Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration Pack Review (xylone12)
After the events of the main game, Lara retires to her family home for a brief respite. The Croft Manor is in great disrepair due to negligence between her travels and her father's obsession/grief. As she readies herself to tackle the manor's reconstruction, she finds herself with her greatest foe yet: bureacracy. Due to her father's sudden death and her mother's missing status, the ownership of the manor goes to the executor of the estate, her uncle. To avoid losing her family home, she must scour the domicile for some method of legally claiming her birthright, whether it is via an undisclosed will or something greater...
Rise of the Tomb Raider 20 Year Celebration Pack is a DLC with two game modes:
The first is a chill exploration of the Croft manor in all its derelict glory , basically an epilogue to the main game. Collect information and tools to open up the manor, and collect relics and documents as you learn about the history of the Croft's, from Lara's parents' college days and coincidental meeting to their life as a family and even their tragic endings. It is completely casual, with no combat and some puzzle (less mechanical and more thoughtful than anything in the main game, but still fairly easy).
The second is a more thrilling take on the same level . Instead of a comfy jaunt through the past, a nightmarish version of her uncle sends an unending horde of undead to remove her from inheritance permanently. The level is the same, but the wonder of exploring an old childhood home is replaced with terror of being hunted through a decaying manor. Shoot your way through your old home to collect upgrades and bring an end to the nightmare. You can also add cards to modify your run, altering its difficulty and modifying your final score.
The main attraction of the DLC is the Croft Manor. The old home of our globe-trotting tomb raider is beautifully designed, and the story is wonderfully voiced. After finishing the main game and its climatic ending levels, the slow exploration of a modern "tomb" is an enjoyable palate cleanser and a final pretty bow on the main game that felt conclusive while still directly explored the history of Lara Croft as a person. Both games are fun in very distinct ways, one a casual investigation story and one a thrilling shoot-out, and feel satisfying for their lengths.
The main failing of the DLC is also the Croft Manor. For the ancestral home of the wealthy and noble Croft family, it's disappointingly small. The room sizes are "fine", but there aren't enough IMO. The neglected state of the manor is used to narratively explain why the entire manor isn't explorable, but I would have liked to fully explore the manor and the gardens around it after finishing the story. This is further exacerbated in the second combat part, as there aren't any new locations form the casual portion. Its very easy to get blocked into a tiny corridor or a dead end room, making it very annoying if you get an objective placed in a very dangerous place that is outside of skill expression. A key part of COD Zombies is the ability to retreat or use the level to escape being mobbed, and while the mansion is slightly changed to make the run-and-gun combat slightly more clean, the manor was frankly not designed for an equivalent mode.
Overall, very enjoyable DLC. Blood Ties is 9/10 and Nightmare is 7/10.