This was an alright audio. It does feel a little disappointing after all the build-up of Excelis Dawns, which, in comparison, I think did a better job of drawing me into this world.

The Excelis in this story is one a thousand years forward in time, a neat facet of the story but unfortunately Excelis Rising barely explores it. For reasons I can't really comprehend, writer David A McIntee for some reason confines the entire plot to largely interior scenes in a museum around a sort of murder mystery. The Sixth Doctor and Grayvorn - the latter assuming a new identity after all these years, are pretty entertaining sussing each other out and trying to outwit one another - it is basically all that is holding this story together. Thanks to the talents of Colin Baker and Anthony Stewart Head, Excelis Rising would have been a lot weaker.

The story is pretty unremarkable and the ending is incredibly abrupt, anti-climactic, and unsatisfying as a listener. Outside of a few details, like how seances are a legitimate means of investigation on this planet, and some vaguely interesting but unexplored ideas in terms of how this functions as a sequel to Excelis Dawn, this second part of the audio was pretty mediocre overall. Not bad, but pretty disappointing as I feel a lot was relying on it to successfully follow up and build on the first part of this story. If Rising isn't special, than this whole Excelis trilogy suddenly becomes a lot less worthy of being this seperate, special, pseudo-crossover thing Big Finish was going for here.

Finally, I will mention that the special effects were decent. Though not exceptional, I do like how the music and sound effects cued us to this being a different era of Excelis' history, and instantly gave it a distinct feel from Dawns.