With the incredible success (both critically and financially) of the first game, Core Design began development on this second part almost immediately. Toby Gard left the project, along with designer and friend Paul Douglas, due to creative differences. The game had to be quickly made in about eight months in order to reach the launch date of November 1997, ready for the holiday season. Development was hellish and intense. They essentially used the same engine and gameplay but with improved and polished details.
Tomb Raider II follows a new Lara Croft adventure as she searches for the magical Dagger of Xian located underneath the Great Wall of China. She is intercepted by an Italian cult that also wants the dagger for their nefarious plans. So Lara must recover it before it reaches the hands of evil leader Marco Bartoli.
You could consider this game an improvement on almost every level since there are more intricate levels, more settings, more demanding puzzles, the enemy difficulty has increased and there's more of a variety in the environments and the missions. A lot of people consider it to be even better than the first game.
There are far more enemies in this game, some are rather easy while others are incredibly hard to the point of being highly dangerous and maybe even frustrating. In the original game enemies were somewhat rare and placed at particular points within the level to create more of an impact, but here it seems like they decided to throw in more bad guys as a way to elevate the challenge, the last two levels are almost exclusively combat levels, making you fight a mid-size fire breathing dragon, living statues and goons who attack Lara croft´s manor. So you better get good at combat or else you are gonna have trouble with this sequel.
As I said, the actual missions and levels have more variety in settings and puzzles, some are a bit hard to figure out at first but if you managed to learn how to solve the objectives in the first game then you will do just fine.
Lara has a more variety of outfits as well, adding a nice jacket with snow boots for the snowy levels, a diving suit for the underwater levels and even a bathrobe for when Lara is chilling at home.
Vehicles are a neat addition too, being able to use boats and snowmobiles is a good change of pace and it keeps you on your toes having to fight enemies while trying to control your ride.
A lot of my praise for this game is similar to what I said in my review for the original. It picks up the addictive and comfortable controls and gameplay from the original but it manages to do more with it than in other games, building on top of a familiar formula. If it's not broken, dont fix it, just upgrade it.
My main complaint would be that the actual story is too barebones and feels less potent because of that, the memorable enemies from the first one are missing here. You aren't very invested in the battles because of this and it kind of wastes it´s potential in that regard. Vicky Arnold writes this one again, but it feels like the concept wasn't as properly developed as the first one (probably because of how fast the game was made). It works as a game but the plot isn't borderline cinematic like the first one.
If you enjoyed the first game then this one will be just as rewarding but be warned of the fact that its difficulty might throw you off at first. Other than that, it's a perfect outing in the franchise.
This isn't a spoiler but the very last cutscene is iconic. After finishing the final boss, Lara resumes her bath, beginning to take her robe off but before she does so she stops and looks at the camera to say "Don't you think you have seen enough?" and then shoots at the player. The End. An unexpected and funny moment that was added as a response to the nude Tomb Raider mod that was floating around at the time.
There's also a secret cheat code that a lot of people thought would take Lara's clothes off but it blows her up instead. Hilarious.
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