Tomb Raider II (1997)

My favorite Tomb Raider. In this sequel, Lara embarks on a new adventure to find the Dagger of Xian, a legendary artifact that has the power of converting oneself into a powerful dragon, as long as they sacriface themselves with the dagger. The classic Lara's home is back as a tutorial, expanding it into outdoors area. The old gym is now a dance ballroom, and the infamous Winston, the butler locked in the freezer room is featured for the first time. It's a great tutorial for showing all the old and new moves. Now, Lara can climb ladders (slowly), use ziplines and flares for dark rooms. The ziplines are fun, but weirdly they are only included in the first level and one of the last ones. Flares are the biggest game change, since that means that now the game has dynamic lightning. They are not mandatory, but help a lot in the few cases where it's almost pitch black. Even better, the game adds two different vehicles for Lara. First you'll find the speedboat in the Venice levels, like Indiana Jones, you can destroy gondolas by jumping onto them. Much later you find the snowboard and its variant: the weaponized snowboard. Their maps are not that polished for driving them carelessly and it's easy to fall into pits and die. It's particularly fun to run over enemies killing them immediately. The game starts in China, just the first level is not an easy tutorial like you expected. It's filled with traps, high speed corridors, and a very unexpected secret near the end that is just peak. This time, Lara visits China, Venice, an oil rig, the bottom of the ocean, back to China and a weird surrealist place that it's unclear if it's real or not. There's also a neat post endgame level to wrap up the story. Most of the levels are just superb. Venice is accompanied by one of the best music compositions in the saga: the Venice violins. The underwater levels tend to drag a bit, but some sections are just perfect. You visit an upside-down ship, slowly moving from room to room solving puzzles and accessing new chambers. As most Tomb Raider games, the previous to last level is one of the biggest and hardest ones, and probably one of the best, just perfect level design. Once more, the weakest part is the combat. This time, there's just way too many human enemies. It's not terrible, you get an upgraded arsenal and you can beat most enemies with a couple of shots, as long as you are not using your default dual pistols. Bosses are just sponge bullets, with the final one being actually challenging and puzzly. Again, as with the previous game, just get the incredibly better Tomb Raider remastered trilogy. You'll also get access to the Tomb Raider 2 expansion as well as the very peculiar achievements.