemies. When you learn some skills, you can do some cool on-the-fly MacGyver type of stuff. You could pick up a can, use parts to MacGyver it into a grenade, and then chuck it. You could maybe take a dead body, take their phone, turn it into a C4, turn it into a bomb, and then it detonates when an enemy gets near it. Simply put: RoTTR takes an already great combat system & finds ways to do creative + interesting things with it.
STORY (FOR THE BASE-GAME):The story in the base-game of Rise of the Tomb Raider follows up the previous TR 2013 Reboot. Lara goes embarks on a quest to find what her father was looking for, known as The Divine Source. This Source is supposed to make people immortal. The problem is this: a group, by the name of Trinity, wants this item, so that they can ue it to become more powerful. Throughout the game - which is loaded with more twists, turns, and turning over-used tropes found in the story of action-games upside its head, by the way - so that the story + plot never loses interest & intrigue b/c of how extremely well this is all executed.
BABA YAGA (DLC):One of the things that might seem lacking in Rise of the Tomb Raider (base-game) is boss fights. B/c of how some enemies do seem important, sometimes the player never gets a boss fight with a certain character, which might feel disappointing. Honestly, this game never really needed many of these, TBH - but this is one thing that the
Baba Yaga DLC actually does have here.
With a mixture between both action + puzzle elements, this DLC's boss fight is one of the highlights of this DLC. While the boss fight + new area does have its own story & Lore + also does feel very important, value and "bang for the buck" can be the big question mark here, feeling a bit lacking. Unless one gets this DLC in a sale or when buying the Season Pass cheap or Rise of the TR: 20th Anniversary Edition where it's packaged with it, it can be a bit tougher to recommend it.
While the new area is very interesting, very cool to explore, and has a great boss fight - it's length is only around 1-3 hours tops, so most players won't be able to justify getting it in for non-sale type of pricing. Catching it on sale, though - it's a definitely worthwhile DLC to take on for the boss fight, cool new area to explore, and the actual reward for finishing this quest and DLC.
PERFORMANCE + GRAPHICS:Performance of RotTR is also another minor factor + issues here, in some ways. With the in-game 60FPS cap on while it et at Medium settings with a 1440p resolution, the game bounces around b/t 28-60 frames per second. To keep the game much more stable, using a 45FPS cap with MSI Afterburner running solved the problem of the framerates going bonkers. Even at Medium settings, the game is absolutely breaktaking to look at, with its beautiful environments & interesting locations, both artistically + technically. Performance might not be ideal here, but for the most part, it handles itself just fine on my system. The game is nothing short of stunning to look at it + to see in motion, when playing, here on my rig (i7 950 Bloomfield; 16 GB DDR3 RAM; GTX 970; W7 64-bit).
OUTRO:After about a little over 25 hours, both Rise of the Tomb Raider (base-game) + Baba Yaga DLC were finished. When taken altogether, this experience was absolutely fantastic. Improving on TR 2013 in pretty much every way, Rise of the TR is an easy recommendation; especially to fans of the TR 2013 Reboot. With better pacing, storytellnig, less QTE's, lots of little tweaks + improvements everywhere, I just can't recommend Rise of the Tomb Raider enough. It's nothing short of great. This game is flat-out an absolute must play.
