Game Overview

Gameplay

In the Vatican, a camera turns an odd detail into something worth stopping for. Photographing discoveries earns Adventure Points, and the camera can also help when a puzzle has you staring at the same markings for too long. You can go back to the journal and piece things together at a pace that suits the room.

The whip gives you a few ways out of a jam. You can catch an overhead anchor to cross a gap, use the line to climb, or pull a fighter toward you before he gets his balance. A tool that helped you reach the next ledge can be the same one that keeps you upright when somebody corners you on it.

A disguise can get you past trouble in areas where a loud entrance would draw a crowd. When it comes to a fistfight, there are punches, blocks, grabs, and parries to work with. The revolver is there for a bad scrape, but limited ammunition makes it worth looking at the room before you reach for it.

Graphics

The first-person view makes a torch feel small against a dark stone passage. Its light catches the rough walls a few steps ahead, then gives way to shadow around the next turn. Outside, Giza's pyramids hold the horizon in dusty daylight, a sharp change from the damp greenery pressing in around the ruins of Sukhothai.

Story

It's 1937, between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. Someone breaks into Marshall College and makes off with an artifact that doesn't seem to justify the trouble. The theft gives Indy a reason to follow the trail to the Vatican and find out what made it worth stealing.

The search puts him alongside Gina Lombardi, a journalist with her own reasons to follow the same trail. Their path takes them beyond Rome as they uncover a connection between sites scattered across the world. The mystery gives the trip an archaeological thread even when a chase or fight has briefly taken over.

Emmerich Voss is after the secrets of the Great Circle too. That rivalry keeps the expedition moving, but the game makes room to slow down inside a temple or look for a clue off the main path. The quieter stretches let the mystery gather some weight before the next encounter.

Overall Experience

The first-person view works best when you can take a few seconds to read a space. Looking up for a whip anchor or moving closer to study a carving puts you right at the problem. The game has room for a big chase, but it gets a surprising amount out of the time between those moments.

There's a tradeoff to poking into every side room. Following each clue can interrupt the momentum of the main story, but that extra time often gives the camera, journal, and disguises more to do. You can leave an optional trail for later and still keep moving through the expedition.

The game's best stretch can start with a question about an object and end with you looking for a quiet way past a guard. Both parts feel like Indy's work. Having to read the room before acting makes a good discovery and a narrow escape feel equally at home.

Box art from Bethesda Softworks via Best Buy. Xbox Series gameplay captures via Pure Xbox.