[Toy Review] Lara Croft Rise of the Tomb Raider Play Arts Kai

Took me a while to finish this review. Few months ago, I got this Play Arts Kai action figure of Lara Croft from her latest game, Rise of the Tomb Raider. I haven't played the game yet, I don't have an XBox One or a PC that can run this game so I don't know much about her latest adventure. But I watched some gameplay and story bits so that it will be much easier to review her action figure.

"We become who we're meant to be."

~ Lara Croft ~

PACKAGING

Front and back of the box.

PAK's standard coffin-type packaging shows a large zoomed-in product shot of Lara in front, the back shows some poses. This is the only figure from the game, don't expect SQEX to release different characters from this game.

Front cover opened.

You can view the figure and its accessories when you open the front cover. You can also read some stuff about the game, Lara Croft, and her equipment at the back of the front cover.

Lara's out for an adventure.

Packaging includes: Lara Croft (RotTR) figure, Recurve Bow, 2x Climbing axes, Pistol, Combat knife, Arrows, Right hand with arrow, L/R axe/knife gripping hands, Left bow/knife gripping hand, Right trigger hand, Display stand (instructions on cardboard blister pack)

THE FIGURE

This new Lara Croft is more realistic than her old PS1 up to early PS3 game versions (except the 2013 reboot), and she's shaping up to be a hardened survivor and adventurer.

Lara at four angles.

Lara's new PAK action figure looks great, much better-looking than her 2013 reboot version. The presentation is great, she looks really rugged.

She should clean her dirty pretty face.

The head sculpt, is almost accurate to the master model figure (the figure shown in the box's promo images). Anyway, Lara's face still looks great, it's 85% accurate to her in-game counterpart. Her lips looks thick and her face is dirty to imply that she climbed mountains, crawled through tight places and searched ruins/tombs for lost treasures.

Lara's necklace, she also wears this on the 2013 reboot.

Her necklace is permanently sculpted on her neck. It looks fine and painted well.

Lara's ponytail.

Her hair looks fine, but I don't like how the ponytail is designed. Her hair tie is sculpted with the ponytail and connected on a small ball-hinge. If you ask me the ponytail should be a "peg/hinge" combo or let the hair tie a separate piece that's made of soft flexible plastic or cloth.

The Remnant Jacket.

She's wears the Remnant Jacket through the majority of the game. It covers her body and hides her sexiness. Makes sense, why would she wear a tank top in harsh, cold weather? But I would like to have her figure wearing the Gray Henley outfit. The jacket's really detailed, textured and painted very well. The strap on her jacket is sculpted on the chest and abdomen that will get misaligned when you pose these parts.

The quiver for arrows and a peg hole for the bow.

She got a quiver at her back, it's permanently attached. The quiver looks good and nicely painted. Also there's a peg hole so that she can put her (pegged) bow at her back.

Gun holster, knife sheath and a couple of little bags.

The lower part of the jacket is soft, and features the pistol holster and the knife sheath. The two climbing axes can also be stored at the back by pegging behind the pants, The pegs can be found if you lift the back lower part of the jacket.

The arms looks fine but the elbow ball-hinges ruined the look.

Both arms looks good and asymmetrical, They're really detailed and well painted, no complaints here. It also hides the wrist ball-hinges. The hands including the extras are also dirty looking for consistency.

The pants looks normal.

The pants looks like standard everyday pants with some extra pockets. This one is less textured but it's detailed with wrinkles, pockets and stitches.

Lara's adventurer's boots... with zipper.

Like the pants, the boots looks like your normal, but expensive, trekking boots.

ACCESSORIES

Lara got lots of stuff which is really cool. She got her bow, climbing axes, pistol, knife, arrows and a total of 5 extra hands. So I guess this justifies the price of the figure a bit.

Wow, Lara's well equipped for her deadly adventure.

Nice accessory quantity, but she forgot her other weapons like the shotgun and the assault rifle. Well I can buy a miniature 1/6 scale AK-47 toy. She's also missing her radio and glow sticks.

The bow looks boring. Her makeshift one looks better IMO.

The Recurve Bow looks bland. The paint applied is almost flat with less shading, but it features a flexible string. This can make Lara pull the bow and aim unlike Fran (FFXII). The bow have a awkward peg sculpted so that you can put it on the peg hole on Lara's back.

These look realistic!

It's great that she uses two climbing axes in RotTR, it's easier to climb the mountain that way. The axes looks realistic but they have the same sculpt, it's good that the paint job makes them look different at each other. You can peg the axes underneath Lara's jacket.

A standard revolver-type pistol.

I don't know why she didn't use Roth's dual pistols, instead she just picked up a pistol on the field. The pistol looks great though, nice black paint on the gun and brown on the grip.

A knife... it's better than nothing.

The combat knife is just a standard combat knife, still looks good.

A bunch of arrows.

The arrows are crammed together, its purpose is to just to make the quiver look full of arrows. They're made of soft plastic that's sculpted well and looks like they're three separate arrows when in the quiver.

A hand with a single arrow.
It's made of soft plastic but it might break when handled poorly.

One hand have an arrow permanently sculpted. I prefer this one than putting an arrow on the hand because its difficult to do it and the hand might not hold the arrow well and fall off, like how Fran did. This hand can also hold the bow string, making the bow pulling/aiming look more convincing.

The extra gripping hands.

The extra gripping hands may look clean on the photo but they're purposely dirty in person. One right hand is for holding the bow and knife, it has a nice grip when holding the knife, it holds the bow kinda loose. The pair of gripping hands are for holding the climbing axes and also the knife, nice grip. And the trigger hand is for the pistol.

Holding bow and aiming/pulling the arrow.

Both climbing axes equipped

Holding a gun and a knife of each hand.

Oh yes, Lara can also hold the glow sticks that I made on all gripping hands pretty well. The hands can't hold the walkie-talkie radio that I also made unless I use some blue tacks.

Holding a glow stick.

All of Lara's equipment can be stored/equipped on the figure, just like Cloud (FFVII:AC) and Raiden (MGR).

[left] The bow kept at the back by pegging it to the peg hole

[right] The arrows stored in the quiver

[left] Both climbing axes can be stored at the back via pegs.

[right] The knife and the gun is kept at their sheath and holster.

Lara fully equipped.

She looks badass when she got all of her weapons/equipment on her, especially if she's holding the climbing axes.

Display stand.

The Display Stand is almost not necessary for this figure unless you want Lara to pose like she's jumping to clear a gap.

ARTICULATIONS, POSING AND SCALING

A hardened survivor.

I keep wondering why the female PAK figures have better articulation than the male figures. Her articulation points are all standard and no experimental joints which is great.

Gun and knife ready if some grunt shows up.

Lara can look around very well, the neck joint improves the head movement. The ball-hinge on the ponytail can move well too, you can make Lara's hair look like it's being blown by the wind or moves according to her movement, but the ponytail sculpt ruined it.

Dual-wielding climbing axes.

Her upper body articulation (chest/waist) moves nicely and there are less to none gaps revealed when posing these parts because this figure uses a standard double ball-peg, not those ball-peg-hinge combo that the male PAK figs mostly have these days.

Seeing her posed like that makes her a passable Resident Evil, The Last of Us or The Walking Dead character

Both arms uses ball-hinges on the shoulder, elbows and wrists. They all have great movement range. No bicep swivel. Lara's chest is soft making it easier to move the arms forward and close to the chest.

Saving herself from falling off the cliff.

The legs can raise up forward and sideways and twist just fine. Movement range is pretty standard. The legs also have cut joints that moves well and gives the figure more leg movement range. Its downside is that it gets both leg sculpts misaligned when posed.

A gun and an axe? Deadly combination.

Knees are double-hinged. It looks good when semi-folded thanks to the knee caps. Posing Lara like she's crouched (hunting pose) looks great.

Hunting mode: Bow and arrow

The boots have decent movement but doesn't have a toe hinge. Thanks to PAK Lara's articulations, she can do almost every pose or actions that her in-game counterpart can and still look good without any gaps visible on the figure.

Hunting mode: Climbing axes

This Lara PAK fig is a 10-incher figure. It's obvious that she will be larger than her 2013 reboot version. Let's see if how her scale fares with the rest of my large-scale PAK figs.

Raiden, Lara, Harley and Leon.

Let's start off with the multi-title group. Raiden (MGR) is taller than Lara. Harley (B:AK) and Leon (RE6) are shorter. Other than Leon being shorter like always, the scaling is pretty good.

Lara with the AVALANCHE members.

Next is the FFVII:AC group. Lara is shorter than Cloud, Barret and she's a bit taller than Tifa.

Lara Croft is an amazon when she's with this group.

Lara with the colorful crew. Lightning (LR:FFXIII) and Serah (FFXIII) are awkwardly short. Sora (KH3D) and Riku (KH2) have better scaling comparison with Lara because they're kids.

A digital pop-star, a treasure-hunter, a Vierra and a masked vigilante.

Finally with the Variant girls and Fran. Lara is taller than Miku (Variant) and a bit shorter than Catwoman (Variant) She's also shorter than Fran (FFXII) even when the Vierra is not standing straight. Nice scaling comparison.

QUALITY ISSUES

The left leg on my Lara Croft figure is not connected properly on the cut joint. It looks like it will detach if I force it, but that didn't happen during my review. Still, be careful on posing the left leg if you also got this figure because I saw a video review where the figure's left leg snapped off while posing that part, probably a common problem on all RotTR Lara Croft PAK figures.

CONCLUSION

Now that I have this new Lara Croft PAK fig, I can totally forget about her 2013 reboot version. The highlights of this figure are its details, presentation and number of accessories, she's also very fun to pose. I don't know about her build though, because RotTR Lara PAKs have a common issue, and that's the loose left leg cut joint. She's pricey so I cannot recommend her if you're on a tight budget, unless if you're a fan of the game or Lara Croft herself. I can't wait to play Rise of the Tomb Raider on PS4.

Sorry, I don't have a special toy edit this time (having computer problems). I will update this blog post/review as soon as I finish the edit.

Cheers and Happy Collecting!