Rise of the Tomb Raider has arrived on the Nintendo Switch 2, right between its own 10th birthday and the series’ 30th anniversary, and just as the curtains begin to rise on Lara Croft’s next era under Amazon’s untested stewardship. This is the latest in the ongoing series of ports by Aspyr Studios, an endeavour which has left me of two minds.
On one hand, it is remarkable that a long-running series like Tomb Raider is undergoing a sufficiently thorough modernization. In the space of two years, we’ve seen the majority of the core series games spit-shined and made available on all modern platforms—the first six games in two separate bundles, and the 2013 reboot just last November.
(Presumably Shadow of the Tomb Raider will arrive in another 6-8 months at this rate, before Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Amazon Games’ remake of the original game. Why 2008’s Tomb Raider: Underworld was skipped in this process is a mystery, since it’s reportedly the jumping-off point for next year’s Tomb Raider: Catalyst.)
“Rise of the Tomb Raider proved to be a fun ride for the first time in 2026.”
But on the other hand, the entire process has felt undercooked. Thankfully, Rise of the Tomb Raider has fared better against the combined forces of aging and remastering than most of Aspyr’s offerings over the last two years, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of unease I’ve had since Lara’s fate was passed over to its current holders.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is the middle installment of the “Survivor” trilogy, Crystal Dynamics’ grittier reimagining of Lara Croft’s origins. The sequel continues to move Lara from the unseasoned academic she was in the reboot’s intro to a hardened survivor, to the cool and collected collector-of-curios (and dinosaur-shooting) archaeologist she was introduced as 30 years ago. In this outing, she investigates the mysterious Trinity organization and the role it played in her father’s death, trekking through the Siberian wilderness.
Admittedly, while I loved the reboot, I had never truly gotten into its successor, and Rise of the Tomb Raider proved to be a fun ride for the first time in 2026. Some of my qualms with the first “Survivor” game were addressed, like reveling overmuch in the grisly fates that might befall Lara should the player make errors, while continuing to focus on less exotic environments than the classic series.
The trilogy’s core gameplay system is itself a well-honed engine, building upon the trail blazed by the Uncharted series (which, in turn, could walk because Tomb Raider had crawled before it). Stepping back into its platforming and combat felt seamless, and Rise of the Tomb Raider holds up fairly well in this department, considering the flood of similar games that followed in its wake and oversaturated the industry with open-world-ish exploration.
What stood out to me now, so far removed from its original launch, was the way the game fought with itself. Lara’s tale felt torn between the temptation to hunker down on the survival and exploration aspects and the urge to embark on another bombastic set-piece segment, full of chases, explosions, and frantic gunfights with action-movie-worthy thugs. Strangely enough, the reboot had done a slightly better job of breadcrumbing progress and keeping a good pace.
Thankfully, Rise of the Tomb Raider looks… good on the Switch 2. It’s a decade old, and the Switch 2 is not exactly a slouch, so it should certainly look good here; it’s a step up in performance and appearance from Aspyr’s last port. And yet, we know the Switch 2 is capable of more. If late-PS4 blockbusters like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Cyberpunk 2077 can set remarkably high bars, there’s no real reason that an older title like this shouldn’t clear that bar with some room to spare.
“Series fans should find enough here to justify its modest price tag.”
To split hairs for a moment, Rise of the Tomb Raider is technically a port; unlike the old PlayStation games in the I-III and IV-VI compilations, the “Survivor” trilogy has not received a proper remaster. (Otherwise it’s unlikely they both could have hit the market in such close succession.) Some ports can be fantastic, and others can feel like a bare minimum effort—and it should be clear by now which camp I think Aspyr leans toward.
Frame rates and loading times are consistently solid on the Switch 2, but some areas clearly need more TLC. Lara’s hair is one such odd example—where more recent games ported to Switch 2, like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, struggle to render modern hair, Rise of the Tomb Raider‘s model for Lara has oddly plastic hair in many cutscene environments. At times, it’s almost jarring compared to the rest of her.
And like Rebirth, Rise sometimes fall prey to texture draw-in, which is easier to forgive when it’s a 2024 PS5 game fighting to load on the Switch 2, instead of a 2015 XB1 game. To its credit, though, the gameplay itself is sufficiently smooth, with little to no impact on strenuous chase sequences or more heated moments of brutal combat.
Though Rise of the Tomb Raider seems torn between being a survival game or a straight-up action game, series fans should find enough here to justify its modest price tag. Yet at the same time, it’s hard not to feel somewhat fatigued by yet another token port—especially since the last time Lara was on my TV screen, it was in a fantastic (and tragically short-lived) animated show that demonstrated she can achieve so much more.
