Every game franchise has its "black sheep".  Often times they'll have more than one but there is usually one title that stands out among the rest as the game everyone seems to hate except for a select few... only for that select few's appreciation of the work to gain more and more traction until it's widely accepted among the fanbase.  Zelda has Majora's Mask, Mario has Mario 2, Pokemon has Black and White, and the Kingdom Hearts series has basically any game that released after KH1.  For one of the most defining series in gaming, Metroid, that game is Metroid II: Return of Samus.

At one point widely considered the worst Metroid game and, to many, is still the worst "canon" Metroid game, Return of Samus released for the original Game Boy in 1991.  It sees our protagonist, bounty hunter Samus Aran, on a mission to exterminate the Metroid species after the Galactic Federation discovers their native ecosystem on the planet SR-388, lest they once again fall into Space Pirate hands.  It was innovative for the series, introducing several now mainstays such as Samus' triple firing beam the Spazer, the Plasma Beam which can pass through enemies and obstacles, the Space Jump which allows Samus to continue jumping indefinitely in the air, and the Spider Ball and Spring Ball, two Morph Ball upgrades that allow Samus to climb walls and natively jump in the form, thereby freeing her movement.  Metroid II also introduced and defined how saving would go in a Metroid game, being the advent of proper "save rooms" which are scattered throughout the planet.

However, as innovative as Metroid II was, it was also one of the most divisive games in the series.  Contemporary critics largely seemed to agree that the Game Boy hardware was holding back what could've maybe been a great game, though they couldn't exactly agree on how exactly it was doing so.  The small screen size and how it limits what Samus can see, the large caverns full of darkness and nothingness, the heavier focus on run and gun gameplay, the spirtework, the music, basically every element of this game had been praised and criticized in equal measure.  No two reviewers could agree on why this game missed the mark, but all of them could agree that it did, that the game was flawed and broken in ways that stopped it at the finish line.  And as the series evolved, and hardware evolved alongside it, Metroid II seemed like it was doomed to fade into obscurity, the lost, outdated Metroid game whose entire contribution to the series could be explained away in a couple sentences of the opening crawl of Super Metroid, its much more successful baby sister.

But that wouldn't be the end for Metroid II.  Rather, Return of Samus would see a second life among the community, with many citing it as a flawed but spectacular Metroid entry that had been sadly overlooked by both critics and the fandom at large.  I remember, actually, the first time I ever heard anyone talk about Metroid II was a very old video by the now retired content creator dookieshed, where he talked a lot about how the game was an underrated gem and how it nailed the sci-fi/horror atmosphere that the Metroid series would later on adopt as a feature in titles like Fusion and Dread.  Return of Samus became the community's favorite child, the misunderstood and oft forgotten middle kid in a line of icons.  The true Metroid fan's favorite.  Literally the Majora's Mask of the series.  And as the cult classic of the series, it would get a lot of love from the community, being the center of so much discussion and reevaluation and, most importantly, reworking.  Remaking Metroid II is such a common practice within the Metroid community that the most famed version of Metroid II is literally called Another Metroid 2 Remake.

Nintendo themselves would even try their hand at remaking the Metroid series' most underrated title.  In 2017, a year after the release of AM2R, Nintendo would release the creatively titled "Metroid: Samus Returns", a remake of Return of Samus for the 3DS by the developer MercurySteam, who would later go on to develop the next mainline Metroid title, the long awaited Metroid Dread.  Obviously with a game that has gotten this much love and this many remakes/reimaginings, both fan-driven and official, it's inevitable that people would compare and contrast them, see how they're different and the different approaches to what Metroid IS to them.  But an interesting thing that is revealed in this discussion is that none of these games seem to replace the original Metroid II.  Unlike the previous Metroid remake and its predecessor, Zero Mission and the original Metroid, there is no consensus that any version of Metroid II has truly perfected it.  That no matter what the remake does, something about Metroid II keeps getting lost in translation.  And I kind of want to explore why that is by analyzing each of the three key versions of Metroid II, what its goals are, and why there is still something to be gained from the original Metroid II all these years later.

The Metroid IIs - Why You Can't Make a Perfected Version of the Most Imperfect Metroid

What every version of Metroid II has in common

Before we begin discussing their individual ideologies, I want to establish the things the three of them have in common.  Namely their basic plot and core design ideology as a result of said plot.  Each version of Metroid II starts with the same basic plot setup.  After Samus' victory against the Space Pirates on the Planet Zebes, she reported her findings to the Galactic Federation.  These findings included the discovery of the Space Pirates' secret weapon, the Metroids.  The Metroids are a species of parasites that can latch onto a being and drain them dry of their life force in a matter of seconds, their origin is completely unknown and it seems likely they were intentionally created as a bioweapon rather than being a naturally occurring species in the universe.  The Galactic Federation, anticipating the Space Pirates being able to regroup, becomes worried about the continued existence of Metroids in the universe and so sends Samus on her next mission: to find the home planet of the Metroids and drive them to extinction, a harsh but necessary action for the benefit of the universe.

This leads Samus to the remote planet of SR-388, an alien world that was so off the Federation's radar that it didn't even receive a proper name.  It has seemingly never be inhabited, the planet being a haven of as of yet unknown fauna.  It is also the "native" planet of the Metroids, them seemingly having been created here for some unknown purpose.  As Samus touches down, she begins her hunt, delving below the surface into the massive labyrinth of caverns within.  It's here that she discovers the horrifying truth: the Metroids here are not simply existing, they're thriving.  Growing.  Evolving.  Breeding.  The larval stage of the Metroids, the ones she encountered in her previous journey, were basically an appetizer.  These new Metroids are faster, meaner, and their previous weakness to her beam weaponry has been effectively eliminated.  While they are now more vulnerable to both concussive and explosive force, their bodies have grown a natural defensive physiology to protect their weak points.  And the longer Samus goes on, the more they grow, eventually becoming massive alien monsters that look more like Xenomorphs than Metroids.

And so Samus must fight.  She must wander this planet, hunting horrifying creatures that are more hunting her than the other way around.  All the while discovering the hidden past of the Metroids, revealing that this seemingly uncharted planet may not have been as uncharted as it seems.  She will discover the secrets of the people who raised her, that the wise and noble Chozo people, a beacon of peace and technological prowess, might not have been the people she believed them to be.  She is truly alone, the odds entirely against her, the monsters lurking in every wall and crevice.  This is where Metroid II really shines for a lot of people, this sense of loneliness, of isolation, the weight of sins long past.  It nails the atmosphere of a Metroid game, with many of its fans saying the series has yet to truly recapture how perfect Metroid II's atmosphere is.  Metroid II's core strength is being so unabashedly, so truly "Metroid".  It's almost the real template for the series' style, atmosphere, and narrative, which is surprising given the fact that it's a Game Boy sequel not a lot of people knew about or played.  Super may have been the perfector, but Metroid II was truly the originator of "Metroid".

Samus Returns

We'll start by talking about the first incarnation of Metroid II that I personally played, the official 3DS remake Metroid: Samus Returns.  The long awaited return of the Metroid series, after a 10 year gap of no mainline titles (technically 7 but at this point Other M is no longer considered a mainline title); Samus Returns was, as previously stated, the first game in the series to be developed by game developers MercurySteam.  It is part of a noted trend, one might even say it's a "strategy", of Nintendo hiring new developers to remake their older titles to see if they can be trusted to begin working on newer ones, i.e. Grezzo and the Zelda remakes they did before making Echoes of Wisdom.  It is perhaps most famous for being one of the last 3DS titles people even noticed came out as they were fully moving over to the Nintendo Switch, a game clearly released to show that Nintendo was continuing to support the 3DS so if the Switch also failed, they could refocus on the 3DS until they found another niche.

I will not mince words here, of the two notable remakes of this game, Samus Returns is arguably the bigger departure in design ideology.  MercurySteam was working with a dormant franchise in a genre that had evolved past its humble origins.  Metroid is famed for bringing the sprawling open worlds with roadblocks that require you to go around and complete other objectives to clear to the masses, but even by the time that its fourth entry, Metroid Fusion, had hit the market we were starting to see the genre grow past it.  The release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the game that makes up the "Vania" part of the Metroidvania, showed an insufficiency in the Metroid part of the formula.  That while Metroid nails the atmosphere and exploration aspects, its core gameplay can be, and often is, somewhat lacking.  Namely, the combat, which in Metroid is very slow and not especially dynamic.  Now I think it's part of the charm, Metroid makes you feel like you're a roaming tank firing off at enemies to make them dead.  But to a wider audience, the traditional Metroid game would probably be a bit lackluster.  Samus Returns was launching the same year as Hollow Knight, arguably the greatest Metroidvania to ever exist, and Hollow Knight has all the things Metroid has in spades AND good combat.

So MercurySteam was in a peculiar position with Samus Returns.  Metroid needed some modernization, something to make it feel like a Metroidvania that came out in 2017 and not 1993, but how to do that without losing the spirit of Metroid.  Their solution is, in my opinion, elegant.  Metroid: Samus Returns largely plays like a traditional Metroid title, maybe a bit faster than games past but it primarily has the same methodical gameplay of the past titles.  But, it does make the combat more interactive.  Samus now has a counter as one of her core mechanics, particularly beneficial in this game as the fauna of SR388 really like getting in close.  When enemies, and especially Metroids, go in for an attack they will briefly flash and make a sound effect sometimes.  This opens up a parry window, allowing Samus to counter said enemy and stun them.  This allows the bounty hunter to safely deal damage to or dispatch the enemy safely.

As well, she gets new abilities in the form of the Aeion system.  Aeion is a Chozo techno-mysticism that Samus has built into her suit and/or DNA, allowing her to unlock new abilities from interacting with ancient Chozo technology.  These abilities range from environmental (a scanner which reveals hidden destructible blocks and unveils part of the map) to defensive (a brief super armor) to offensive (a powerful rapid fire shot which decimates enemy HP).  One can easily criticize these powers for being a bit too good at times, and I think the criticism is fair, but it does really inform how Samus Returns wishes to be perceived.  A traditional Metroid for a modern era, creating a more dynamic and action-forward experience.

However, as you could imagine, this greater focus on dynamic gameplay makes Samus Returns quite a bit different from the game it's remaking.  While Samus Returns does retain much of the atmosphere and the same basic plot structure of Metroid II, it is a far more action-y affair than the traditional Metroid series had been thus far.  Its key design ideology is very much to create the best "game" that Metroid II can be, rather than creating the best version of Metroid II in the same way Zero Mission attempted to create the best version of Metroid.  It's a game that focuses on being as fun as possible to reintroduce the wider world to Metroid, and in my mind, it succeeds, I adore Samus Returns, it is my third favorite Metroid game and second favorite of the classic series.  However, it's undeniable that it loses part of Metroid II in its quest.

See, one of the things that makes Metroid II so special, makes its atmosphere so beloved, is how natural everything feels.  Samus is the invader on this closed alien ecosystem and she never knows how close or far from a Metroid she truly is.  She is hunted as she is hunting, as previously stated.  Any room could contain a Metroid and while the game does show you the discarded shells of Metroids who have reached different stages of maturity to indicate that you're in the right location, encounters with Metroids in II feel very sudden.  Like Samus is stumbling upon a bear in the forest, a wild animal living its life that she now must do battle with.  This is not the case with Samus Returns.

In Samus Returns, every Metroid feels so choreographed.  Metroid fights aren't as much random elements in the world as dedicated boss fights Samus is being led to.  They're always events when they happen, a cutscene of the Metroid slamming through the wall to attack Samus occurs transferring directly into the battle.  This causes a ripple effect across Samus Returns, the natural feel of the environment of SR-388 is just gone.  In its place a fun but very video game-y world  It's not a bad decision, I want to make clear, so often when people highlight changes in adaptation it's with the note of "oh, this version is better".  Samus Returns is doing what is best for its own goals, not just in trying to make a more modernized Metroid experience but also in creating an accessible one.  These are neither correct nor incorrect decisions, they are just decisions one made.

But, it does compromise the original atmosphere of Metroid II in making this decision.  It fails to be a definitive remake of Metroid II because what it wants to be is so different from what Metroid II wanted to be.  Again, I think Samus Returns is brilliant, it's one of my favorite Metroid games and, honestly, one of my favorite games of all time.  Settled nicely in slot 90 (for now).  But in trying to be more action-y, more dynamic, more modernized, it doesn't become "THE Metroid II".  It's simply A Metroid II.  It makes big swings in its ideology that create what is probably the best "game" of the three, but if you are looking for loyalty to the source material, is the worse of the two adaptations of it.

AM2R

Now let's talk about the one that's the more faithful of the two, at least spiritually.  AM2R is a critically acclaimed and masterfully done fan rendition of Metroid II.  Attempting to actually do for Metroid II what Zero Mission did for the original Metroid, AM2R's core ideology seems to be "enhance, not recontextualize".  It's not like a direct remake by any means, it adds a considerable amount to the game, including a new B plot, new areas, and most notably a bunch of new lore.  If anything it fleshes out the history of SR388 MORE than Samus Returns did.  Lore that is all fanon, obviously, but it's still really cool to see, especially since for a series that is mostly about a solo warrior wandering through dark caverns and facilities to fight monsters, there's been a surprising lore focus.  The Prime series taught us that Metroid fans love lore, even if it doesn't feel like they should given the core ideal behind these games is "our main character is completely alone on deserted alien planets".

Now it's not entirely fair to say that AM2R's desire is "enhance, not recontextualize" as there are some very distinctive parts of this game that do go deep into interpretation on what the Metroid's purpose was.  But I think that the key idea driving AM2R is to make the modern player understand what it felt like to play Metroid II back in the day.  Its key ideals are preserving the atmosphere, of keeping that aspect of "Metroids are just as much hunting Samus as the other way around" intact.  It's a very hostile world, a world of creatures who have evolved into monsters after billions of years of isolation.  It does even lead into the horror aspects of Metroid more than Nintendo ever would on their own, the parallels between Metroid and Alien are drawn attention to and utilized for great effect.  Even if AM2R is not simply "Metroid II but in a more updated gameplay style", it does a lot to preserve the oppressive atmosphere and unique design ideals that make Metroid II so beloved.

But it is also a remake that does update Metroid II into a more updated gameplay style.  I don't know if this started out as a romhack of Metroid Zero Mission, the at the time most recent 2D Metroid as depressing as that is to say.  But it keeps a lot of Zero Mission's DNA, its visual style and core gameplay are very much borrowed from the GBA title.  This leads to a lot of very important, nay, crucial gameplay ideas.  For instance, being able to just switch on your missiles instead of having to hold down the button is obviously very important for a game where you must use those missiles constantly, as Metroids are only vulnerable to the concussive force of the Missiles.  It also adds some of Samus' missing powerups from the original Metroid II, most notably her iconic Screw Attack and her wide variety of beams.  But unlike Samus Returns, it doesn't modernize it to such a drastic extreme.  AM2R is what most Metroid fans probably think of when they think of safe, comfortable Metroid gameplay.

However, while I find AM2R incredibly fascinating and compelling and think that it probably is as close to a perfect Metroid II remake as we're going to get, it too is missing something.  And ironically I think what it is missing from Metroid II comes in what its core goal is.  AM2R wants to sell you what it felt like to play Metroid II back in the day, to enter this truly alien world with its deep atmosphere and its vast caverns.  But the feeling of playing Metroid II is far grander than what Metroid II actually is and as such, AM2R also cannot truly replace it.

For me, a major part of it is that AM2R is so inspired by both the horror vibes Metroid II has as well as actual horror films and video games.  I made the comparison with Alien before and I think that's pretty accurate to AM2R's general ideology.  It feels like a Metroid that is trying to bring that connection with the film that inspired it to the forefront.  There's a lot of body horror elements in AM2R, they visibly show the Metroids molting and growing throughout their life cycles, they literally use gross, flopping bug limbs as an indicator of when a Metroid is utilizing a smarter AI than previously encountered Metroids.  They also lean very hard into the darkness, there are times where you will be literally running around in the dark only to be assaulted by a Metroid who was lurking within.  Which especially seems Xenomorph-esque given the more monstrous designs of adult Metroids.

However, as you could probably imagine, I think that these decisions, these attempts to make it more of the sci-fi horror that its cult following always said it was cause AM2R to miss the same thing that Samus Returns misses.  Metroids aren't events, aren't staged like video game boss fights but they also aren't treated as natural creatures in this world.  They're the monsters that lurk in the dark, horror movie bad guys instead of predators that naturally roam this world.  Because it's so caught up in trying to capture what Metroid II felt like, it misses a key aspect of what Metroid II is.  Again, that's not a bad thing, it is simply an adaptational choice.  But it's one that makes it, just like Samus Returns, A version of Metroid II rather than THE version of Metroid II, at least in my opinion.

Why You Can't Remake Metroid II "Perfectly"

So why is this?  Why is it that despite two incredibly excellent remakes that, while both attempting to accomplish different things, still seem to be enhanced versions of this game, we haven't been able to create a version that truly replaces the original?  By all accounts this should be easy, Metroid II is an incredibly archaic Game Boy game, it should be one of the easiest entries in the series to replace with a later remake.  And yet, both of the big remakes of Metroid II fail to capture something specific about it, the natural feeling that Metroid II has that makes it so special?  In my honest opinion, the reason why Metroid II is such a hard game to "perfect" without losing something is the thing that makes it so in need of a remake.  I think Metroid II's biggest strength is being an early Game Boy title.

The Game Boy, as fantastic as it was, also was an infamously underpowered system.  It didn't even play in color initially, opting instead for different shades of what could only be described as "pea green".  While there are tons of truly evergreen titles on the system, it is now a very disappointing library to return to as a lot of games are simply just "poorer versions of console titles".  A lot of games had to compromise a lot to fit onto the Game Boy, and while at the time players were okay with said compromises if it meant getting to game on the go, it's undeniable that a lot of original Game Boy games feel really bad to play now.  Especially the earlier releases, games that didn't really know what worked on the hardware or, indeed, how to work the hardware at all.  I'm sure most people reading this have played an early Game Boy entry in a beloved series and hated the process the entire time.  Hi Super Mario Land.

However, I think that it is these technical limitations and this inexperience with the hardware that makes Metroid II what it is.  The dark, oppressive atmosphere that players felt in SR388 comes from how uncanny the game is.  It's weirdly quiet and very empty, a world of tight passages and small caverns.  A world that feels truly uncharted and uninhabited.  And while I'm sure this was an intentional decision to design it this way, it is undeniable that it came with great consideration for the Game Boy hardware.  Doing a big world just wasn't feasible, having a lot of music wasn't feasible, and having to account for these hurdles creates the very oppressive atmosphere of Metroid II.  This world exists because of the Game Boy.

This extends to the very natural feel of coming across Metroids, of just having them be parts of the environment.  I'm sure that, if the hardware had permitted it, we might've seen something akin to Samus Returns with the Metroid encounters.  Each Metroid being a specific boss fight and each encounter being an "event".  But the hardware limitations didn't permit that even if they wanted it, so Metroids are now a common element of the world that Samus simply stumbles upon.  I wouldn't be surprised if the sheer amount of Metroids was itself adjusting for a hardware limitation, there being 40+ Metroids to hunt rather than a handful.  It's a way to reuse assets and keep your game much smaller, but it also contributes heavily to Metroid II's vibe.  Having a population of Metroids makes SR388 feel more natural, sells the alien world that Samus is the true invader on that much more.

However, this is seen as outdated by the majority of players.  Metroid II has always had its fans, obviously, it probably has the most dedicated individual fanbase of any Metroid game period.  But it is incredibly difficult to make a game that has this same ideology anymore.  Especially in a franchise attempting to appeal to the widest audience possible, having this very specific, distinctive atmosphere, a world you just feel like you're thrown in and told to go hunting, it can feel obtuse and archaic.  Both remakes of Metroid II lose something of Metroid II because they have to.  Because the kind of game design that makes Metroid II so magical is also not acceptable anymore by a wider audience.  The game industry has changed, audiences have changed.  Samus Returns and AM2R may never replace what truly works about Metroid II, but that's good.  Because the changes they make, the ideas they bring to the source material, allow the spirit of Metroid II to survive.  There can never be a "perfect" Metroid II, but I think three flawed but ultimately brilliant Metroid IIs is more than a fair trade-off.

Games I Cleared in May - 2026 Edition

 Check out the first entry in this series for additional context on what these are and what the nuances of my Game Clearing is~

Game 1: Sutte Hakkun - Beat

Something I really enjoy doing is having a sort of "chill game" alongside my longer game clearing projects.  You'll notice that a lot of these have started popping up on the blog as of late, mostly because of a renewed NSO subscription.  It has been a lot of retro games, a lot of puzzle games, this is the slot that roguelikes would slot into if I had any on Switch that were interesting to me and I could like play in bed.  Which I do, I've been doing low key runs of Necrodancer on the side for a while now.  But currently I've been working through the retro games on NSO, picking out anything that looks neat to me and that I've maybe heard about.  Which brought me to Sutte Hakkun, a puzzle game that I've heard is quite the sleeper hit on SNES/Super Famicom.

Sutte Hakkun is a puzzle platformer where you play as Hakkun.  Hakkun is a tiny cloud/hummingbird guy who lives on a series of islands connected by rainbow bridges.  One day, the rainbow bridges are broken apart, their shards scattered across the islands.  Hakkun, being the hero of our tale, must go around the islands solving the 100 puzzles which are guarding the 100-ish shards, some levels have more than one but the majority of them only have one.  As you progress on this task, you unlock more islands and, as such, more puzzles, ultimately only needing 75 to unlock the final area and the final set of puzzles.  As you might imagine, the puzzles get more and more difficult, with them starting simple and easy and very forgiving and ending up so precise that any mistake has you hitting that reload checkpoint and/or death button.

Hakkun's ability to solve the puzzles comes from his distinctive hummingbird-esque nose.  Hakkun is capable of utilizing his nose to interact with a variety of elements in the stage.  The primary usage of this is moving blocks, Hakkun can absorb certain blocks and then place them down in other areas.  And while he has absorbed a block, he takes on all the qualities of a block.  Similarly, he can interact with the rare enemies in the game, the Rokkun and Makkun.  Not the Blokkun though, which are sentient version of the blocks who can't be absorbed and can only be pushed with Hakkun's nose.  He must use all these elements, shuffling them around each individual puzzle, until he finds a path to the solution.  Aiding him on his quest are vials of potion in three distinct colors, red, blue, and yellow.  The most common usage for these potions is to imbue the blocks with different movement properties, red being vertical, blue being horizontal, and yellow being diagonal.  But they interact with the other elements in the puzzles too for unique effects.

And that's kind of just what Sutte Hakkun is.  It's an incredibly fun puzzle game, it's not too difficult but also not too easy, it makes you really think about puzzles and it's a master at making the solution obvious but making the mechanisms through which you achieve that solution obtuse.  I will say though, I'm not super plussed by how many puzzles in the late game just go "you made one mistake so now you have to completely reset the puzzle instead of having a method to work your way back to an open game state".  But it's a very fun, very solid puzzle game that I'm glad I checked out.  If you have NSO, definitely check out Sutte Hakkun if you need a puzzle game, it's genuinely a hidden gem.  8/10

Game 2: Claymates - DNF

Claymates is one of those games that has lived in my memory for a long time.  I have never played it myself, this isn't one of those "I played a random game growing up and then lost it, can the internet help me find it" deals.  I knew exactly what Claymates was this entire time.  A content creator I watched from the early internet days kind of made a career off of playing these sort of off-kilter, left of the dial games.  She is how I learned of E.V.O. Search for Eden and actually Luigi's Mansion at a time when that game wasn't very famous.  Also LOST: Via Domus, meaning she was my introduction to the LOST franchise.  One of the games she played was Claymates, this weird 2D platformer with a claymation visual style that I always wanted to play because of how unique it looked but never had a way to play it properly.  Luckily for me, Claymates got put up on NSO.  Unluckily for me, it's kind of bad!

Claymates is a 2D platformer of the type that games like Bubsy, discussed in one of my previous entries, occupied.  Sonic the Hedgehog had been a big hit and a lot of people were attempting to cash in on the mascot platformer gold rush.  Claymates was the now-defunct game studio "Interplay's" first foray into this market, before their later, far more successful and far more beloved entry into the genre, Earthworm Jim.  In Claymates you play as Clayton Putty, a young boy whose father, Professor Putty, has developed a shapeshifting serum which, when consumed, will transform the user into animals.  But the evil witch doctor Jobo appears suddenly and demands the serum.  When Professor Putty resists, Jobo turns Clayton into a ball of clay and then absconds with the serum and the professor.  Clayton must then follow the witch doctor across the world, fighting his minions in Oceania, Japan, Africa (it's as bad as you expect) until eventually cornering the Witch Doctor in the place all 90s mascot platformers end, in space.

As mentioned previously, Claymates is a Sonic the Hedgehog-style platformer, valuing large levels with numerous paths to approach them and a general sense of speed.  What makes Claymates stand out is the aforementioned serum.  When Jobo flew off with the professor, he accidentally scattered drops of the serum across the world.  This was fortunate for Clayton, as he can use these serum drops to transform his clay body into one of five animals: a mouse that can speed through levels, a cat that can climb walls, a bird that can briefly fly after a running start, a fish that can easily traverse through water, and a chipmunk who can throw acorns as projectiles.  This is not the only gameplay style to the game, though, as when you beat a level you are thrown back into the overworld where you will be faced with a puzzle: two or more robots have left the level with you and they will automatically move about the area.  Clayton must push rocks and carts around to put the robots on a path where they will pick up the axes or bombs laying about the area and then head towards the road blocks that they must then clear.

I really wanted to like Claymates, because I do enjoy its unique claymation visual style and its interesting dichotomy of platforming and puzzle levels.  And I like the way it handles power-ups, with these transformations that each have their own strengths and weaknesses.  But it is a truly awful platformer.  Much like a lot of the post-Sonic platformers, it's designed to be a visual or stylistic leap forward for the medium and the gameplay is unfortunately secondary.  It's one of those games that reviewed very well at launch because, back in the day, reviewers were very positive about games that visually innovated.  Bubsy got good reviews.  But unfortunately Claymates' platforming is just really bad, it's stiff and way too precise for a game that also wants you to gain as much speed and momentum as this one.  Like, in general the speed of this style of game is counterintuitive to its level design, but this one is REAL BAD about it.  It's a shame, I was hoping that this one would be a super neat hidden gem that validated how much headspace it has occupied for all these years.  But alas.  4.1/10

Game 3: Trine 2 - Beat

Yet another game, or in this case game series I know about from a content creator whose name has been lost to time.  Trine is a very cool but very obscure series of puzzle platformers built around the idea of utilizing three classic RPG tropes, a wizard, a thief, and a knight, who through interacting with a mystical object have had their souls intertwined and as such exist as one entity, switching between who is occupying their shared existence at a time.  You must use their unique skills, one being puzzle based, one being combat based and one being movement based, to traverse the levels, solve puzzles, defeat enemies and figure out a way to get yourselves unbound.  But the artifact, the "Trine" will always come back, unifying out three heroes at times of peril to once again save the land.

Trine 2 picks up some time after the first game.  Amadeus, in the first game a flirtatious and unserious wizard, has settled down and started a family, living a provincial life in a tiny town by the kingdom's forest.  One night, though, he is awoken in his sleep by a bright light and, following it, reunites with the Trine and his compatriot Pontius.  Pontius was once a drunken and dim knight of no notoriety, but now has made his way to the captain of the guard.  Pontius explains that the kingdom is in peril, massive plants have begun to overtake the world and the trio must reunite to find out who is behind this magical malady.  They then both find Zoya, the thief, who now makes her living not by stealing for herself but stealing to bring justice upon the rich.  The three of them reunited, they delve straight into the mystical forest to find the villain at the center of all of this.  Along the way, they are beset by the goblin army, who have taken advantage of the chaos to expand their territory.  And by the end, the trio will uncover a lost history of the kingdom, one which reveals the hidden lore of the royal family.

So the way Trine works, as previously stated, is that essentially each member of the trio is built around one aspect of the game.  Amadeus is notable for lacking any offensive capabilities at all, outside of dropping objects on the opponents, which is unreliable.  He can't even cast fireball.  Instead his skills are entirely built around solving puzzles, utilizing conjuration and telekinesis to make boxes and planks as well as hit switches.  Zoya has some combat capabilities and, in a pinch, will probably be your back up if Pontius ever gets overwhelmed, utilizing her bow to pick off enemies from afar.  But moreover her thing is movement, her grappling hook is the backbone of the games' platforming, allowing you a lot of freedom in how to get around obstacles.  And Pontius is entirely built around combat, he very rarely, if ever, contributes to the puzzles or platforming in the way the other two do but he mows down enemies like it's nothing.  If Pontius ever falls in battle, you are likely just done, you need to get back to a checkpoint to revive him because he is crucial.

The most notable thing about Trine is, in general, how pretty these games are.  It doesn't seem very notable nowadays but when Trine was new, there weren't a lot of indie games of this standard of visual quality.  The Trine games originally came out at a time where the majority of indie games were primarily made with pixel art and usually meant to replicate a classic style of game that was no longer made, and/or provide commentary on classic genre tropes in a deconstructionist way.  Trine was one of the very early games that tried to be very modern in its aesthetic, and I think it works really well.  It has this very dreamy, beautiful look to it, like a storybook come to life in full 3D and the second game just maintains its signature beautiful style.  I don't know if it really adds to it, but it doesn't have to as Trine 1 was already very strong visually.

Unfortunately the actual level design is not up to snuff with the rest of the game.  Like, it's fine, it does its job, but I think the issue with how Trine 2 carries itself is that it can't decide whether or not it wants the player to be able to find a solution with each character on their own or if it wants them to have to work the trio in tandem.  Some puzzles and platforming challenges are remarkably easy, usually only needing Zoya's grappling hook to get past without any other contributions, while others are just complex to a point that doing them with even all three characters contributing is difficult.  The puzzles are adjusted more around multiplayer as well, meaning there is a lot of having to move way too quickly on them if you are playing solo.  Thankfully it doesn't really matter if you fail at any point in this game because checkpoints are plentiful and can be accessed incredibly easily should you lose a character to a battle or a violent puzzle.  7.6/10

Game 4: Donkey Kong Land 2 - Beat

This one was so disappointing.  So I really liked Donkey Kong Land 1, probably more than I was expecting to.  I kind of expected it to just be an inferior port of DKC1 and, although it definitely starts out that way, Donkey Kong Land very quickly evolves into its own entity with its own flavor.  It even became a surprisingly early entry in the series that attempts to connect the modern DK with the classic Arcade style, ending the game in a big city setting.  And so I was excited to continue the Donkey Kong Land trilogy, hoping that the later games kept up this momentum of being wholly unique.  Unfortunately, that was not the case for Donkey Kong Land 2.  Donkey Kong Land 2 IS an inferior port of its console counterpart, DKC2.  It has some original levels but, on the whole, it is an attempt to properly demake the game for Game Boy.  This is especially unfortunate as, of the classic DKC trilogy, I think DKC2 is the worst and it's not particularly close.

Donkey Kong Land 2, much like its console counterpart, takes place sometime after the first game.  Donkey Kong has been kidnapped by King K. Rool leading Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie to mount a rescue of the big ape.  Much like DKC2, the game starts at the ending area of the first game, K. Rool's pirate ship, and you instead go to K. Rool's home turf to get your friend back.  Although the individual levels can be different in DKL2, it is functionally a near identical game to DKC2, porting over much of its levels, all of its worlds, and just its general structure.  It's weird because at the time this was probably such a cool thing, they effectively got DKC2 on the Game Boy without having to compromise too totally much, it feels like a portable DKC2.  Nowadays, with both games being equally accessible and, moreover, accessible portably thanks to the Switch family of systems?  This is just a waste of time.

That being said, I do kind of like Donkey Kong Land 2 more than I did like Donkey Kong Country 2.  This is a pretty low bar, mind, I don't particularly like Donkey Kong Country 2.  Even though it isn't the Donkey Kong game I want to play the least, I deeply and truly despise Donkey Kong Country Returns, it's the one I find least compelling.  DKC2 to me just doesn't feel very interesting, it has this bad habit of just forgoing the world theming to have generic "Donkey Kong" level themes and I actually think it's like easily the worst soundtrack of any Donkey Kong game.  Heresy I know.  And while all those problems are still in DKL2, I think the fact that it's DKC2 on the Game Boy kind of gives it a certain charm that makes me like it more.  I don't think it is a better game than DKC2, it has literally all the problems that game while also being objectively inferior, and honestly I don't think it's as good as DKL1 even though it's objectively the better game just because it is a worse version of a SNES game instead of its own entity.  But if given the choice between Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Land 2, I just find DKL2 more endearing overall.  7/10

Game 5: Double Dragon - Beat

Fair warning, there are about to be a lot of beat 'em ups on the NES in these entries.  I know, I'm sorry, we're going to get so many games that no one really has much to say on anymore but they're all like.  "Important".  They're also just very easy games to justify me playing, they're perfect to just pick up and do a full playthrough before bed or while I'm eating lunch or whatever and there are a lot of really significant ones on NSO that I've just never played.  So bear with me, we have a lot of "dead space" on these posts coming up, especially with regards to the Double Dragon franchise and it's sort of sister franchise, Battletoads.  I'm working my way up to Battletoads/Double Dragon on SNES.

Double Dragon is, possibly, the most famous beat 'em up ever made.  Its now iconic intro has been immortalized and recontextualized and critiqued to death.  In the NES version, you play as Billy Lee, one of  a pair of martial artists in a crime filled city which may or may not be the same series from the other iconic NES brawler, River City Ransom.  At the beginning of the game Billy girlfriend, Marian, gets kidnapped by the Black Warriors gang and Billy must set off on a quest to rescue her, fighting through waves of the Black Warriors' goons to eventually get to their boss and rescue your girlfriend.  It's a very simple plot that is bolstered by the dramatic twist that the final boss is your own twin brother, Jimmy Lee, who has arrived at your moment of triumph to fight you for Marian's hand.

Double Dragon holds up surprisingly well in the modern day.  It's very simple, which I think contributes as to why, Double Dragon is to beat 'em ups what Dragon Quest is to RPGs.  Just a very simple, platonic ideal of the genre and its game design.  But it does have its own flair.  But it does have some serious depth in the form of its level up system.  Double Dragon has a very interesting level up system, where as you go along you will gain experience from defeating foes and, the more experience you gain, the more of Billy's moveset is unlocked.  It is not the only beat 'em up of this era to adopt a level up system, there's a very famous one we'll be getting to later on this list that also had vague RPG mechanics, but to spoil how I felt about that game in comparison; I think between the two Double Dragon's level-up system just simply holds up much better.  It's far simpler and less obtuse and I think in terms of NES beat 'em ups, it makes Double Dragon hold up very well even if it is just the platonic ideal of a beat 'em up.  I liked Double Dragon, didn't love it but definitely did like it. 7.3/10

Game 6: Star Fox 2 - Beat

I don't like Star Fox.  Of the "core 8" Nintendo franchises as shown in the Super Smash Bros. series, Star Fox is the one I got to the latest and is, by a very large margin, the one I like the least.  Which, side note, let's be honest those aren't the core 8 anymore, like, if they did Smash Bros. today that core 8 would probably be Mario, Pikachu, Villager, Link, Inkling, Kirby, Donkey Kong and like, maybe Olimar?  Star Fox has always been the oddball to me, a series of super arcadey, very short shmups that are more designed to show the power of the hardware than anything.  Which may explain why it went to the wayside for so many years come to think of it.  But with the announcement of a "new" Star Fox game and the fact that I did kind of write off the series after its first entry and some multiplayer stuff forever ago, I decided to give it another go.  No promises on if I'm going to continue Star Fox, I should probably play OG 64, but for now, let's talk about Star Fox 2.

Star Fox 2 takes place some time after the original Star Fox.  The Star Fox crew has been once again hired by the military of Corneria to defeat the forces of the mad scientist Andross, who after his defeat in the first game has shored up his resources and is now launching an all out assault on the solar system which Corneria occupies.  Now joined by new members Miyu and Fay, the six-man team Star Fox must launch a defensive military campaign in the solar system, stopping Andross' assault and pushing him back.  All the while having to combat a rival faction of mercenary space pilot, Team Star Wolf, who serve as Andross' hired goons and are a darker, more violent, more brutal version of Team Star Fox.

I would like to first state how interesting I find Star Fox 2.  Star Fox 2 is a rather famous game in gaming history circles, the basically finished, ready to ship SNES title that got canned at the last minute as Nintendo was shifting their focus entirely towards the upcoming N64, which had a superior Star Fox title in development concurrently with Star Fox 2.  It would then release through leaked builds over the years until finally being released on the SNES Classic microconsole and then, subsequently, the Nintendo Switch Online service.  It's a very fascinating piece of gaming history, one which on its own makes it a worthwhile game to experience.  But also, playing it, I have to question how accurate this narrative surrounding the game is.

Star Fox 2 is a game that feels unfinished.  Star Fox games skew short, mind, they're very arcade-y affairs that are designed for players to play over and over, learning the best routes, finding secrets, and getting the optimal ranks.  So it not being that long isn't super surprising.  That being said, Star Fox 2 just feels like it's lacking in content.  Like what we've been told is that Star Fox 2 was around 90-95% finished when it was canned, basically ready to ship, but it feels like half a game.  The Normal mode gameplay consists of like 3 very short levels, a couple dogfights, and then the final boss.  It is a 20-30 minute experience depending on how quick and efficient you are.  It feels to me like the game was probably in a "finished state" but was lacking in serious content and probably needed to be fleshed out more, and was cancelled before they could do that fleshing out.  And then what was there was just cleaned up and released by Nintendo later on.

That being said, I actually like Star Fox 2 more than I did Star Fox 1.  I feel like the rail-shooter stuff is actually kind of dull in the way Star Fox does it, just kind moving forward on a track firing at things that just spawn in.  I played KH1 as a kid and so I always associate this kind of gameplay with the worst parts of my childhood games.  Star Fox 2 instead focuses more on dogfights and incorporates strategy elements into the game, having the player manage the team as they have to fight their way through Andross' fleet while protecting Corneria.  It's definitely, as I've mentioned before, probably not as deep as they wanted it to be and I think that ultimately the game is still not very good, but I think Star Fox 2 has more interesting and compelling ideas to it than the previous game and honestly, I'm surprised there hasn't been an attempt to revive Star Fox 2 in some way?  Star Fox is now infamous for not being able to let go of the Lylat Wars storyline but I think this works super well and I think doing a full remake and fleshing out 2's ideas would really benefit the series.  But also I'm not the person to ask, I'm literally only playing Star Fox games because they are effectively free.  5.7/10

Game 7: Strange Horticulture - Beat

Finally back to my wheelhouse: really strange indie games that I eventually make all my friends obsessed with.  If there is any type of game that is an instant play for me, it is a supernatural mystery puzzle game.  It's an oversaturated genre at this point, mind, as a lot of genres that get popular in the indie space are.  Don't ask me about how I feel about deckbuilder roguelikes unless you want me to get on a whole tangent.  But it's one of my favorite oddly specific game genres, I love these weird occult indie puzzle games and I'm always glad to play one of them.  Especially when said puzzle game is all about deciphering cryptic clues and descriptions to progress.  See my Gaming Diary on Return of the Obra Dinn.  And Strange Horticulture is very much in-line with that sort of game.  I'm so glad to finally play this one, y'all.

Strange Horticulture is set in the small provincial town of Undermere, one of many towns, cities, forts, and castles that pepper a diverse country side.  In it, you play as a fresh faced shopkeeper of an occult horticulture shop named "Strange Horticulture", a shop recently inherited by the protagonist's late uncle.  Strange Horticulture is a supplier of all sorts of medicinal plants and fungus, stuff used in traditional medicine, magical enchantments, or occult rituals.  The protagonist, however, is very new to this world and knows very little about the plants in their shop.  Luckily, their uncle has left them a book of various plants, one that is missing numerous pages but can be used to aid in identifying the various plants and fungi that the shop stocks.  But something strange is occurring in the countryside, the patrons of their shop speak of weird rituals and ancient evils best left sealed.  A murderer hides among them, and a ritual is being conducted to awaken an ancient god who will threaten to destroy the world.  Will the protagonist aid in stopping this ritual, or will they become bound to it?  The player's choices will decide the fate of this land.  And also you can pet your cat!

The best thing about Strange Horticulture is, genuinely, the gameplay loop of identifying plants and/or clues to find new plants.  Customers do not tell you directly "hey, I want this plant", instead they leave with you either a name (scientific or common) or a description of what the plant is/does for you to go off.  At which point, the player must look through their book of herbology to find a plant matching the description, however, the plant is not just on the page.  The page will give you a description of the plant and a drawing of some key feature of the plant, which you will then use to look through the plants on the shelf to find one matching the description.  It's a very fun gameplay loop, and one that always leads to more plants either being identified or being added to your shelf as, rather than simply paying you, customers will typically gift you either new plants or new pages for your herbology book.  Or, if they don't, they will instead gift you a clue that, when solved will allow you to go out into the world and find a new plant.  It's a game designed to make the player feel clever, and I love that as a goal.

The mystery is also really compelling.  You are visited by a lot of similar players on the day to day and you must piece together what is going on by giving them their plants and listening to their stories.  The "culprit" in the mystery is kind of obvious unfortunately, there is only one person who talks of the events other people see as "prophetic visions", but there is a deeper mystery going on regarding an apocalyptic death cult and their obsession with plants that the player can become privvy too as well.  It's a very fun plot for this game and while it's not the most deep or compelling mystery, it is a very nice throughline that leaves the player wanting more.

If there is any criticism I can level at Strange Horticulture, it's that I think it's lacking in a sense of tension.  Like, the game is very relaxing, you can do literally everything at your own pace, but I think it's maybe to a fault sometimes.  You can sit there with a customer for infinite time solving their request and the punishment system for misidentifying plants is, honestly, pretty generous.  Usually the clues are put together in such a way that it could only apply to a couple plants anyways, so it's really a matter of losing a coin flip on the more ambiguous identifications.  There's a logistical reason for this ability to take infinite time, you will sometimes have to go find a plant in the world to fulfill an order and so having a time limit would be a problem.  You'd just fail out of turn.  But still, I'd like for there to be more stakes.  This is still an amazing little puzzle game though, I'm a big fan of it, it's a top 10 contender for this year. 8.8/10

Game 8: Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble - Beat

It is sometimes impressive how committed Nintendo, and the games industry as a whole, were to trying to get motion controls to work in the past.  From essentially the start of the video game industry, everyone was seemingly trying to make the idea of "gaming without the need for buttons" to work.  And it's not hard to see why, having to play around with a controller is by far the biggest hurdle to getting into video games.  For non-gamers, it is the most intimidating part.  As we saw with the early success of the Wii, if you remove that aspect, if you instead focus in on just movement as control, you can tap into a whole ecosystem of people who would enjoy video games but can't get past the complexity of traditional controls.  And also controlling a game with motion just feels cool, everyone imagines actually being able to punch to fight Mike Tyson or being able to realistically fly a plane in something like Pilotwings.  And while everyone has tried, no one has had the same consistent success as the big N.  Among their earliest forays into motion controls, however, is this game right here.  Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, all the way back on the Game Boy Color.

Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is a puzzle platformer game unique for its motion control gameplay.  Kirby, everyone's favorite pink puffball, is unable to move "normally" in this game, instead moving about stages in a ball form.  The plot explanation for this being that King Dedede has been causing mischief in Dream Land again, setting up pinball bumpers around the land for some unknown goal.  Basic Kirby stuff, Kirby stories are very simple.  This is ragebaiting, I am ragebaiting the people who care a lot about Kirby stories to comment about it.  Using a series of accelerometers, or more likely the gyroscopes in the Joy-Cons if you're playing today, you tilt the Game Boy/controller to get Kirby to move about the stage, flicking it to jump over obstacles and using the buttons to solve puzzles and interact with objects.  It works really well, it probably worked even better on the Game Boy as the Joy-Con is famously finnicky and needs to be resynced way more often than it probably should.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, it just ends up going the way of a lot of motion control games.  Especially older motion control games, which is what it is.  The early levels of Tilt 'n' Tumble are very fun, breezy and control very well.  If you were to play the first couple worlds only, you'd probably adore this game.  I sure did.  But as the game increases in complexity and the levels require more precise motion from the player, it starts to get far more frustrating than rewarding.  I'd be curious to see how many people who love motion control games are people who really value a first impression whereas people who dislike them are people who are more likely to have the last notes leave a bitter taste in their mouth.  I am moreso the latter, I tend to care about whether a game continues to be good rather than if it starts good.  To me, Tilt 'n' Tumble is just fine.  I liked the early stages and all the cool concepts that they did with this control scheme but in the late game I was just like "I don't really want to play this anymore".  6.1/10

Game 9: Psycho Dream - Beat

There has, historically, been a lot of criticism about the Nintendo Switch Online retro games service.  It's really funny as during the WiiU era, everyone was clamoring for Nintendo to stop doing a Virtual Console and instead do a sort of retro game streaming service and now that that's what they have essentially done, people are mad about it.  A big reason why is, likely, that because Nintendo isn't offering a direct revenue source and instead is paying licensing fees to every publisher, way fewer publishers are willing to play ball with the service.  Why would Capcom put up Mega Man 1-6 on NES Online when they could just sell the Legacy Collection on the same console, y'know?  But I actually like this decision.  NSO has so many games that no one would ever care about on a VC service, tons of obscure old Jaleco and Natsume titles and a lot of odd imports that wouldn't be likely to make it onto a service where people choose the games they want to buy.  And one such title is Psycho Dream, a game that I'm glad made it over because I really like it.

Psycho Dream is a Japanese-only sidescrolling hack-and-slash from the company that made the originally Megami Tensei game, as well as the Valis series, which it shares a lot of gameplay with.  It takes place in an alternate 1980s Japan where virtual reality films, films which exist as worlds for people to live in instead of just linear plots moving forward, have taken ahold of the culture.  The Japanese government has, in response to a trend of young people getting so engaged with their virtual worlds that they abandon real life, created an elite task force to go inside these worlds and free them from the virtual reality before they deal irreparable damage to their physical bodies.  Psycho Dream follows one such case, the case of Yuki Sayaka, a seventeen year old girl who had lived in the virtual world for three straight days and, due to pre-existing medical issues, is likely to die within the day if the task force doesn't get to her in time.  But the virtual world will not give her up so easily, the film has become corrupted as the monstrous beings within have captured Yuki and refuse to let her go.

I am not going to try and sit here and convince y'all that Psycho Dream is a better game than it actually is.  It does not have the best reputation, both concurrent and retrospective reviews tend to rate it as an incredibly average 16-bit hack-and-slash.  And it's honestly pretty easy, while you will struggle in the early game no doubt, once you unlock the main characters' ultimate forms you should breeze through the entire rest of the game.  What makes Psycho Dream so interesting, however, is its distinctive visual style.  Psycho Dream has a very surreal visual style, clearly inspired by J-Horror and Japanese Sci-Fi properties in general.  The contrast between the standard urban Japanese environments and the supernatural creatures that are invading them really gives this game its own unique flavor that, in my mind, causes it to hold up better than some of the other forgotten 16-bit era hack-and-slashes.  It's much worse than other games in its genre, don't get me wrong, but I think it has aged like wine.  It's very much a vibe.  Also, it has an insane pull for a final boss theme, like, truly unhinged.  7.7/10

Game 10: Battletoads - DNF

I do, indeed, have Battletoads.  Battletoads is one of the most infamous games of all time, a tough as nails retro beat 'em up from superstar developer Rareware.  It was their "big hit" before they became a big deal, the "Walkin on the Sun" of their catalog.  It's undeniably a classic, but it's also a very intimidating game to play.  Battletoads is up there with Ninja Gaiden as one of the classical examples of "NES hard", games which utilize grueling difficulty to engage players.  There's a longstanding theory that I'm unsure has ever been validated that this was mostly done to combat rentals, a common practice back in the day.  If a game is exceptionally difficult to beat, it becomes nigh impossible to beat it on a typical game rental period, incentivizing the player to purchase the game to have a better chance at beating it.  I don't think it's a coincidence that Battletoads lacks any save/password system, forcing players to start from the beginning.  But I also wanted to give Battletoads a proper shot, not only as a classic NES game but part of my quest to clear the Battletoads and Double Dragon games to where I can eventually play Battletoads/Double Dragon.

Battletoads is an attempt to cash in on the boom of anthropomorphic martial artists that dominated the late 80s/early 90s, kickstarted by the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  In it, you play as the Battletoads, a trio of alien warriors who resemble human-sized frogs as they run afoul of the evil Dark Queen on a mission to escort the Princess Angelica to her home planet.  The Dark Queen manages to kidnap Angelica, as well as fellow Battletoad Pimple, and hides the two away in her base under the surface of a hostile alien world.  The two remaining Battletoads, Zitz and Rash, along with their mentor Professor T. Bird, descend upon the alien planet to rescue their charge and defeat the alien sorceress, a woman who they are in constant contact with and who taunts them between levels.  It's kind of amusing actually, it feels like they're more like rivals than archenemies, like if Gary Oak was a tyrannical space emperor.

I want to be clear about one thing here: me DNFing Battletoads has nothing to do with how I feel about Battletoads as a game.  Because I actually really like Battletoads.  Of the NES beat 'em ups I've played so far, Battletoads is the best one by far.  Despite its limitations, only having one attack button, Battletoads has a surprising depth of combat that answers the problems things like Double Dragon and River City Ransom have had on the same console.  I like both of those games, don't get me wrong, but they have this issue of trying to create very deep and interesting combat on a system that only has two buttons to work with and, usually, needing one of those buttons to be the jump button.  Battletoads solves this issue by having combat be contextual, the moves you have access to at any given time are determined by what the context you use them in is.  If you punch the air, you can punch forever in an endless cycle, but the moment you punch an enemy, you gain access to a potent combo string complete with larger than life finishers.

Which is another great thing about Battletoads, the game's larger than life nature.  Battletoads adopts a very Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic and theming that gives the game a lot of charm and a lot of personality.  The Toads have the ability to shapeshift parts of their bodies, turning into a ram when they do a dash attack, increasing the size of their limbs to do combo finishers, turning into wrecking balls when they swing from ropes.  These wackier options really sell the cartoon come to life vibes they're going for.  Moreover, the Toads just have tons of classical cartoon reactions, such as their eyes bugging out and their jaws dropping to comical degrees when they see a boss.  It's a game that oozes personality and it remains endearing 35 years on, one of the NES games that holds up the best unquestionably.

So why didn't I finish it?  Simple: I just couldn't beat Rat Race.  There's no other reason for it, I got to the third part of Rat Race and was not able to do the essentially frame perfect run they need you to do for it.  I tried probably a dozen times without even getting close and was like "I don't think this is happening".  It's actually kind of funny, I messaged some friends when I started playing Battletoads, abouts when I finished Turbo Tunnel, and was like "Battletoads is definitely hard but I'm surprised at how manageable it is".  Turns out, it wasn't that manageable, at least for me, I had just not gotten to my own personal wall yet.  That being said, I did really like Battletoads, it's a very good game and I'm glad I played what I did.  Truly an all-timer beat 'em up.  8.1/10

Game 11: Tomb Raider II: Starring Lara Croft - Beat

A game clear a month+ in the making.  Since starting game clearing in 2023, one of my long term projects has been getting through the Tomb Raider series.  I'm always surprised at how much Tomb Raider, as a franchise, has fallen by the wayside?  Like, Tomb Raider was one of the most defining action-adventure games of all time not once, but twice, with the original 1996 release and the 2013 reboot being two of the most influential games of all time.  It's always surprising to me how little people know about Tomb Raider, and especially the classic era of Tomb Raider which thankfully now have been getting rereleases.  I guess something good has come out of Embracer purchasing Square-Enix's entire catalog of Western studios.  And I've been enjoying going through them, I've only played a couple Tomb Raiders so far but I've enjoyed every one I've done tremendously.  And Tomb Raider II is no exception, it has a reputation for being the best classic Tomb Raider and while it's not my personal favorite, I think it's fair if this one IS your personal favorite.

As is tradition, I'm not going to talk too much about the game here since I did a full blog post on it.  I moreso just want to apologize how much Tomb Raider II stagnated this blog.  I was doing so good earlier on in the year, I got essays and diaries done pretty regularly and I was super proud of my writing and then Tomb Raider II kind of conspired against me.  I did really enjoy this game, obviously, but it was so difficult and so time-consuming that it kind of stagnated the entire month and I hope it doesn't happen again but I worry it is going to with what is coming up on the docket.  I hope y'all are ready for me not to post for like two months only to come back with a whole thing about Dragon Quest.  It's DQ summer baby, shoutouts to my boy Thomas for providing me with some capital C content.  I'll try my best to get some more essays out, I'm in the midst of a big one, one that is very much in the style of "i don't like banjo-kazooie" but is much bigger in scope.  It's probably going to be even longer than Radiant Historia.  I'm so sorry.

Tomb Raider II: Starring Lara Croft - A Gaming Diary

I cannot describe to you how amusing it is that Tomb Raider II's subtitle is actually "Starring Lara Croft".  It's no secret that Lara Croft the character is much larger than Tomb Raider the franchise, there are numerous people who are very familiar with Lara who likely have not and will not ever pick-up a Tomb Raider game.  Which is a shame because there are not one, but two Tomb Raiders on the horizon currently.  And also the survivor trilogy is incredibly easy to get ahold of on modern platforms.  And also the first six games have all gotten remasters, with 7-9 looking like a remaster is probably incoming, play Tomb Raider.  I digress.  But I always figured this was something that came about over time.  That after the original trilogy at least and the quality of the games going downhill, you saw a separation of Lara Croft, the beloved adventure heroine, from Tomb Raider, the now failing action-adventure series.  But no, as soon as the second title in the series, the Tomb Raider franchise was starting to sell itself on the name recognition of its protagonist.  Lara Croft had already eclipsed the franchise she was a part of.

Anyways, so excited to be returning to Tomb Raider.  I very rarely think of myself as a fan of any series, I've famously stated previously that fandom is a poison.  The people who claim to love something the most are almost always, without fail, the people who limit that thing because they don't really like the thing, they like what that thing was to them at a pivotal moment of their lives.  They don't want art, they want comfort.  But maybe it's just that I didn't enter my Tomb Raider era until I was already an adult and had a more healthy relationship with the art I engage with, but Tomb Raider.  I am proud to say "I am a fan of Tomb Raider".  This series rules.  I own basically every Tomb Raider game, I've mentioned that previous, so there's going to be a lot of Tomb Raider on this blog longterm.  I hope y'all are ready for me to be annoying about Lara again, she's my hero.

Review:

If you were to look at the first two Tomb Raider games side-by-side, you may not see much of a difference.  Tomb Raider was a franchise that came out very close together, the first five games in the series ultimately releasing one a year every year for 5 straight years, and so it seems like Tomb Raider is a franchise whose improvements, if any, would be very small and very nuanced.  However, it is my opinion that Tomb Raider II is a far more significant upgrade upon the first game than it can seem just watching the two side by side.  Although Tomb Raider II definitely seems identical to its predecessor, having near identical gameplay and visuals, the game is so much better in so many ways.  Its greater focus on combat, more intense platforming, greater focus on collectibles, and more interesting level theming and design make Tomb Raider II a massive leap from the franchise's first entry.  That being said, its actual plot is much much worse, with it going a bit too silly a bit too quickly, and its an incredibly difficult game, starting you off at around the 3/4 point of the original game in terms of difficulty.  However, it's an action filled romp that takes more everything else about the original game and kicks it up to an eleven.  It's not my favorite Tomb Raider, but it may shape up to be my favorite of the classic series and a top 3 contender overall.  8.9/10

Diary:

4/26/26

We're SO back. Just want to start by giving a big shoutout to Stellalune and her lovingly crafted Tomb Raider website for providing really comprehensive walkthroughs.  If you read my diary on the first Tomb Raider from last year, you'll know her website was a big help there too and given how Tomb Raider II is already shaping up, I think she'll be even more of a help on this project.  But also she's been keeping up this Tomb Raider website since 1998!!!  You reading this, yes you, there's a very good chance that you are younger than this Tomb Raider website.  It's insane.  If you need some Tomb Raider stuff, please use her resources.  Especially with new games on the horizon, man, it's a good time to be getting into Tomb Raider.

It feels so good to be back.  Tomb Raider is something that, I'm sure, can seem archaic to modern gamers.  It's a tank control game, which I know is like shorthand for "a 3D game which existed before we had proper 3D movement and thus is bad" to most people, it has this very slow, methodical gameplay, it's pretty difficult.  Tomb Raider is something that, if I'm speaking objectively, probably needs a remake.  And of more than just the first game, which has now been remade twice.  But I love how Tomb Raider plays.  I think because everything you do in Tomb Raider is so deliberate, it makes it age extremely well overall?  Like this isn't just a hardware limitation but rather a deliberate gameplay choice.  I love this whole "platforming as puzzle" feel, having to line-up your jumps and take in the environment to figure out where to go next.  I'm bad at it, there was a certain platforming challenge in the first level of Tomb Raider II where I just totally missed what the game wanted me to do and went "we ball" through a room of traps.  I shockingly made it almost all the way through without damage.  But like, Tomb Raider, in my opinion, has aged extremely well.

Tomb Raider II also throws you right into the action.  Tomb Raider 1 definitely did have a bit of a buildup, you started out not having to do a lot of platforming and fighting and then it slowly built up over the course of the first couple areas.  But Tomb Raider II just starts you in a big platforming puzzle being chased by a tiger.  It advertises that this game isn't going to hold your hand, it expects you to understand Tomb Raider going into it.  Probably a good assumption given how much of a smash hit the first game was.  Part of me does want to criticize this game for doing it this way, I do genuinely believe that each work should approach its audience as if it's their first time in the world, which I understand is a little restrictive to some but I think is beneficial on the whole.  But Tomb Raider II does do a good job of onboarding people onto Tomb Raider, it has a famously good tutorial, the Croft manor.  It opens up with an obstacle course that teaches you basically every mechanic you need to know to play the game in a really fun way.  It even gives you a timer to see how quickly you can beat the obstacle course (I am bad at it so I didn't get a good time).  And then you get to explore Croft manor too, and like actually explore it unlike the first game's tutorial where certain parts where locked off.  So good.  I need to go back and do the Croft manor DLC for Rise.

This game is also so much harder right out the gate.  A big part of that is that Tomb Raider II kind of starts you out with a big Indiana Jones-esque temple run where Lara has to quickly make her way through a bunch of booby traps in a lost section of the Great Wall of China.  But also just in general, the game kind of starts you out at the difficulty level of about the halfway point of Tomb Raider 1.  There are way more gunfights in this game, way more tricky platforming sequences, way more interesting puzzles.  It takes a second to get the flow of Tomb Raider II down as such, again it doesn't ease you in at all.  But I do really like that the game also trusts the player can handle this out the gate, especially since it does give you a much better tutorial section compared to the first one.  It makes the game immediately more fun and exciting, as you're having to do more complex and interesting parkour out the gate.  Lara has always been cool but she feels so much cooler in Tomb Raider II because of this.  Also this game starts Lara with all the required equipment from the first game, which I just think is a neat touch.  It both is like "yeah, Lara did Tomb Raider 1 and still has all her gear" but also is kind of a sign to the player to be like "yeah, we trust you've done Tomb Raider 1".

I'm also very impressed by how much grander the scope to this game is already?  Like, Tomb Raider II, and by extension the classic Tomb Raider series, was often criticized for how little changes game to game.  It was an annual series back in the day and a lot of reviewers saw the series as consistent but entirely iterational, we would probably see the games as little more than DLC/expansions nowadays.  I mean, that's absolutely what we would see them as given how people reacted and still react to Tears of the Kingdom.  But I think Tomb Raider II is such a big leap from the first game in terms of scope.  First off, it includes more elements of contemporary shooters, given it includes more shootouts.  While there remain environmental drops and, by extension, environmental storytelling related to those drops, the vast majority of the ammo and health packs you get come from combat now.  This adds to kind of the new feel of combat, whereas Tomb Raider 1 was more about "being mindful with your resources and using them smartly", Tomb Raider II wants to be more of an action game it feels like.  It doesn't lose any of the things that make it Tomb Raider but it definitely is signaling "use your resources" more than the first game.  Though admittedly, I do miss the first game's design ideology of "solving optional puzzles to get rewards early", in II it's more like "beat optional enemies to get items early".

But also, the level design is just way more ambitious.  Like, level 1 was a huge temple run with loads of traps and enemies to deal with, something that would take almost an entire area of the first game to really conceptualize.  And then the second level is parkouring through the canals of Venice, but also you have this long section where you take a motorboat around a very open area of Venice.  The whole thing is like one massive puzzle, with you having to find the multitude of switches to reach the objective, said switches being hidden behind locked doors that require you to find the keys to open them.  It speaks to the increasing complexity of the game over the first one, having this large open ended puzzle box you need to solve.  Also it ends with you driving a boat over a ramp and launching it out of a covered bridge, which is super cool.  As well, the game has a lot of dark areas now where you have to use flares to see where you're going/find secrets, which gives the game more of an exploration feel to it.  This would become a series staple after this point, afaik, with the modern games giving Lara a near infinite number of flares with which to explore dark areas.

The plot is way sillier though.  Like, supernatural elements in Tomb Raider are very common and, especially in the earlier games in the franchise, they go way over the top.  Their template was Indiana Jones, a franchise which features, amongst other things, indisputable proof of the Abrahamic god's existence.  But whereas the first game sort of eased you into it, starting as just a more generalized archaeological exploration before slowly introducing the Atlantean element to the story, Tomb Raider II opens with an FMV of a Chinese emperor getting stabbed with a magical dagger and turning into a literal dragon.  And from there it evolves into "fighting through the canals of Venice to uncover a cult of clown monks armed with guns who are seeking entrance to the chamber where that dagger is buried.  It's a lot dumber than the first game, I almost admire how bold of a swing it is but like.  It's the only part of this game where it just going "you've played the first one, you know what you're getting into" doesn't really work for me.

All this being said this game is clearly the worst Tomb Raider just by how many good boys Lara has to kill.  I think I'm up to 11 dogs killed so far, it's so sad.  Lara often being forced to mass murder animals is always the saddest part of these games but all these dobermans especially are just upsetting me.  They deserved better.  RIP to all the good puppies, they make this really upsetting crying noise and everything.

4/28/26

Y'all, I think I'm bad at the video game.  So like, I had a lot of trouble with Tomb Raider 1 too, especially as I got into the late game.  There were entire play sessions that constituted one single level in that game due to both how difficult the game gets and how precise the platforming needs to be.  And also my stubborn refusal to just save scum and create a new save after every obstacle until I've given enough attempts at a section to where I feel like I've "earned" the save.  Tomb Raider II essentially starts at the difficulty level of late game Tomb Raider 1, roughly the late Greek/early Egypt stages, so I've been having a time!  I played for four hours last night and I accomplished in total about a single level, as I played half of one level and half of another.  To be clear, I'm not getting discouraged like I did with say Fire Emblem when I was just making no progress, it's very quick to get back to where I was usually once I know what to do.  But I am a bit like "welp, guess we're strapping in for the long haul, huh?"

That being said, man, the level design in this game is good.  So the first thing I got stuck on in this session was a large ballroom.  Level 3 is the hideout of the main antagonist and leader of the cult Lara is fighting, Marco Bartoli, which takes place in an old, flooded mansion hidden deep within the Labyrinthian canals of Venice.  After weaving through the manor's various rooms and hidden corridors, filled with death traps, Lara finds her way into the abandoned ballroom.  The ballroom is home to a large puzzle where Lara must climb all the way up to the top, hitting the various switches along the way, until she ends up in the rafters.  At which point, she hits the final switch and must work her way back down safely to retrieve a key that was unlocked by hitting all the switches.  It's a very fun room.  It's also a room that really highlights the difficulty of this game as, again, this is level 3, and it's a room that has a large, complicated puzzle and a very difficult platforming section where any wrong move can instakill Lara as she just falls to her death.  But like, I really enjoyed doing it in spite of that fact and how many times I had to reload.

So remember what I said about how it can be disappointing that Tomb Raider II has fewer secrets like the first one?  Because now it's more of a shooter with a lot of combat being vs. people who drop items when they're dead?  Well in classic Ed commentating on a game fashion, the next session just proved me wrong.  Not only does Bartoli's hideout give you the possibility to get the Uzis very early on, as they are hidden in an alcove that requires the player to go "I bet I could get up there", a massive boon given how rough combat can be.  Especially for me, who is bad at combat in every game, I am burning through health packs as soon as I get them in this game, y'all.

But moreover, the ending sequence to Bartoli's hideout is entirely optional if you are clever.  The level ends with a sequence where you're intended to search through the library finding hidden passageways until you find the key to a detonator.  At which point you can blow up the manor and use it to find an entrance to Bartoli's true hideout, an old abandoned opera house that his father used to perform at.  However, if you're clever about observing and going around the environment, you can just completely skip having to find the detonator key and, moreover, you can avoid a number of tricky shootouts by taking a shortcut out of level 3.  This shortcut was pretty handy for me especially, as I forgot to save at the beginning of level 4 and accidentally kept reloading my save at the end of level 3 when I meant to restart level 4 upon death.

Speaking of level 4, the hardest enemy in the game so far is in level 4 and it's just one random goon.  You start level 4 high up above a canal and directly underneath you is a guy who just patrols back and forth, watching the canal for disturbances.  If you get in the water AT ALL, he's going to fire at you, and trying to confront him will eat most of your health as you are literally helpless in the water.  It's very much a "play smarter, not harder" situation, you can and probably should maneuver around this level to where he only gets a shot off on you here or there.  You should not do what I did, which was continuously jump down over and over, risking my life to climb up onto the ledge the enemy is at to take them down, wasting my precious healing items in the process, only to realize on the sixth run that I can simply snipe them from a vantage point but STILL lost most of my health trying do so.  My friend Thomas is probably reading this right now and going "hehehe", I've given him so much guff over the years for not using stealth in games and just trying to action movie his way through and now here I am doing the same thing.

The opera house is a very cool setting, by the way.  Something I really like about Tomb Raider II so far is how open ended they have made the level design in comparison to the first one.  I mentioned before about how there was this open ended Venetian canal section in level 2 and now in level 4 we have this really open opera house portion.  I haven't gotten into the meat of it yet, I did the break-in portion of the level in this play session but have not experienced the full opera house really.  But I do know it's this massive five story building that you get effectively free reign of and you must figure out how exactly to approach it to progress.  Tomb Raider II really feels like the franchise is actually hitting its stride and I can already see the bridges forming between this kind of level design and the modern Tomb Raiders I'm more familiar with.  It makes it kind of crazy to me how many long time fans of this series see the reboot Raiders as being "not real Tomb Raiders", maybe it's because I played them first so I'm seeing the DNA they share more than the DNA they don't but to me, it does tend to feel like the Survivor trilogy is more Tomb Raider than Uncharted.

5/2/26

Man.  The opera house level was SOMETHING.  So, I got through the Venice section of the game in tonight's section, which is good.  I'm glad the first "act" is kind of over and done with.  But also, doing half of the final level in said Venice section was like 3 hours of my play session tonight.  And looking ahead at the walkthrough I'm using, it seems like after this section, at least for the next several levels, we're going to be skewing shorter.  I loved the Venice levels, don't get me wrong, I loved how ambitious and grand they seemed, how open ended they were.  But also I will be happy to not spend an entire play session on essentially one singular level for a while.  Progress good.  Progress makes game clearing fun.

Granted, part of the reason why progress has been so slow going is on me.  Like I've said, I don't really enjoy the idea of save scumming, I like to complete a substantial portion of the game between saves.  I tend to only really adjust my save if I know I'm about to face a rather tricky obstacle, a rather tricky enemy, or have played through a bunch of level without a save.  So like, a lot of the reason my progress stalls so much in Tomb Raider is that I have to redo sometimes 10-15 minutes of gameplay over and over to get back to where I am.  I get very quick at doing that bit of gameplay over and over, mind, but still.  I would probably be getting through this game faster if I saved way more frequently.  I don't know if that would be a more "fun" experience, but it would be a faster one.

I did adore the opera house level, though.  Like for as much trouble as it gave me, I really enjoyed making my way around this flooded, abandoned opera house that has been co-opted as a hideout by the evil cult.  It starts you from the onset with your two key objectives: you're missing a circuit board for the switch in the sound booth, and a relay box for the elevator down to the lobby.  Your goal is to find both of these things.  And you basically have free reign from there.  There is a concrete order of operations that you must do, don't get me wrong, some things don't become open until you do other parts of the opera house.  But on the whole, you have free reign of the area.  It's not just a good showcase of one of the highlights of Tomb Raider II, it's more open ended level design, but it's also really fun and really clever.  It really tests on how well you know how to play Tomb Raider.  There are a lot of platforming challenges that require full understanding of the precision and movement, a lot of gun fights that reward you for playing smarter and not harder.  It's a really fun level, I adore it.

Speaking of gun fights that reward you for playing smarter and not harder, I got to the first boss of the game!  It's a gun toting muscle bound member of Bartoli's crew that wields twin revolvers, which is how you know he's serious business.  The way you are intended to fight him is to use the environment to your advantage, weaving in and out of the maze of shipping containers, trying to get the drop on him and take a few shots before retreating.  However, that also can leave Lara very vulnerable to him, as you can't always see what you're doing from inside the maze, and he's not alone.  He has two dobermans which Lara has to kill, I'm still mad about how many dogs die in this game.  However, you can also trigger the boss and then find a worthwhile vantage point to snipe him from, with him not being able to do much of anything but run around the maze aimlessly, trying desperately not to be a sitting duck.  It's difficult to even really know if these things are intended or if they are just cheese that players can easily find out, as Tomb Raider, even in this incarnation of being more of a shooter, still favors sniping enemies safely from above than facing them head on.

After that, we reach the game's second act, an abandoned offshore oil rig that Bartoli has been using to find his father's lost ship.  His father, Gianni, was the original leader of this cult, and he sailed off one day with an artifact called "the Seraph", which is something of a key needed to unlock the vault which contains the dragon dagger.  Lara kind of ends up being whisked away to this oil rig by accident, she snuck onto the plane to confront Bartoli, only to be taken out by one of his goons and imprisoned in the oil rig herself.  It ends up working out though, as she now has access to the shipwreck where Bartoli's father disappeared.  Meaning that she can get the Seraph before Bartoli can.  It also introduces one of my favorite gaming tropes that I think everyone else hates besides me: a section where you lose all your resources and have to sneak around a facility slowly regaining them bit by bit.  People often criticize these sections in games and act like "who likes this" it's me, I like this, I like when a game goes "how well do you understand our movement/design options instead of just using your tools to push through."

I think in my next play session I'm going to get to Lara's iconic wetsuit?  That's exciting.  They've introduced underwater combat with a harpoon gun, and obviously I'm about to enter a shipwreck, so it only makes sense.  Like I said at the beginning, now that we're out of Venice the levels seem to be getting considerably shorter.  I doubt it'll increase the pace of progress going forward, I am bad at games and stubborn at using the tool that would make these levels go a bit faster.  But I'm optimistic that the second and third "acts" of this game will have a bit more forward momentum.  That being said, despite my feelings like "oh I haven't been making like any progress" I do want to say that I'm still very into this game.  Currently I think my rankings of the Tomb Raider series have this behind Rise, and it's honestly a pretty close race.  Second games, man.  Sometimes the sequel is just better, who would've thought?

5/4/26

Tomb Raider II has its own Snake Eater moment.  Like, literally it is the Snake Eater moment, just without the song.  This is not a drill.  In the game's seventh level, you are attempting to make your way up to the oil rig's helipad, trying to find a way out of the facility so you can dive into the wreck where the Seraph is being held.  And the way they do this is by having Lara climb a giant maintenance ladder in the middle of the facility all the way up.  I have never played Snake Eater, for the record, it's going to be on the list eventually but I know this scene, obviously.  So the entire time I'm climbing I was singing Snake Eater.  I can't believe one of the most famous video games ever stole from Tomb Raider II and nobody knew about it.  For legal reasons, this is a joke, climbing a ladder isn't exactly a patent.

I was correct in that I was getting close to wetsuit Lara.  At the end of level 7 you find out that Bartoli is torturing a monk from the Tibetan monastery related to the dragon dagger he seeks.  After the monk reveals that his family bloodline is responsible for the protection of the Seraph, and that his father was the one to kill Bartoli's father and wreck his ship, Bartoli gets the jump on Lara and the monk.  The monk sadly loses his life, but Lara escapes, and follows Bartoli's men down to the shipwreck.  It's here that we get an extended underwater segment.  I am once again going to make people upset at me but I do not care: I kind of like underwater levels in video games.

I distinctly remember when DKC Returns was coming out, some people at Retro were talking about the lack of water levels in Nintendo Power and they literally said "well nobody likes a water level anyways" and I think for a long time I agreed with this.  Like I just did not like water levels because I always expected them to be the worst parts of the game.  But nah man, I love water levels, I love swimming in games, I love the atmosphere of being underwater, I feel like they're the unsung heroes of gaming and people just look down on them because they remember like the water levels of NES games, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Or getting lost in the water temple in Ocarina of Time.  But water levels rule.

And like, this one has you deep sea diving into a shipwreck!  It's so cool.  It's very tense because Lara has a limited oxygen meter so you have to move quickly when you're underwater and try and make your way to the next safe spot before you run out of air.  You're being chased by sharks and barracudas and you have to swim quickly.  You keep switching between the parts of the ship that have been insulated from the ocean where Lara can move normally and going underwater, even switching between inside and outside of a ship.  It's a very fun level, in my opinion, I really like level 8.  The only real problem, to me at least, is that underwater combat is very bad.  Unlike regular combat, where Lara will automatically aim at enemies, you have to actually aim underwater.  This ultimately just leads to a lot of wasted ammunition as you try and figure out how it works and honestly most players are likely to find a vantage point above water and pick off enemies like that.  Especially when you have an enemy as small as a barracuda.

It feels so nice to be able to do two levels in a session.  It feels like I'm making actual progress.  I probably would've even been able to do 3 if I weren't so stingy with saving!  But like, where's the fun in that.  I try not to save scum unless I'm playing like a famously difficult retro game where save stating after every jump is just the best idea.  I think genuinely having a section of like big, complicated levels followed by a section of smaller, more linear levels was actually so smart, like, I liked Venice but I was also like "maaaaaan, I'm kind of ready to be past this" and then it goes right into more breezier levels!!!  It's nice to feel like I'm making progress, y'know?  This game is just good, y'all.  It's already bumping up to my second favorite Tomb Raider game and I feel like, even as I play more of the series, it's going to stick in that spot?  I don't really know, obviously, there are still 8 more Tomb Raider games to play but I'm liking this one a lot.

5/6/26

This is going to be a short update because I literally did one level tonight.  This isn't because the level was hard or anything, I would probably say this is one of the easier levels thus far.  It was a lot of small, enclosed spaces and you may think that would make it harder but usually, when you're enclosed, the game is more reliant on traps to kill Lara.  Enemies are fairly sparse in these tighter levels.  Enemies are sparse in this section of the game in general, like, we are stuck underwater inside of a shipwreck and the game has been kind of light on enemies for that reason.  Bartoli could only safely get so many of his goons inside the ship after all.  But compound that with how many small, enclosed spaces there are?  It's been a breeze.  The only hard part in this level was when you had to retrieve a key which had been thrown overboard and were pursued by sharks and barracudas.

The eighth level of the game, the Wreck of the Maria Doria, takes us further into the wrecked ship that serves as the Seraph's final resting place.  In particular, it takes us through the parts of the ship that any patrons that were on its doomed voyage would've been using for recreation.  The ballroom, the swimming pool, the rest room, not to be confused with the restroom.  This "rest room" is like a big parlor where people could play cards.  Something I don't think I've mentioned as of yet is that the Maria Doria is upside down.  Like when it sank, it sank upside down, and I noticed this before but when you're going through maintenance corridors it's like "what does it matter that the ship is upside down".  Vs. now that you're going through a bunch of the ship's more noteworthy locations, you really start to appreciate the ship being upside down.  Something I really enjoy about this level is how many of the hazards are clearly just broken lights from when the ship was operational.  Like, when it was rightside up, these were just normal lighting fixtures but now that it's upside down and time has taken its toll, they're horrible death traps of glass.  That being said, I don't know how Bartoli's father could afford this ship.  I know he ran a cult but like, bro was a stage magician.

We finally have the full suite of weapons in Lara's arsenal.  Something I find very funny about the walkthrough I'm using, shoutout to Stellalune once again, she's the GOAT, is how much Tomb Raider II clearly wants you to pick up the weapons in the game.  Besides the grenade launcher, that is, which is the final weapon I got my hands on even though I technically could've grabbed it as a reward in the first level for finding all the secrets.  In the first game, there were like two weapons that were required, and honestly I forget if the shotgun was even actually required, and then one that was pretty easy to get ahold of but technically missable.  In this game, though, it feels like every level I read the line "if you didn't get the Uzis in one of the previous levels, this goon will drop them".

In particular the Uzis are the weapon that the game seems to want you to have, which is very funny when the Uzis were the hardest to obtain weapon in the original game, being part of a tricky platforming challenge that left Lara a sitting duck near the endgame.  It's nice because, especially now that we're in way more gun fights, having access to the better weapons is pretty paramount.  I have been burning through ammo really quickly and I do not care.  But also I can imagine it makes doing a minimum weapons run pretty frustrating.  Real quick, I do want to correct something about the harpoon gun from my previous mention of it.  It does auto aim, it is just that it's so easy for Lara to get just a bit off kilter and then your aim is useless.  It's just super finnicky, I admire the effort to make underwater combat but it needed some fine-tuning.

5/10/26

Classic Tomb Raider fans will literally tell you like "oh the modern Tomb Raider games don't even feature any tomb raiding, they're just generic third-person shooters that occasionally have puzzles to them" and then the second game in the franchise, one of its high points, mostly takes place on a boat.  I get that, as someone who initially got into the franchise with the Survivor titles, I'm biased towards defending them with regards to how they carry on the torch for Tomb Raider.  I see the things which are similar more than the things which are different, yadda yadda.  But like.  Y'all at a certain point you do gotta just look at the franchise and go "huh, maybe there isn't that much Tomb Raiding in the classic Raiders either".

I am still on the boat, if you couldn't tell.  I don't mind it, this is a great location, I love this sunken ship.  Though I will say I'm starting to question the geography on display here.  I've been kind of suspending my disbelief for the last couple levels, like, you swim into a ship who has already been half buried in the ocean's sand and rocks and slowly make your way through the ship's middle decks, right?  But then, at the start of level 9, you leave the first part of the ship and swim over to a second part of the ship which is primarily comprised of the ship's cabins, its engine room, and the ship's theater.  Bizarre the theater wouldn't be with the ballroom and the swimming pool as part of a recreational deck, but I digress.  It seems like the ship split it two, it's whatever.  And then you get to the 10th and final level of the Ship act and like, all sense is just thrown out the window.  This part takes place within a giant cavern that somehow the ship has found itself in and you you're just climbing about a series of disconnected parts of the ship.  It's not a problem that the ship doesn't make a lot of sense but like, it is kind of silly how they've just fully given up on making the ship seem real for the sake of platforming challenges.

Things got a little tense at the end of the 9th level, the Living Quarters.  I've mentioned before that med kits are a pretty tight resource in this game.  I am, as you all know by now, bad at video games and so I am usually using a med kit as soon as I receive it in a lot of cases.  And at the end of level 9, I had run out of med kits and had gotten myself in a tricky situation where Lara ended up at 1 HP, forcing me to run the final gambit of the level on hard mode.  It was VERY touch and go and I genuinely thought I was going to have to reload a previous save, which would've been from the previous level at that point because I make the fatal gaming mistake of not having multiple saves.  I have so many bad gaming habits, y'all.  I think the fact that I was a Pokemon child just ingrained in me like "you have one save file, and that's what you get".  But surprisingly it only took me like three tries to get through the rest of the level.  It's so weird because like, I don't enjoy when games are designed to put me in scenarios like this really.  I've always been critical of Soulslikes and I'm a well known Cuphead hater.  When a game's whole point is to get you into these tight scenarios I'm more bored than anything.  But when I do it to myself?  I'm all about that.  I'm all about the consequences of my actions bby!

5/16/26

I finished the last wetsuit Lara level in this section.  A sad day indeed.  I am actually a huge fan of how good the fits are in this game.  They're not particularly practical by any means, like.  It's pretty clear that each of Lara's fits is designed for visual appeal rather than function.  She wears her parka half zipped up so that you can still see her cleavage, in what has to be one of the most obvious decisions in gaming history.  No wonder Life with Derek did an entire episode like 8 years later on whether or not Tomb Raider was progressive.  There's your Life With Derek mention for your bingo cards.  But also Lara looks good in all of them.  It's the classical pulp hero/heroine idea of "not actually having to wear practical clothes because your iconic fits are just so cool why would you ever change into something more "practical".  Like, Lara is such a good pulp heroine, her being cool is always at the forefront.  I like Survivor Lara, obviously, I love those games a whole lot, but I'm glad a version of this Lara is coming back to the forefront moving forward.  Even if I'm scratching my head at the Herculean task they're undergoing of trying to make one singular Lara Croft timeline out of the three separate Laras.

I am so happy to be done with the sunken ship act.  The last level of this act is likely the worst level of this game, and is definitely the worst level of the game so far.  Like it's not necessarily a bad level or anything but the thing that I've liked about this section so far is that it's this super interesting underwater adventure; you're traversing through a sunken ship and making your way through a bunch of interesting locations on this lost luxury cruise liner.  And the final part is just a big cavern where a chunk of the exterior of the ship has found itself in.  Tomb Raider has a lot of levels which are just "a big cave" and this is certainly one of them.  It's also just a level that feels overcomplicated, like.  Tomb Raider level design is very centered around backtracking through levels after completing objectives but this one definitely felt a bit tedious.  It's probably the worst individual level I've played through so far in a Tomb Raider, frfr.

I'm finally getting into the habit of saving pretty frequently.  So, and this is a dumb thing to admit because usually I don't care, but there are achievements in the Remastered Collection for beating the game in under so many saves.  That's why I've been like "well, I need to be sparing with my saves, I don't want to miss out on the achievement!"  I'm not going to be achievement grinding in these games.  I only really achievement grind if, a, I like the game a ton and, b, getting all achievements isn't too crazy.  And while Tomb Raider II is definitely a game I like a lot, I expect it to make my best list this year, the achievements for this seem absurd.  The game is hard, I am not good at it, I will move on once I beat it.  So now, while I'm not aggressively saving, I'm still staggering my saves a bit, I'm more comfortable going "I've beaten a good chunk of this level, I can save".  It is not making my progress faster, mind, despite the game's eleventh level being kind of short all things considered I ended up spending like two hours on it.  But it's making it so I don't have to redo absurd amounts of level over when I die.

Luckily, once you get out of the final sunken ship level, you get into an absolute banger of a level.  After retrieving the Seraph, a statue of an angel, odd thing to be the key to a Chinese treasure but whatever, we make our way to Tibet.  This is where we get Lara's absurd and amazing parka fit, she's running around the Himalayas in a half zipped parka, it's so funny.  I only got around to one of the Tibet levels in last night's play session, I wish I had gotten to more but game is hard, y'know?  Tibet has kind of a weird juxtaposition of enemies too which can make it at times easier and at times very tricky.  It both has the return of wild animal enemies, which don't deal a lot of damage but are very mobile and can chip you to death if you're not careful; and also the strongest goons we've seen so far, equipped with machine guns which can just zero-to-death Lara like it's nothing.  You can tell that the stakes are kind of kicking up as we approach the end game, Bartoli has decided to invade the Tibetan monastery where the treasure is hidden away, lack of key be damned.  I say end game, I'm pretty confident I have like 6 more levels of this game left.

The big feature of the first Tibet level, though, is a snowmobile section.  PS1 games loved their snowmobile sections, I swear.  And you know what, fair, the snowmobile is a very cool vehicle.  You spend the majority of this level riding a snowmobile, it can be beaten without it (and an achievement is locked behind beating the snowmobile level sans snowmobile) but for a first time playthrough why would you ever do that?  Other than the snowmobile kind of being clunky to control, it is a vehicle section in a non-vehicle game and those are almost always a bit clunky in older games.  But it's just cool.  And do a surprising amount with the snowmobile, like, you have very interesting paths you can only take with a snowmobile that seem like they would be impossible, you have a number of big cinematic jumps. you instakill enemies while riding the snowmobile, later on you unlock a snowmobile with front mounted turrets for some vehicular combat.  It's such a cool level, Tomb Raider II seems way more focused on "Lara doing cool stuff" than the first game and I appreciate it.

In the next play session I will, finally, be diving into a tomb.  Again, I am shocked at how little tomb raiding is in the series' second and often considered best entry.  Like the modern Tomb Raider games are usually criticized for how little tomb raiding goes on in them and meanwhile over half of Tomb Raider II was in Italy and the middle of the ocean.  And it's such a wild swing, Tomb Raider was basically all tomb raiding, you moved through ruins and made your way deep underground into lost cities and stuff.  But in this game you spend half the game in the "modern day" and then finally, 12 (24) hours in you're entering ruins.  I'm stoked though, I think it plays better when Lara is allowed to have more of an adventure in the present that ends in ruins.  Gives the game more of a Indiana Jones-esque story structure, something that is kind of lost in the first game where you're just jumping from ruin to ruin.  Tomb Raider II is so good y'all, easily second favorite Tomb Raider game so far.  Of four, but still, I expect it to be top 3 when I finally get caught up on this series still.

5/19/26

I'll beat this game someday, y'all.  Someday.  Like, classic Tomb Raiders are hard, and from what I understand they will only get harder from here.  I looked up "what is the hardest Tomb Raider game" and Tomb Raider II only ranked as like the second or third hardest game in the series.  3 & 4 are apparently going to be a RIDE.  And I am famously bad at video games, if there is one thing you can take away from this blog it's that.  But man, spending an entire play session per level is getting to me.  This happened when I played Tomb Raider 1 too, it's why I've adopted a "play games on rotating days" for this game (and also because it's fun to alternate).  For those who are curious, right now I'm playing Strange Horticulture alongside this and loving it.  Such a good puzzle game.

Now that I'm slowly approaching the endgame of Tomb Raider II, I'm starting to realize that the game gives you just way too many resources.  I have over 1000 bullets in weapons I haven't even had to bust out yet because as I want to sort of use weapons in order of weakest to strongest.  I.e. I'm not using the Uzis until I run out of Automatic Pistol ammo, and then once I'm out of Uzi ammo I'll move onto the M16, etc.  It's funny because like, in Tomb Raider 1 it did feel like I was discouraged from using my resources, every weapon was kind of a late game weapon or, if it did need to be brought out in the early game, it was just an "in case of emergency, break glass" sort of deal.  But this game like really overcorrects, I know I've been having a hard time so it's ridiculous for me to say like "oh, I'm too strong in this game" but legitimately I feel like the only danger I'm ever in is platforming related.  Enemies can be a problem but more often than not, I struggle with enemies due to how few heals I have on me, and I mostly lack heals because I keep making critical errors when it comes to platforming.

The Monastery level was sick.  It's another one of those levels where the entire thing is built around one central puzzle.  In this case there is a door that requires you to find five keys around the Monastery to unlock it, each key being hidden behind its own series of puzzles.  And these puzzles are fun enough, as is normally the case Tomb Raider is at its strongest when you're placed in a central locale and you have to keep going through the various corridors and rooms to solve puzzles, ultimately ending up at the centerpiece of the level.  But the reason the Monastery in particular works is that Lara is placed in the midst of a war.  Bartoli's men have found their way into the hidden Monastery and are attempting to invade it, all the while the monks that call this area home are defending their sacred temple.

This level is designed in such a way where the player could approach it one of two ways.  The monks will defend their temple from ANY perceived threat, but, if you're not a threat to them, they will instead swarm enemies, providing Lara with a rare opportunity for backup.  You COULD go in guns blazing, killing every person monk or henchman, and that's certainly the "easier" way to do it.  The monks are numerous and can overwhelm you easily but they also only have close range weapons and can be manipulated.  But if you hold your fire, play smarter with your aim, you can gain a powerful allied force.  It also doesn't have to be exact, the monks seem to have a bit of leeway if you accidentally fire at them and then holster your weapon.  It's if you dedicate fire to them that they'll freak out.  It's a very neat level, a little bit of a headache to manage if you aren't on team "kill everyone" but worth it.  If nothing else, Bartoli's men will often be so distracted fighting the monks that you can easily loot their bodies while resupplying.  For the first time in the entire game, I have a reserve of healing items.

5/20/26

Y'all, I'm excited to say that we have Yetis.  I'm actually kind of surprised that "the yeti" wasn't, like, a boss fight that then became a regular enemy?  That feels very in line with the structure of a Tomb Raider, you know, you fight a more supernatural threat as a boss earlier on in the game and then it becomes a regular enemy.  But this game just has yetis as standard enemies out the gate.  I've already killed like 20 of them.  Lara has no regard for the fascinating life she finds, she only wants carnage.  Quick aside, I was happy to finally be out of the part of the game where you have to kill dogs en masse because that's, you know.  Sad.  But now she's just killing endangered Snow Leopards and that's worse.  That's so much worse.  Lara's complete disregard for animal life is why these games need remakes.  I digress.  Not only are there yetis but there is kind of a fun bit of environmental worldbuilding on why yetis, despite being a concrete species, are so rarely seen.  The monks actually keep them imprisoned within their sacred lands, having rounded them up in large cages that are all triggered to release when someone tries to make progress.  The yetis that hikers spot are simply those which avoided this fate or escaped it.

This section has one of my favorite things that the first Tomb Raider had: a pair of levels which take place in the same geography and you wrap around to setpieces you had seen but couldn't access in the first level.  The 13th and 14th levels are part of a paired set, throughout the 13th level you repeatedly see parts of the temple that you cannot access.  A frozen lake with a gong hammer underneath.  A bridge above you that leads to a locked door that you never open.  A large hanging fire on a statue that you can't interact with.  You see all these pieces but can't really do anything with them.  And then in level 14, you finally come back around to this area and do something with all these pieces you couldn't do anything with before.  It's very neat to have in what is usually a very linear adventure series, Lara tends to always be delving deeper so having areas that she returns to later in the same area is always just a really cool moment.  I imagine they intended this to be one big level but needed to separate it to let the game keep pace and not be stuck loading this huge level, but breaking it up like this also ends up working super well for the game's needs.

I also love that, in level 14, there are none of Bartoli's men left to fight.  In level 13 you encountered sparse numbers of them, the very few who had successfully made a push past the monks and pursued Lara into the depths of the temple.  I want to say that, in total, there are 7 gun toting enemies in the entirety of level 13.  By level 14 though, it's clear that Bartoli has ordered a retreat and so the gunmen have dissipated.  Lara is going to get whatever necessary treasure is hidden within the Tibetan monastery and it is in Bartoli's best interest to stage a tactical retreat and remove his dwindling numbers from Tibet to instead stage an ambush when Lara heads off to China to retrieve the dagger.  Something I think is just across the board better in Tomb Raider II when compared to the first game is how much more willing it is to tell the story between the story beats.  Like in the first game, Lara had to be present for every bit of storytelling it felt like, whereas in the second game, the game is more willing to explain what's happening through the gameplay and you can infer through it what is happening in the larger narrative without needing NPCs to show up and tell Lara what is going on.

There was a very cool secret in this section.  I have been trying to get most of the hidden collectibles, I haven't been getting all of them, mind, I missed some in the early game and I also definitely gave up a couple on certain levels where the reward wasn't worth it.  For context, if you find all three hidden collectibles in a level, you get a pretty substantial reward.  These collectibles replace the secrets from the first game where hidden throughout the level, there were optional puzzles/platforming challenges that would net you additional rewards like early weapons or additional ammo pickups, in this game you have to find the three collectibles and then once you've found the third one, you get a massive reward, usually 4-6 ammo pickups.  This might be why I'm not stressed about ammo.  I digress.  Anyways, one of the collectibles in level 14 is over a giant pit with seemingly no way to cross.  It's just a massive room with a collectible on a raised pedestal you can't get up to above a pit that has ladders to climb out of but I'm pretty sure you would die if you fell into it.  So how do you get this collectible?  Invisible bridge.  Just like Indiana Jones, you are required to take a leap of faith across this pit and, if you do it from the exact right spot, the spot directly across from the collectible, you will land on an invisible bridge that will take you safely across.  It's a classic adventure staple and I was so happy when I figured it out.

5/29/26

I promise you that I like this game.  I know updates on this blog entry in particular have taken so long and been very scattered, I've been super busy in May.  We've been throwing out a bunch of stuff in our basement it's been a lot, and I'm usually like "I want to sit down and commit a lot of time to Tomb Raider because I know that I might play for four hours and not even beat A level, let alone enough of the game to where it feels like I made substantial progress.  But I have a fire under me right now as I want to beat Tomb Raider before June starts.  I already know what diary game I am playing after Tomb Raider and it is a game that in a certain friend group, we traditionally play in June.  It's technically a game I meant to start already because the franchise's anniversary was this month, but since I missed I want to play it in June.  And to be honest I think I can handle it, at the time of writing I only have two and 1/3 levels of Tomb Raider left, so I feel like I can finish it either in the next play session or the next two play sessions.  Not that it really matters because I have a lot of June left and I'm not exactly going to be only playing that game in June but, you know.

So I finished Act III, the Tibet act.  I had basically been done with the level last time I played before I got ganged up on by Yetis and lost the level right before I had to call it a night.  Disappointing, to be honest, I could've probably powered through the remainder of the game in like one sitting if I hadn't died there.  I digress, the rest of the level was kind of bog standard Tomb Raider platforming with the exception of the boss of the level.  The boss of Act III, the Talion guardian, is a giant bird man monster that is super cool and feels very mystical.  Like something I do like about this game in comparison to the first is that they are letting things be more mystical, even if it's definitely not full-on magic.  In the first game they kind of explained the mysticism away as being scientific experiments from a long dead civilization but in this one they're just like "yeah, magic is in the world, but it's not like a massive driving force".  The only unfortunate thing is that the Talion Guardian is a very easy boss that has a very clear exploit, it can literally be taken down with your standard pistols no problem because the arena has a built in spot where Lara can just stand and shoot at the Guardian and it can't find her again.  But still a very cool creature, I hope that this game gets a remake/remaster after Legacy of Atlantis so we can see this thing in a more modern context, its design will probably be sick.

After that Lara steals a Jeep from Bartoli's men and drives off to where the Dragon dagger we've been hunting this entire game only to get immediately clowned on.  After all of this, after hunting down Bartoli and racing across the planet to try and stop him from getting the dagger, the dagger is surrounded by trapdoors that make it so nobody can get to it anyways and, should they try, they will get thrown down into the caverns below that are full of puzzles and death traps.  It's so funny, like, it kind of feels like Lara is the only thing that has actually caused Bartoli to progress.  I kind of feel like if she hadn't gotten involved, Bartoli would've never actually had a chance.  This isn't a problem I'm actually pointing out, for what it's worth, this isn't like how the Big Bang Theory really thought they were cooking by pointing out that Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark goes the exact same way whether Indy is there or not.  I just think it's a bit amusing that our main character is probably the only reason the villain has a chance of succeeding.

But also I'm glad the dagger was booby-trapped because man Level 15 rules.  The longest and most complicated level so far, the Temple of Xian is a massive fortress full of death traps and amazing iconography.  It's one of those areas that can only exist in fiction because it involves people building into a volcano and having structures exist within the lava.  Actually come to think of it, is the world in Tomb Raider hollow?  Is it a Hollow Earth?  There are many giant empty caverns under the surface where civilizations have built great structures that would be impractical to build under the surface if it weren't hollow.  Anyways, so far I've had multiple spike rooms, I've had to outrun like 8 boulders, I've had to dodge mechanical terra cotta warriors, it's been dope.  And I've yet to get in a gun fight, because at this point Lara is just fully ahead of Bartoli and his men.  I'm actually super glad that we aren't dealing with Bartoli's men in this level, there are too many death traps and required HP losses for there to also be gun fights.  Also, the entire thing is built around this super cool Dragon statue, love a dragon.

I think I can commit to beating the game next play session.  Now, I want to be clear, I am bad at the game.  I have take an additional 15 hours at this point over the project HLTB average just because I keep dying.  But I have about 1/3 of level, then a level that is very open but also doesn't seem that long all things considered, and then the final level which is just a build up and then the final boss from what I'm reading from the walkthrough.  I should be able to do that in one single 4-5 hour play session.  So, as is normal in the penultimate section, some "final thoughts".  Tomb Raider is a series that can seem to be very iterational, that especially in the classical days of the franchise it feels like a series that is largely the same but with minor iterations between the entries that make them better.

But I think Tomb Raider II is a lot better than 1 and I wouldn't be surprised if it remains my second favorite Tomb Raider game long term.  The actual plot and especially the way the plot is structured is better in Tomb Raider 1 but in every other way Tomb Raider II is just so much better.  The level design is better, it's a better shooter, a better platformer, it has some more interesting level ideas.  It's more difficult than the first game but in a way I find very compelling.  It's great.  Y'all should get on Tomb Raider, it's such a banger of a franchise and it feels like it has kind of fallen to the wayside.  Like it's crazy Tomb Raider is objectively one of the most iconic franchises in the medium and yet I've met so few people who have ever played one, and even fewer who have ever played a classic Raider.  Just a whole part of gaming history that most people have seemingly skipped.

5/30/26

Okay, so.  I didn't beat the game.  I always underestimate how bad I am at the platforming/how easy it is for things to go wrong in said platforming.  The number of times I line up a jump perfectly to then just hit run then jump instead of jump then run, I swear y'all.  You'd think after sixty hours of playing these games (yes it's that much, I'm embarrassed too), I'd finally have a grasp on the nuances of the controls and not be making these errors but you know.  Never underestimate my ability to screw up.  At least I am finally just saying "screw it" and saving incredibly frequently.  I spent 18 or 19 saves on the Temple of Xian level alone.  I swallowed my pride, choked on the lies, but the lack thereof left me empty inside.  And it still took me an additional like two hours to complete in this play session.  RIP me.  I'm very bad at games.

Again, if Lara had, instead of rushing to the dagger, taken the single key to the vault where the dagger had been held and thrown it to the bottom of the ocean, Bartoli would be completely out of luck.  So, Lara climbs her way out of the Temple of Xian only to find that Bartoli and his men are at the dagger, conducting the ritual that will allow Bartoli to become a dragon.  Something that they only are able to do because Lara already set off the booby trap guarding the dagger at the beginning of the level.  It's just so funny how much of this was unlikely to play out like it has if Lara hadn't gotten involved as, at the very least, Bartoli would probably have gotten to the booby traps at the Temple of Xian and then fell to his death.  Like obviously this isn't a problem, we wouldn't have a game if any of this didn't happen, it's just so funny how Bartoli is always this many steps behind Lara and because of that, he reaps the benefits of her getting places first.

The inner chambers of the Temple of Xian were sick.  Like, I'm a big fan of this level in general, it's a very fun "booby trapped temple" level with new traps and obstacles around every turn.  And I really like the fact that the only enemies down this deep are animals who have made this place home.  Even if it means, yet again, Lara is killing endangered wildlife.  I killed A LOT of Siberian Tigers in this level, y'all.  But the level ends with this incredible set piece of Lara having to make her way through a lava filled room with twin dragon statues on either side that she has to climb up.  This is something that the modern Tomb Raiders do miss from the classics, I feel, it's not that they lack in really iconic and interesting set-pieces but their focus on realism does mean that outside of the dedicated puzzle rooms, they tend to be set in very logical and standard locations.  Whereas the classic Raiders could go a little more classic pulp more often.  And also it's super fun how you climb up the dragon statues only to then slide all the way back down.

Speaking of really cool setpieces, level 16 owns.  It's really hard, mind, especially for a bad at platforming boy like myself, but it's also super cool.  So after Bartoli stabs himself with the dagger, his men carry him away in a portal that opened when the dagger was activated.  This portal leads Bartoli and, by extension, Lara into a kingdom in the Heavens, a fortress for the dagger's master where an army of stone soldiers awaits them.  This is the Floating Islands, a jade kingdom in the sky.  It's actually so cool, like, I'm bad at the platforming so this has been an uphill battle to get through it, hence the other reason I didn't beat the game this play session, but it's super cool having this area of just intense platforming where any misstep is just instant death.  You have to really be deliberate with your movements.  Or just screw up constantly and make sure you have a save that isn't too far back, that works too tbh.

That being said... the final enemies of this game are kind of pushovers?  Like I get why you wouldn't want to design enemies that are overly problematic given that this is a pretty harsh platforming challenge.  Having enemies that can be serious walls for Lara would only ensure that the end game is miserable.  But like, there are two kinds of enemies in this level: sword wielding soldiers who slowly fly towards Lara and spear wielding soldiers who attempt to rush her.  Both of these enemies are very intimidating if Lara allows them to get up close to her, however, the level design makes it so that you'd only end up in that situation if you were intentionally trying to die.  The sword guys move too slowly to be a threat unless you didn't see them approaching, and the spear guys can't handle Lara jumping off the platform they're already on.  Meaning both parties can easily be dispatched, even using Lara's standard pistols.  Although I have no reason to do that, because I am drowning in ammo, because I have been doing my best to find all the drops in a level, but still.

5/31/26

I should've just pushed through and beaten the game last play session.  I am not kidding when I say this that, even with how bad I am at this game, I had maybe an hour left of game time.  I cleared it during a meal.  It would've been so much more resonant if I had cleared it all in one sitting but I was like "well, it's after midnight, usually this is when I stop gaming and get some writing done, plus I'm kind of hungry, I should stop".  An incorrect assessment, I should've just simply beaten the game.  The final boss level took me less than 20 minutes, and that was just me being dumb and not playing my best.  I kept trying to make all my Grenades work when I just simply could've been mobile and played smarter.  The epilogue took five minutes.

It's actually kind of wild how short the final level is.  Like Tomb Raider 1's final boss level was a full proper level where you had to do the most difficult platforming in the game, make your way out of the currently sinking Atlantis, and then have a one-on-one duel with the main antagonist who mutates into a flying monster to dispatch you.  It feels so "final", like all your skills you've amassed across the entire game actually matter.  So in a game like Tomb Raider II, where the level design is, at least in my opinion, more interesting and more about testing the player's skill, you'd expect it to be an end game that absolutely test your merits.  Takes Lara to her most extreme yet.  Instead the final level is a single, small, very linear level where you fight four kind of strong enemies, 6 incredibly weak enemies, and then the final boss which if you've even been storing up some Uzi ammo, you're probably going to blast through.  Kind of a disappointing ending to what is otherwise a pretty banger game.

And yeah, the final boss is a joke.  I wish it was cooler, I really do, because the final boss is a DRAGON.  Who doesn't love dragons, dragons are inherently cool.  But like, the problem is that they made him too mobile.  The dragon, what remains of Bartoli after stabbing himself, walks around the arena with giant pounding steps as Lara tries to outmaneuver him, ducking under the arena into a pool of water underneath to swim away from him when he's caught up with her.  However, because of this the dragon is just so easy to work around as he just wanders the arena randomly until he gets a lock on Lara.  I think this boss fight would've just been better if it was more of a puzzle fight, like, the dragon is stationary in the center or has limited movement, but is able to follow Lara more effectively, and so what Lara must do is dive underneath it to maybe hit switches that will cause it to be knocked out, allowing Lara to go up and get the drop on it.  Tomb Raider is missing puzzle fights, that's the consistent problem with its boss design.

The epilogue is kind of cool though.  First of all, we get to see Lara in her satin blue robe.  Love that for her.  I try not to comment on Lara's attractiveness too too much when talking about her because it rarely matters but like, the girl is hot and she owns it and we love to see a queen dominate.  But also, she's cornered in her mansion, low on supplies, as the last remnants of Bartoli's cult crash through her gate and try to take revenge for her fallen boss.  Now, this isn't a full on stealth section like the stuff at the oil rig was, Lara quickly grabs her shotgun and way too much ammo for it to mow down the intruders (and their dogs, I'm still so sad about having to kill all these good boys and girls), but it's still a super neat segment.  Seeing the heroine cornered and having to fight her way out of her own home to finish the job.  And it also lets you see the Croft Manor at night, which is a rarity for this franchise as typically you only ever see it during the day.  It's a very easy section, however, most of the remaining men are very early game enemies and the shotgun, while not my favorite weapon due to how slow it is, is amongst the most powerful.  It dispatches any regular enemy in 1-2 shots.  But still, a fun little sequence to end off Tomb Raider II.  And also we get Lara teasing us about the camera almost following her into shower, clearly poking fun at all the rumors surrounding the Tomb Raider games which didn't make sense as if any one of them were true it would immediately cause Tomb Raider to receive an AO rating and be pulled from sale.

So that is Tomb Raider II.  I like this game a whole lot.  It's a lot harder than the first game, at some points to the point of being grueling.  But I think it demonstrably improves on every aspect of the first game outside of the story.  It has super engaging and fun platforming, a heavier focus on the gun gameplay, more interesting level concepts.  While the plot is just so much worse than the first game, I think it is structured better in this one, having Lara go to more real world locales before delving into the more mystical and abstract parts hidden in the world.  It's a game that is really hard to contextualize how much better it is than the first one, as comparing them side-by-side they do seem very equal, with maybe very slight improvements.  But in my mind, Tomb Raider II improves upon its predecessor significantly, creating a more challenging but more engaging game overall.  I fully expect Tomb Raider II to be on the year-end list this year, it's excellent.  8.9/10