Following the successful 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider series, Rise of the Tomb Raider picks up with the reimagined version of Lara Croft years after in a game that feels a bit more like a continuation of the previous game’s mechanics and concepts rather than an advancement. However, Rise of the Tomb Raider does come with new settings, a new story, and a refinement of what the previous title did, trimming the fat as it searches for how best to handle this reimagining of Lara Croft’s adventures.

Set after her formative experience on the island from the previous title, Lara Croft is now a more seasoned explorer and survivalist, her attention now turning to research of her disgraced and deceased father to try and find if there’s any truth to his ridiculed research. Lara’s father had been looking into the possibility of immortality, his research focusing on a medieval prophet who claimed to have found a Divine Source, a concept a group called Trinity aimed to suppress. Lara sets out in search of where she believes it to be, but it appears the Trinity group is alive and well in the modern day, the group trying to not only stop her, but to suppress any further interest in it by any means necessary. The leader of this particular group of Trinity soldiers is a cold yet pious man named Konstantin, a surprisingly chilling villain who is calm when ruthless but driven by a religious calling towards this particular mission. Lara herself is also given a bit more depth, her competency allowing her focus this time around being on how the previous game’s events have left a lasting impact on her and how it influences this current quest to validate her father’s research.

Most of the game takes place in the frigid mountains of Siberia in search of the legendary city of Kitezh, although the game has a brief segment near the start where she’s searching the deserts of Syria instead. Despite being set mostly in the snowy mountain range, Rise of the Tomb Raider does escape from its snowy setting on a few occasions without totally breaking away from the idea you’re exploring one interconnected location. The forests of the taiga, interior cave areas, and some settlements help keep the player from getting snow blindness, making it easier to accept that most of the game will have you climbing icy walls with icepicks, tromping through snowed over woods, and contending with iced over ruins. The areas of Rise of the Tomb Raider are often wide and encourage exploration, Lara packing the skills and tools to open up the environment. Over the course of the game you will gradually find better tools and new abilities, things like constructing fire arrows and being able to tie ropes across large gaps opening up previously restricted areas. These open areas of the game have plenty for Lara to scrounge up as well, the game making sure that there’s almost no truly empty downtime as you can always be searching around for crafting materials or special relics, documents, and hidden tombs that add to the lore of the location and sometimes develop the central characters as well.

The game even has a few helpful ways of aiding such exploration, the first being Survival Instinct which briefly dulls the environment and makes special objects glow, a feature so useful I was still attempting to use it in other games just because it helped so much here. Also, like in the previous game, areas the game wants you to head towards are often marked subtly with things like waving cloth or ledges that stick out from the environment with white highlights made from rot or snow. Even when the game starts throwing a bombastic action scene at you that requires quick movement and reaction times, you can usually spot where you need to head next thanks to these clues. Between the wide open areas for exploration are thinner story locations where Lara might suddenly be thrust into linear life-or-death scenarios where she needs to move in a hurry, crumbling ruins or explosive enemy attacks jeopardizing her life. These are certainly spectacle focused, the player mostly needing to just move properly and not being set back too far if they die, but they do manage to feel intense thanks to the present threat and just how much destruction is being wrought.

The challenge tombs are actually more useful then they were the previous game. While most of Rise of the Tomb Raider is action focused, the hidden tombs are puzzle-focused, the player needing to operate mechanisms or influence the environment to open the path to lost documents. While the tombs will have goodies scattered around, the reward for completing them is a new unique ability to help you during regular play. When you aren’t wandering around the environment and exploring its nooks and crannies for special items or the way onward, Lara Croft will have to defend herself in combat. For a more quiet approach, Lara can choose to sneak around enemy camps or patrolled parts of the mountains, killing enemies quickly and quietly with melee takedowns, but she also packs a bow that can do the same long range so long as your aim is true. When firefights occur though, she packs heavier weapons for the task, the player gradually gaining better and better firearms over the course of the game. Lara mostly finds things like pistols, shotguns, rifles, and automatics, but she can only carry one of each type of weapon and the ammo isn’t so abundant that they can be used frivolously. Variations on the weapons might have different properties, but you can make any weapon more effective through the crafting system. Find a campfire, and on top of saving, potentially hearing Lara reflect on her journey, and leveling up your skills, you can use the scraps you find throughout the environment to better your gear. This will mostly impact the stats of certain weapons, but leveling up can give you new helpful abilities and the relationship between completing tasks in game to earn experience points and the pay off with the increased effectiveness in combat or scavenging makes the RPG mechanics a welcome inclusion. Crafting could almost be said to be a good supplement as well, but the game has most of your explosives tied to in-the-moment handmade options. You need to find a bottle in the environment to make a Molotov cocktail you can only use there, but the game does slowly make such materials more present so they are a frequent options despite not being able to carry any around for later use.

The rise and fall of the action in Rise of the Tomb Raider is actually pretty well-balanced to allow each segment to play to its strengths. There’s very little fatigue between the interchange of exploration, action scenes, and firefights, partly because of how much control the player can have over the pace of them. Exploration is rewarding but you can move on with the story quickly if you wish, although the game will give you special objectives like potential allies in the mountains who will give you sidequests to make it more meaningful if you need a goal-focused approach. The action scenes add pepper to story beats and don’t stick around since they are meant to be surges of adrenaline. Firefights involve a lot of ducking into cover and firing when the time is right, the player able to increase their power through crafting to make it easier but not a pushover. Most of who you fight will be gun-wielding regular men, but they do get armored variants later that can’t just be taken down in a headshot, and the late game throws some tough new foes into the mix, meaning that you have to consider whether accuracy is more important than putting them down quickly with more frenzied fire.

Most everything done here is an improvement over 2013’s Tomb Raider. The pacing is better, optional objectives and upgrades are more meaningful and substantial, and the tacked-on multiplayer mode has been entirely removed… only to be replaced with something else that feels tacked-on. Expeditions are an alternate way to play through the areas of the game’s campaign, the player approaching the game less as a story and more like arcade challenges where score or other factors are prioritized. The Remnant Resistance mode is a bit more interesting than “just the story again but slightly changed”, players able to use special cards to change more meaningful conditions. Some are expected like which weapons are available, but some are silly like giving characters huge heads or using a chicken as a weapon. The cards being tied to microtransactions and random rewards means it’s not as prone to experimentation as it could be, but this extra option thankfully doesn’t impact the game’s overall quality too much, meaning the story can still be action-packed and intriguing and those more interested in the gameplay have a way to fiddle around with it afterwards.

THE VERDICT: The Rise of the Tomb Raider continues to build off the series reboot’s foundation. The Siberian mountains are ripe for exploration and manage to have distinct and varied locations despite being coated with snow, the action scenes are explosive and require quick action to overcome, and the gunplay allows for different approaches and the impact of ability upgrades and crafting can be felt, making your efforts to uncover secrets and collect materials pay off noticeably. A clear improvement over 2013’s Tomb Raider, it does still feel rather similar to it at times. Since that game was well-designed and interesting though, Rise of the Tomb Raider is as well, and it’s tighter all around with a more character-focused story and better implementation of its survival and action mechanics.

And so, I give Rise of the Tomb Raider for Xbox One…

A GREAT rating. Rise of the Tomb Raider hits the same mark of excellence its predecessor did by learning from it and on the whole improving the design. The game manages its environments well, making it easy to return to explore them later with new gear but also making it pretty easy to keep moving forward if you wish. Scavenging well will increase your ability to handle the shooting segments, and while the more complex puzzles are limited to challenge tombs, you’ll need to find the way to move through many story moments with proper skill use, quick reactions during high-energy action moments, and know how to balance your ammo and approach during the gunfights with Trinity’s forces. The game manages its build ups well in every way, the story growing more and more interesting as your character becomes more and more capable along the way through acquisitions and the fruits of the player’s labor.

The continued adventures of Lara Croft continue to impress, and as it continues to feel out how best to execute its design ideas, I feel like its getting ever closer to making them truly fantastic. Still, another intense journey with this version of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider will always be welcome so long as it continues to nail the moments of action and exploration as well as it has before.