This is the second of three DLC releases for the superb Rise of The Tomb Raider, and while it's certainly a step up from the disappointingly shallow Endurance Mode, it's just so damn short and of a much smaller scale than I was hoping. Even though it advertises itself as ''3 hours of new content!'', it's probably more like 90 minutes. 2 hours at most, I guess. I don't want to get too granular about it, though, and what's more important is whether those whatever many hours are enjoyable. And they are!... For the most part.
The DLC can easily be separated into three chunks. The first part has you meet with a Remnant lady called Nadia, who asks you to search for her grandad in the nearby 'Wicked Vale', who got lost there after hoping to avenge his wife after she was murdered by the Baba Yaga witch. Upon entering the place, however, you're poisoned by flower pollen and then undergo a trip of the psychological horror variety. The trailer for the DLC already shows off all of what this entails, with you notably following the hallucination of your dad through some spooky woods, before engaging in a bit of arena combat against some demon wolves.
Once that's done you then head back to the soviet installation to collect stuff to craft an antidote. This part's pretty dull as you simply have to explore the caves of the area to find some plants, and must then kill a couple deer.
Then it's back to the vale, which you're to first solve a clever little puzzle involving pulleys and lifts to travel higher up the area. From there you're basically at the end boss of the thing, which is definitely the highlight. Despite packing some extra antidote, Lara of course inadvertently loses it and so has to fight the witch amidst all of the trippy horror hallucinations. It involves the witch hovering about in a cauldron looking thing, while you have to shoot some rope at her to pull her towards one of the geysers to deal damage. As the fight progresses you'll have to leap across floating platforms and fight off crazed trinity soldiers, though they're literally just the Deathless from the main game but of a different appearance. The fight itself is simple and really easy, but the visual effects on display are creepy and unsettling enough to stand out. Once you've beaten the boss... well, that's it. You unlock a new bow that trades your poison gas arrows for some of the hallucinogenic pollen, and also unlock an outfit that dresses you up as the witch herself. The costume is a beast, though I haven't tried out the pollen on any enemies yet.
It's fun for the most part, with the psychological hallucinations making for the best part of the whole deal. Problem is is that it feels like it's over in a flash, and the middle portion that has you collecting antidote ingredients is pretty uninspired to say the least. There's no new proper cutscenes either, and what passes for cutscenes are clearly using canned animations--bad ones at that--as opposed to motion capture. The story behind it is whatever, with a painfully obvious 'twist' that just about anyone should be able to figure out after only reading one or two of the audio files you can find. They didn't even give the grandfather character a unique model either, as he's clearly just a generic Remnant guy but with grey hair.
It's all just an awful lot more smaller scale than I was expecting. I had hopes there'd be like a whole new area to potentially explore, but what the DLC encompasses basically is some visual effects, a single puzzle, and a boss battle. It's £8/$12(?), so I guess with that in mind it's my own fault for setting my expectations a little too high. I just enjoyed the game so much (completed it twice) that I was left wanting more by the end. And as of now the DLC hasn't done a good job in satiating such desires. I can't imagine the third and final DLC will be much to write home about either, which sounds like a sort of combat arena most likely akin to what was found in this DLC.
Also, I kinda don't have much use for the new bow and outfit. I was considering starting over again, though you unlock the bow after beating the DLC as opposed to it unlocking from the outset. So, it's not like I could start over complete with the outfit and bow available. Though it doesn't seem like it'd take too long for it to open up.
Yeah, it's fun, just... best know what you're getting into. It'd probably have worked better as another mission set within the full game, as heading back to it after a short while only for it to take up 90 or so minutes felt a bit anticlimactic.
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