Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration from Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics brings us the next game in the Survivor trilogy in the beloved franchise. Learn more in our Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration review!
Please enter your date of birth to access this video:
Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration from Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics brings us the next game in the Survivor trilogy in the beloved franchise. For this entry in the series, main character Lara Croft goes on a new adventure to Siberia. Her objective? To locate the legendary city of Kitezh. This won’t be an easy task, since she’ll need to go up against the secret society Trinity, since they’re also searching for the city in hopes of obtaining, as per the legends, its gift of immortality: the Divine Source relic.
The game received a shadow drop right after this month’s Nintendo Direct, and it’s now ready to go on Nintendo Switch 2. Unlike the stealth drop of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition release from November of last year, this time around there’s only a Nintendo Switch 2 version of Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration and no Nintendo Switch option.
Rise of The Tomb Raider was originally released in 2015 on the Xbox 360 and Xbox One as a timed exclusive. This meant that it could not be released elsewhere for a set period of time, which is why the PlayStation 4 version of the game was not released until late 2016. And 10 years later, it’s time to dive back into this journey.
We’re now getting what could best be described as the Complete Edition of Rise of The Tomb Raider, since, along with the base game, we’re also getting all previously released DLC and exclusive content in a single package. Thanks to this, we’re getting access to:
All Season Pass Content & DLCs: Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch, Cold Darkness Awakened, Blood Ties, Lara’s Nightmare, Endurance Mode, and Co-op Endurance
All Exclusives: 8 DLC Outfits and 7 DLC Weapons
All Extras: 35 Expansion Cards, Extreme Survivor Difficulty, 5 Classic Lara Skins, and Tomb Raider III Reimagined “Antarctica” Outfit
This release offers a series of difficulty settings for combat, so that you can find the right one for you. Your options will be Adventurer, Tomb Raider, Seasoned Raider, Survivor, and Extreme Survivor. For the Adventurer difficulty setting, aim assistance will be enabled, and enemies will have lower health and will deal less damage. The Tomb Raider difficulty setting removes aim assistance, and enemies will have normal health and will deal regular damage, making it the standard option. The Seasoned difficulty setting makes it so that health regeneration only occurs outside of combat, and enemies will have more health, deal more damage, and have heightened senses.
On top of all this, the Survivor difficulty setting will completely disable health regeneration, more challenging enemy types will be present, upgrades and equipment will be more expensive, and using a camp requires resources. As for the Extreme Survivor difficulty setting, it will bump up the challenge to 11, since your progress can only be saved when you’re at one of the campsites. While you can change between the first three difficulty settings at any time, the Survivor and Extreme Survivor difficulty settings can only be chosen when starting a new game.
After the intro cutscene ends, you’ll be taking control of Lara by using the left analog stick, as you use the right analog stick to look around you and aim as needed. Speaking of which, press and hold down the ZL button to aim as you shoot at your target by pressing the ZR button as long as you have enough arrows/ammo. You can sprint by pressing in on the left analog stick. Jump and climb up with the B button. Melee attacks are mapped to the X button. This is also the button that you’ll use for finishers. Roll with the A button to perform a dodge.
The D-Pad can be used to pick between your available weapons. Press up for the bow and for cycling between the special arrow types. Press left for the shotgun, right for the rifle, and down for the pistol. Reload your weapon by pressing the Y button. Pressing in on the right analog stick will activate your survival instincts, which will make it a lot easier to spot what you can interact with as well as the objects you can use for solving puzzles. Oh, and you can press the L button to heal so that you can recover a bit of your lost health.
The resources that you collect can be used to unlock upgrades for your weapons. The first option you’ll have will be to upgrade your makeshift longbow. Thanks to the resources you’ve found up until that point, you’ll be able to add reinforced limbs to boost the overall damage you can deal with each arrow you shoot. Later on, you’ll be able to add a grip wrap for better draw speed, or a wrapped string to boost hold time by decreasing finger tension. You can also craft equipment to aid you, such as a hunter’s quiver to increase carrying capacity for all arrow types, or a satchel to increase resource storage capacity.
By defeating enemies, hunting down creatures, collecting objects, and completing main and side objectives, you’ll be rewarded with experience points. Obtain enough experience points to fill up the gauge on the left side of the screen to level up. When this happens, you’ll be rewarded with skill points that you can use to unlock perks in the three different skill trees: Brawler, Hunter, and Survivor. Get the Efficient Killer perk so that enemies that are killed in stealth are automatically looted. Unlock the Arrow Retrieval perk so that you have a chance of recovering arrows when looting enemies that were killed with a bow. Or get the Avid Learner perk so that you gain bonus experience points from survival caches, documents, relics, and challenges.
As was the case for Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration has an in-game achievement system for you to work on. It’s a very, very long list with 100+ achievements for you to work on, so there’s plenty for you to do if you want to 100% this one. What are some of the objectives that you’ll need to work on as you play through this adventure? You’ll unlock achievements by defeating an enemy using a bottle, healing yourself in combat 3 times, defeating 3 enemies with a single shotgun blast, defeating 10 enemies by shooting them in the leg, drowning 3 enemies with a water finisher, performing 25 special stealth kills with a knife, crafting 5 pieces of equipment, buying all skills in one category, shooting 15 deer in the heart, and collecting 25% of all narrative assets in the game, to name some examples.
Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration brings us the next game in the Survivor trilogy in the beloved franchise. For this entry in the series, main character Lara Croft goes on a new adventure to Siberia. Her objective? To locate the legendary city of Kitezh. This won’t be an easy task, since she’ll need to go up against the secret society Trinity, since they’re also searching for the city in hopes of obtaining, as per the legends, its gift of immortality: the Divine Source relic.
Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration is out now on Nintendo Switch 2 with a $29.99 price tag. If you hurry up, you can take advantage of a 10% launch discount. And if you own Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft, or Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered on Nintendo Switch, then you can enjoy a much better 20% launch discount.
Disclaimer
This Rise of The Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration review is based on a Nintendo Switch 2 code provided by Aspyr.
