Crystal Dynamics modernised the series with Legend, and Underworld is a continuation of this. Legend’s story was based on the mythology of King Arthur. Even though this is a continuation of that story, they now use Nordic mythology involving Thor’s Hammer. It still sees Lara going on another globe-trotting adventure around the world, including the likes of: Thailand, Mexico, Norway, and a few sea locales. There's a video you can watch which claims to recap the story, but it is so brief and lacking key points in the story; I can’t see it being too helpful if you missed Legend, or even Anniversary. Lara wants to find out what happened to her mother, and yet again crosses paths with Amanda, but also Natla who featured in the original game (and Anniversary).
Legend featured free movement and it’s probably even smoother here, although some of the camera angles can be problematic in some sections. Legend featured quite a lot of climbing and I thought it seemed inspired by Prince of Persia; and this game feels even more so. You will be climbing/shimmying along ledges, climbing up handholds, grabbing onto poles, and performing wall-jumps.
Lara still has a magnetic grapple that she can attach to objects and pull them towards her but is rarely used for that. It is used in a few places for swinging across chasms, but often for rappelling up/down.
There’s a few instances of block pushing, or weighing down pressure plates, but I think the puzzles have mainly been reduced in favour of platforming and exploration.
The game is very linear, so there's no backtracking unless it is part of a story to do so. The linear design and agile movement means that you can progress fairly quickly through the game, but it will take around 10 hours compared to Legend’s 8 hours.
There’s a couple of times where it’s not quite obvious where to go, but there is a hint system which features a basic hint and then a stronger hint if you want it.
There are a few Quick Time Events (QTE) but instead of button presses, you now just need to perform a dodge, or a jump, and these sections are more forgiving, utilising slow-motion.
There’s some secrets to find, which are often placed in a vase surrounded by a few other vases. It’s a bit tedious to kick them all, especially when the button prompts are quite fussy with how you need to position yourself.
Lara’s primary weapon is the iconic dual pistols with unlimited ammo. She can also have an alternate weapon such as shotgun, uzis, assault rifle with limited ammo, in addition to a few grenades. You can choose one weapon at the start of the level, but yet you can switch using Lara’s PDA; so I didn’t get the point in choosing one. I think there’s far fewer combat sections overall, so didn’t utilise some of the combat mechanics, and mainly stuck with the pistols. I often forgot I had grenades, and I never used the special "adrenaline shot" mechanic. When you do acquire Thor’s Hammer, you can plough through enemies with ease; either bludgeoning them, or zapping them with electricity.
The game's primary enemies are humans, a couple of animals, plenty of spiders, then later some mythical creatures. Lara seems to have better aim this time around (Legend used an auto aim system like this game, but most bullets didn’t hit the target). The exploding barrels and destructible scenery doesn’t feature in this game either.
In Legend, I found the boss battles a bit confusing what the objective was. I don’t know if others hated those fights because now they have been removed. Early in the game there is a kraken-like beast but you defeat him with climbing and puzzles, rather than guns. The last boss is defeated in a similar fashion.
There’s a level where you need to ride your motorbike between sections, but the mindless bike combat sections from Legend don’t feature here. That’s a definite improvement.
While you can save manually, when you reload - you'll always start at a previous checkpoint. The checkpoints are frequent though. Since they were so frequent, I rarely felt the need to use a medpack because you would just reload at full health. Most of my deaths were due to bad camera, pressing the wrong button, or not quite getting the angle of the analogue stick correct, so she jumped to her death rather than to the next platform.
I found this game much less glitchy than Legend, although some of the climbing animations had awkwardly stretched legs, and on a few occasions - I was temporarily stuck on scenery for a few seconds until I wiggled free.
In terms of graphics, it still looks good today. There’s a nice level of detail like dirt appearing on Lara.
Tomb Raider Underworld refines the gameplay in Legend, with more focus on spelunking, and fewer combat sections.