YMMV / Tomb Raider II

• Awesome Music:
  • The theme for the Venice level in TR II, which sounds like it was composed in the 18th century by some powered-wigged, high-heels-wearing Italian.
  • Don't forget the soothing Main Menu music.
  • The techno heavy song that plays when Lara first gets on the snowmobile, which also incorporates some notes from Lara's Theme, titled Lara Plays in the Snow.
• Broken Base: This game was the start of the division among fans. Depending on who you ask, you'll either hear how the game is an Even Better Sequel or hear that the game focuses too much on combat and action and not enough on the puzzles or exploration. This was also around the time that Toby Gard, who was the creator in the first game, had left the team after having a different view on how the games should proceed compared to what Eidos wanted, which may also explain the shift in the game's tone and style.
• Fridge Brilliance: The Talion Guardian seems to be garuda, a large mythical bird or bird-like creature that appears in both Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The garuda are enemies to the naga, a race of intelligent serpent- and dragon-like beings, whom they hunt. This has a relation with the Guardian of the Talion and the Dragon of Xian. The Garuda guards the Talion, which can open the way to the dagger, and thus, the dragon.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The final line of the game, "Don't you think you've seen enough?", gained completely new meaning just few years later, when it became common knowledge how sick and tired people from Core were with making yet another Tomb Raider^note And the group that made both the first and the second game outright threatened to quit if they weren't given free time to make their own project, rather than another TR.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Floating Islands", thanks to its creepy high-pitched drone soundtrack, enemies that can float so there's never a truly safe spot to hide, and the bottomless pits in a black void.
• Polished Port: The iOS and Android ports have higher resolution textures in the level geometry and the skyboxes are also in higher resolution.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The springboards found in the Ice Palace and the Temple of Xian. You'll only get a big jump forward if you're already running or jumping forward, and remember to hold forward when landing on it too. Landing on the springboard completely straight or letting go of forward before landing on it will only launch you straight up and you'll take massive fall damage over and over until you die.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Your first enemy encounter is a tiger (which is similar to the bears from TR1 difficulty-wise), not a bat. You'll encounter deadly traps in the deeper parts of the first level. Things only escalate from there.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The game really takes a while to properly pick up pace. The Great Wall is a strong first level, despite its difficulty, but then Venice becomes incredibly combat heavy, causing it to just drag and then there are the offshore rig. Each of those five levels takes roughly an hour to finish, nothing really interesting happens in them and then there are the levels inside of the Maria Doria wreck. After finally being done with those, the game moves to Tibet and suddenly cranks up the action on overdrive, never slowing down even a bit, while introducing more and more of the surreal elements.
• That One Achievement: While most of the secrets in the game are not too difficult to find, the Gold Dragon in Ice Palace stands out for being extremely well hidden, with the moveable block it's hidden behind being very well camouflaged against the wall. That's not even mentioning how you then have to figure out how to get over to it after finding the block.
• That One Level:
  • The first level, The Great Wall, is infamous for its ridiculous amount of timed runs and death traps in the latter part of the level (especially for first-time players). Oh, there's also the fact that there are 2 T. rexes in one (optional) area.
  • "Opera House", only the fourth level, is loooong, and has that "I hope I'm doing things in the right order" feel. You would be forgiven for resorting to a strategy guide to beat it.
  • The Oil Rig, where the first level is a No-Gear Level and both levels are huge, have a lot of key items to find, and also introduce mooks with flamethrowers.
  • Floating Islands is considered to be hell for many. The first half of the level takes place over a Bottomless Pit and your only sources of safety are the aforementioned floating islands. Ancient warriors disguised as statues can come to life and fly to you, especially if you're on an island. The second half of the level is not much better since you are dealing with more of the warriors, lava pits everywhere, and tricky jumps.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The save system on the console version was copied from the PC version where players could save anytime and anywhere, unlike the first game where players could only save at designated save points. People complained that the save system removed all difficulty, so the developers combined the save system of the first two games for Tomb Raider III, but everyone complained about that too.
  • The secrets were regulated to dragon statues and there are always three in every level. You won't get the cache of items unless you find all three statues. Some found this to be a step down from the first game where it had more than three secrets in some levels and each secret always gave supplies. This was reverted back to the old system in the next game.

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