Title: Tomb Raider Collection 2
System: Evercade
Price: $29.99
Release Date: April 2025
Prelude
We had the first Tomb Raider Collection as a pretty big get for the Evercade, being the EXP-R pack in game and another place to play the first three Tomb Raider games after remastered versions came out shortly before.
However, the journey was not yet over, and Lara has her two remaining PS1 games come to Evercade! The EC got spared from Angel of Darkness, and sadly all the handheld games are in legal hell, thus leaving us with the final two Tomb Raider games we can get.
Presentation
Both of these run like the other Playstation games on Evercade, so they play great and look sharp. I’d normally leave this section be after that line, but The Last Revelation had a surprising amount of work done to it thanks to a new addition Blaze threw in; a bonus level from a PC Demo that focuses around King Tut’s Tomb.
While that level did get reissued in more modern releases of the game, Blaze went back and downported it to the PS1 original, and it worked out surprisingly well. The level looks pretty good in the PS1 style and the lighting didn’t offer me any issues, and it fits in so well next to the main stages it feels uncanny how well Blaze was able to port the stage over.
Neither Tomb Raider game is known for their soundtrack and likewise continue the series tradition of sound cues being a main focus, so you don’t get any exclusive songs in the stage, but I still found it to be quite fun to play and a wonderful bonus feature.
Gameplay
We have two games here, Last Revelation with that bonus level I mentioned earlier, and Chronicles, both on the PS1. Let’s get into em!
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation– Following up from the new engine in Tomb Raider III, Lara Croft is back in a really big adventure, almost entirely within Egypt this time around! Your usual tank controls return, still as tight to control as previously, and if you’re used to how the last few games played, you’ll get used to how this one plays real quick.
In the same way that II and then III felt like a slowly expanded version of their previous game, TLR feels like more Tomb Raider with the improvements from III, but with even more of its own, improvements that I personally feel give this game the much needed QOL to make it a more fair and less frustrating experience, even while the game gets pretty challenging near the end of it all. You can save anywhere with no crystals for one thing, and the inventory menu has been redone to be much easier to use. The game also is kind enough to give you a tutorial chapter at the start of the game, which ties into the overall plot pretty nicely by showing a younger Lara on one of her earliest missions learning some of the skills she’d use later, making it far easier to get into than Tomb Raider III.
Of course, you could also use the Evercade’s bonus level as a good training level, since it’s fairly long and shows you a good amount of mechanics you’ll use in the main game, seeing how it was originally a demo level for the PC version. The Bonus Level is not linked to the main campaign, so you might want to make it a separate save from the one you have for the main stages if you play it beforehand.
Otherwise, this is just more Tomb Raider, but refined to what I felt to be the most enjoyable installment since the original. It kicks the infuriating stage design of III to near the end of the game, it gives you breathing room to learn the mechanics and show off your mastery if you already know them, it makes saving way easier, the stages are real fun, and it easily climbed up to being one of my favorite entries in the franchise.
This is a very, very long journey, so much to the point it might feel like too much of a good thing, but on the bright side that means more fun exploration you’ll be kept plenty busy by. The bonus level being faithfully downported to the PS1 version is a sweet bonus that makes this game all the more fun to experience on Evercade, and by far one of the best PS1 games on the system.
Tomb Raider Chronicles– Core tried to make Last Revelation a grand finale game, and it sure felt like one. Having you control Lara in her youth before the present day, and having the main objective be another end of the world quest made it feel as if they absolutely, positively wanted to end the series here so that there was no way they would have to make a fifth one as the PS2 was starting to come into existence. They even had TLR end in a manner where Lara was pretty much all but done for.
Anyhow they were forced to do it again, so Tomb Raider Chronicles is the result. In this game everyone is missing the MIA Lara Croft, and they reflect on other adventures she had throughout the world. Thus, Chronicles is more or less a set of random levels in differing locations rather than a game taking place through a continual story like the last four games, with each location being its own mini-adventure Lara had at some point. The QOL from Last Revelation returns and the game is still really good fun because of it, and you even get an area where you’re the younger Lara from the intro of TLR, helping to illustrate the anthology nature of these areas.
The Levels might not hit as high of a mark as some from TLR or the original Tomb Raider, but they’re still relatively fun and were ones I still found to be way more enjoyable than anything III had to offer. Otherwise this is literally more of the same, just in different locales so you get the TLR improvements to the series without being stuck in Egypt all day. Combat still remains solid, and the levels are still fun enough to be worth completing. It’s also far shorter than the previous games, making this a nice breather after the marathon of trying to finish Last Revelation, and a decent spot for the series to end on the PS1.
Conclusion
Ultimately, maybe this is just because of modern QOL speaking to me a bit more, but I actually found the two Tomb Raider games here to be more enjoyable than most of the ones from the original trilogy. Being able to save anywhere in-game is huge, and the difficulty curve of both titles are a lot more tolerable and ease you into the overall game better than II/III did, with The Last Revelation feeling like a true epic that helps train you as you play further along in it.
Chronicles just feels like “We need to make more levels to satisfy our bosses”, but the levels being fun more than makes up for the game being a lot shorter than the previous installments. Granted, considering how Last Revelation is really, really long, maybe Chronicles being more of a breather isn’t a bad thing here?
Either way, these two hooked me far more than TRIII ever could dream of doing, and I’m absolutely sure I’m gonna end up 100%ing these two before the first three games at this rate. Either way, you get more Tomb Raider, and slightly more fair Tomb Raider at that, making this a collection I found myself enjoying overall slightly more than the first set.
I give Tomb Raider Collection 2 an 8 out of 10.