Thanks to Aspyr for the review code

Title: Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 02/14/2024

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Story

In this series of pivotal adventure games, you take control of Lara Croft as she goes on a world-exploration quest, finds out the mysteries of her family, seeks ancient artifacts, and goes to stop various evil along the way. Really this is just a story that continues from one game to the next, but no matter how you slice it, you’re Lara and you’re investigating locations all over the world. Have at it!

Presentation

The presentation in this game starts rather strange for a compilation, but ultimately, I found it to be a nice change of pace from the usual compilation menu structure. See, the three games boot up immediately with their title screen selection menus… And that’s all you get. Hit down to go from TR1 to 2 and so on, and up to go back a game. Then you just jump into the game of your choice, and you’re already off to playing. The start button switches between OG/HD graphics, even in this first menu, and the glowup between the original and remaster visuals is a big one.

Still, the original Tomb Raider menus being the way of starting the games, just like you would back in the original PS1 versions, really does give it an eerie feeling of being an emulation despite that not being the case in the slightest; these developers do a really good job polishing up these classic entries in a variety of ways, and that was apparent to me even as I started the first game with the original graphic style. On the downside, there aren’t any collection exclusive art galleries or bonuses in-game to play with, but these games had a lot of secrets and fun hidden in them that are mostly retained, including PC exclusive story chapters available on consoles for the first time ever, and various cheat codes that still work.

So, how do the original/remaster styles compare, and is the seamless switch a hinderance that makes one look more jarring than the other? Surprisingly, they compare very well and I didn’t find the switching to get in the way, really. The original visual style looks excellent and still is more pleasing to the eye than playing the games on an actual PS1, but you get all the low poly models, effects and the original framerate here, and the music cues appear to be the same across both styles. The FMV cutscenes are also the same FMV across both styles, and while they look a bit crusty, they still get the point across all the same, and the in-engine cutscenes within a stage look outstanding in the remaster style, with character mouths moving to the voices and their models animating much more naturally than with the original style.

The game is still wide screen even in low-poly mode, but I didn’t find this aspect to be a hinderance at all. Per the original nature of these games, a lot of stages have very dark areas which are incredibly difficult to see, and often require lighting a match or finding another light source to navigate or spot a hidden switch/detail on the walls. The big difference that I noticed between modern and retro in this aspect, is how almost every instance I came across where a corner of a room was too dark on the modern style, was much brighter by default on the low poly style, but there were a few cases where neither were all that easy to see, which was when it was prime time to light a match and find light the intended way. Playing the remastered style on my docked Steam Deck via my OLED TV really made the darker areas harder to see than normal, so I do feel maybe a bit of tweaking could be done to make some areas a bit easier on the eyes or at least match the brightness of the OG style more.

Speaking of Steam Deck, I’m happy to say that the performance on it is stellar, and has been with each update that dropped throughout the past few months. All 3 games run flawlessly in both OG and Remastered styles, docked and portably, and none of them suffered from any deck related issues at all. The game is extremely stable at the original or remastered framerates, and the controls map wonderfully to the deck, especially the modern layout. In the end, I found the visual style of these games pretty appealing whichever way I chose to play, and while the remastered visuals do help make some hidden details a bit more obvious, I felt the lighting differences were enough of a tradeoff to warrant both styles having their own pros and cons. Sadly, you can’t mix the high framerates with the low poly look, or the low framerate/better lighting with the remastered look.

Gameplay

Being that this compilation is a very to-the-point set of three games, I could just jump into describing the three games and let them speak on their own merits, but the odd part about this remastered trilogy is that while the wrapper is simple, a ton of crazy good work was poured into the remastering effort of these three games, and every patch would fix or tweak even more details for a better quality, more faithful experience. Being that this compilation was my very first foray into the Tomb Raider series, I got to deal with the typical growing pains while also seeing some minor tweaks every update, and also noting how dang similar all three games are.

Yes, this was a yearly series back in the day. No, that does not mean each game was a glorified level pack, as the three games still are distinct enough to warrant their own breakdowns. But because they do control similarly and have a lot of similar UI/options to mess with, we might as well go over those, since that’s an aspect of this compilation I can focus on.

When the original Tomb Raider hit the PS1/Saturn, analogue sticks weren’t a thing on the console at all. Thus, the game was made with tank controls in mind, and it shows big time, with a lot of focus on turning, careful movements, and precise jumping and grabbing for the brutal stages. The original control scheme is here and accounted for with all 3 games, and while I did get used to it and ultimately felt it was the more precise layout, I didn’t find it to be the most fun, even with me being experienced with other tank games like Mega Man Legends. For general movement and fighting enemies, it was incredibly frustrating, and considering these original versions had saving limitations that were thankfully removed in the remasters, the controls make an already brutal series even more annoying to deal with. Thankfully, you can save as many times as you please, anywhere and everywhere, but you can also brick your save if you aren’t careful, so there is some caution to be had with that feature.

The modern controls might make you think you get typical third person action game controls here akin to the newest Tomb Raider games, but if you go into these with that hope you’ll be incredibly frustrated and disappointed. They’re still tied to the tank control quirks, such as long windup before jumps and needing to be very precise to solve some tricky platforming challenges. You can’t just run in 360 degrees thinking that’ll make the jumping better, you still have to think with a tank control, almost cinematic platformer mindset. Still, I found this control scheme to be way better for dodging and using combat weapons, and with me thinking of Tomb Raider more as a cinematic platformer with these controls, I clicked with the modern style way, way more and had a lot more fun controlling these games, and if you’re a newcomer to the series, I strongly advise you do the same to start out with. There’s also an absurd amount of achievements across the three games, so completionists will have a field day with that extra content if that stuff tickles your fancy.

Now to get into the individual games and why them being so dang hard is in fact, not the fault of controls, and why this review took so dang long in my queue…

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TOMB RAIDER: The original game that started it all! Originally for the Saturn, then made more famous on the PS1, this new port includes all the content from prior versions, including the bonus chapter. However, that bonus chapter is super duper hard to the point I’m not even going to bother covering it, since man, I tried to progress in it… But that chapter shows the harsh nature of the game immediately, and somehow manages to be tougher than the later parts of the base game.

So, let’s talk about the more fun parts! This one starts simple, and I like that considering how the later games would throw in new mechanics like vehicles and the like, but here your starting template is just you going around, getting to grips with the weird controls, and finding secrets and solving puzzles. A pretty fun, promising start! You have a pair of handguns with infinite ammo, and plenty of rooms to explore and figure out at your own pace to ultimately reach the exit of each stage. These stages are rather long, even if you know what to do, and are filled with tons of puzzles and traps to deal with. Sometimes you’ll find a secret room or item hidden away in a stage, and a few of these I found to be incredibly clever when discovering them on my own. One secret required me to do a weird wall jump on a ramp, and I felt really satisfied when stumbling upon a bunch of helpful items that way.

Speaking of items, a lot of TR items are pretty typical stuff, from medicine packs that can heal Lara’s health points in a pinch, to more powerful weapons like grenades and shotguns to deal more damage to the bulkier foes like dinosaurs, wildlife, and humanoid enemies. Lara, either in her classic or modern control setup, does have a handy dodge roll that you’ll need to master in order to deal with these enemies in combat, since a lot of foes will just rush at you immediately, and once you encounter enemies that can shoot at you, the game gets a lot harder when dealing with them, and of course, each new location Lara reaches has more and more traps to deal with for an increasingly challenging experience.

Despite the ramping difficulty, I found the QOL and generous saving in these remasters to make this first entry a ton of fun, even as someone completely unfamiliar with this IP beforehand. The modern controls work great once you treat jumping like a cinematic platformer, and before long I was easily making some extreme edge jumps without much of an issue. Really the toughest part of this first game for me, was the insane amount of traps the game throws at you that can kill Lara instantly. That’s par for the course with this franchise, and it’ll keep up as the series progresses, but otherwise with trial and error, I made my way further and further over the past few months, and mostly spent my time with this compilation here due to how much I enjoyed it.

What I did not spend much time on, in comparison, was this game’s DLC expansion, Unfinished Business. Previously a PC port exclusive chapter, this is now brought to consoles for the first time ever, and is another set of stages in this game. However, being that this was post-game content originally, these stages are absurdly hard; I mean, harder than the first TR2 stages, even. Definitely not one to start when early in your travels, and certainly one to only work away at once you completed the first and maybe even the second games. Still, considering how obscure these PC chapters were before this remaster, I’m very glad to see them here, even if they kept kicking my ass.

TOMB RAIDER II: STARRING LARA CROFT: Following up from the smash hit of the first game, this game jumped solely to PS1 before getting a PC port with a bonus episode later on. Lara is back, now in more locales around the world and now with the ability to ride vehicles around and use more kinds of weapons. The action ramps up pretty darn quickly here, with the first stage of the game being way tougher than the first several worlds of TR1, at least it was for me. Still, I was able to knock a couple of levels down and have fun with the new mechanics, but dang, despite the vehicles being a cool idea in theory, a lot of the situations I encountered with them led me to getting confused or lost trying to navigate my way to the next objective in one, or deal with enemies firing on me.

This one’s definitely a game I had to use a lot more saves on than the prior entry, but even still the fact I was still making progress and found this a natural followup to the first game’s difficulty means that if you play this after clearing the first base game, you’ll have a pretty reasonable time. I still found the level design of early TR1 to be a lot more fair though, since these initial TR2 stages still pack quite a punch, but not enough to throw you off completely. A fun little diversion to alternate between TR1 for if you want to see something different during your adventure in that game, and worth playing fully after clearing that first adventure, and before the first game’s Golden Mask expansion, since that came after this one. Of the games in this trilogy pack, this is the other game I find to be a plausible starting point if you happened to get this one first.

As for TR2’s expansion? Well, that’s the Golden Mask, and just like Unfinished Business it bricked me immediately; it requires mastery of the mechanics just like TR1’s episode did, and even after adjusting to the controls and getting used to these games after several hours of play, I didn’t get far at all and yet again, cannot judge this. Treat this expansion like the final episode of TR2 that it is, and you’ll be more prepared for it, but yet again it’s nice to see this PC-exclusive set of stages brought back.

TOMB RAIDER III: ADVENTURES OF LARA CROFT: This game was easily the biggest cause for this entire review taking so darn long to complete, and that all stems from the fact that TRIII puts all of your tomb raiding skills to the test from the very first level, to the point that I’d argue the DLC stages from the first two games are more approachable. There’s still new stuff to find in this sequel, as the engine got a bit of a shakeup, and considering how simple the first game’s stages felt compared to the worlds here getting more massive than ever before, this is one lovely looking game in both retro/modern modes. However, this one is incredibly, insanely tough and a game I can only recommend playing after you beat both prior games and their DLC expansions; you’ll seriously need all that experience and then some to deal with the trickier puzzles found here, almost immediately.

Quicksand in the first stage you can barely spot until it’s too late? Yep, that’s a thing. Frustrating water mazes that take a ton of tries to figure out what you need to do? Yep, that too. More vehicles and new weapons to play around with, and combat that still is, while clunky, at least still competent like usual? You bet. Needless to say, despite my previously strict “no cheating” mantra up to this point, I broke down and used a retro cheat code to see more of this game so I wouldn’t just base it all off the first level, and the later stages in the game certainly don’t hold back the difficulty, either.

The training mansion is yet again a must-play before you go into this one, but that won’t save you from a ton of trial and error, more than ever before if you’re a newcomer like myself, and I can’t say I ultimately found all that fun compared to the first two. It felt like these games, while technically impressive, got worse and worse from a design POV as the series went on. It was cool to see that the game lets you pick the order of several world locations after clearing the first area, which at least gives this game some replay value via the choices you have instead of being on a locked linear format like the last two.

Oddly enough, I found the Highway Fling level in the Lost Artifact expansion for this game to be a lot more of a forgiving starter DLC level than the DLC stages in the prior two Tomb Raiders, but it still packs a punch that takes an incredibly long time for me to get used to; needless to say, this game still was bricking me with plenty of situations where I got stuck even after I got the hang of the first two, but somehow I was able to make a bit more sense of Highway Fling’s first level than the first level of the base TR3 experience. Still couldn’t get past it despite my nearly 10 hours of playing this trilogy over the past few months, though.

Conclusion

Hooooo boy. What I expected to be yet another series of retro games compiled in a simple fashion that I could jump into as a newcomer and give easy thoughts on, ended up not being that. Part of that is due to these Tomb Raider games being far more complicated than they initially seem for a newcomer like myself, along with the sheer amount of polish, care, and extra work done to these remasters that still make them the ultimate versions to play.

Seriously, there were times I thought I did enough research on it all, then a patch would deploy and update and improve some more things I didn’t even know where problematic! Add to the very, very long length of the games and their high difficulty even with all this QOL, and it took a while for me to play enough to get the grasp of these three titles as a newcomer, but I’m glad I finally did in the end. This remaster trilogy is just incredibly well done, and more than likely if you’re a fan of these three games you probably already bought it.

But what about other newcomers, in the same boat I was when picking this up for the first time? Well, I still had quite a lot of fun with it, but there’s a big learning curve you’ll still need to deal with, even with the copious amount of quality of life features. The first Tomb Raider is a great time I can see myself continuing to work away at to fully complete it and its expansion, and was easily the game I had the most fun with. Removing the limited save options was a smart move and makes these games a lot easier to slowly progress in short bursts, but it also can lead to situations of bricking yourself if you save right as you’re about to die. TR2 was pretty decent fun too, and even playing it out of sequence for a while I had fun with the new mechanics, even if the level design was more frustrating than the first game.

I’m also just sorry, but Tomb Raider III is easily the weakest game in the set, both from a newcomer POV like my own, and I feel it has to be one for fans of the IP, since I can’t imagine anyone found this difficulty spike back in the day to be that much fun to deal with. It improves the engine and still provides classic tomb raiding action, but doesn’t do much to keep the fun factor going and by this point it already feels like Lara’s adventures were getting milked dry. Still, it makes sense to include it here as part of the original trilogy, and hey, more well-remastered content is still great for fans and it’ll at least keep you on your toes while you work on it.

Ultimately, as a newcomer to the Tomb Raider series, I’m definitely a fan now, and the outstanding quality of these remasters is a big reason why. It got me into the first game with ease, and got me to try the others long enough to see their own individual merits and appreciate them. This may just be a simple drop into the game experience, but when the work to polish these up and look gorgeous was done as well as they could be, I still find these releases the best possible way I could have experienced these classics. Lord knows how much misery I’d be in for trying to play Tomb Raider III with the original save system. Still, these are very challenging games, and not for the faint of heart. If you can manage to prepare yourself for a lot of fun trial and error and puzzle solving, I think you’ll at least get a good sense of fun with that original game, if nothing else.

I give Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft a 7 out of 10.