Review: Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered Revitalises the Best and Worst of the Franchise

Tomb Raider 4 is my favorite game of all time. I say this to get an obvious bias out of the way while reviewing Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered. If this collection was that game alone, I’d slap a 10/10 on it, demand you all play it immediately and leave it at that.

However, this is not just one game. Following on from last year’s remaster of the first three Tomb Raider games, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered does the same with the next three. The final three Tomb Raider games made by original developer Core Design, in fact – The Last Revelation, Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness. However, this may be a harder sell overall.

Not for Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation though. As a game that saw Core try and bring the series to an end, it feels like a huge extravagant attempt to deliver an adventure that cemented Lara’s legacy for good. Take all the best elements of the three games that came before it, stuff it in a blender and this is what comes out. It’s also a Tomb Raider game with a strong storyline for the first time, as Lara accidentally unseals Set, the Egyptian god of disorder. This kickstarts a potential apocalypse unless she can find the Armour of Horus and re-seal the dark deity. It’s still a goofy pulp adventure, but this gives the game greater stakes and helps expand Lara Croft as a character.

As a result of this premise, the entire game is set in Egypt. This is a far cry from the first three games, which saw Lara flying across the world, uncovering the secrets of multiple civilizations. However, Core managed to maintain this kind of variety, even within a single country. Of course, there are pyramids and Horus and palaces to great pharaohs, but we also see the Roman influence as well as contemporary Egypt. There’s even a level set on a moving train.

But what Tomb Raider 4 does so well is taking the creaky old Tomb Raider engine and pushing it to its absolute limit. Obviously, it’s less impressive now than it was in 1999, but Core managed to throw in pole-climbing, laser sight aiming and rope swinging into an engine mostly built for pushing blocks around a grid. There’s a greater athleticism to Lara’s movements and the puzzle design is some of the best in the series. As the game progresses, you’ll encounter puzzles that involve assembling an ancient map of the stars, making use of mirror illusions and solving the classic water jug puzzle.

The remaster barely has to do any work to bring out the best in this game. The same visual splash of paint its predecessors got last year is present, but it also feels faster. I don’t know if this is just down to an improved framerate or if they did tweak Lara’s movement directly, but it works wonderfully. It’s a buttery smooth experience that helps an already excellent game shine. If Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered was just The Last Revelation, I’d call it essential.

However, while The Last Revelation is easily the gem of Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered, it’s not all we have to discuss. Both Tomb Raider Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness are also here, and they are some of the more contentious entries in the series. Both were rushed, buggy and showed signs of how much the team was tired of the series by this point. There’s a reason these two games are the final games made by Core Design before the series was passed over to current owners Crystal Dynamics.

Let’s start with Tomb Raider Chronicles. This is a game made over a span of only a few months, a desperate request from Eidos to release a game for the 2000 holiday season. It’s a much shorter anthology game, one built around several small adventures from Lara’s past. Because it’s an anthology, the quality constantly fluctuates.

The game starts strong in Rome, as Lara navigates the eerily quiet streets of the city, encountering strange machines and the remnants of its ancient history. It feels like a minor extension of The Last Revelation. Russia keeps this up, evoking strong comparisons with the industrial parts of past Tomb Raider games. Just a shame that it mostly hangs around a single submarine.

The last two segments show signs of Core’s boredom with the series, as they were clearly determined to make anything else here. Ireland chases the contemporary survival horror boom, with an unarmed teenage Lara dealing with demons and fey beings. It’s got some fun ideas but the levels feel exceptionally short and forgettable.

And then there’s New York, an attempt to emulate the successes of The Matrix and Metal Gear Solid with a high-tech spy adventure. However, this is where the limitations of the engine begin to show. The introduction of stealth takedowns and fast-paced sniping fall apart quickly as the controls simply don’t work well for it.

The original version of this section was also compounded by bugs, most of which crashed the game, corrupted your save or created invisible walls. Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered does a great job ironing out these problems, as it was a much smoother experience this time around. However, it does nothing to correct the inherent design problems here, which are sadly just baked into the game.

Speaking of design problems baked into the game, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered rounds off with Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. This was the first game in the series released for the PS2, notorious for almost killing the entire franchise. It’s an example of developer ambition far exceeding their capabilities. The original game launched with half its content missing, a broken control scheme and a general sense that the series had lost its way. It’s the only Tomb Raider game I’ve not played multiple times.

The remaster does do a decent job in fixing many of the worst technical issues. The controls were the most obvious example of this, as they’re now much more responsive and align better with previous entries. The experience feels less buggy as some of the more egregious issues seem to have been ironed out. However, it’s far from perfect, as Lara’s overall movement is still sluggish and new bugs appear to have snuck their way in, such as when I got stuck under a bench within minutes of exploring a restored area at the start of the game.

The fixes don’t do much to solve the inherent problems with The Angel of Darkness, however. Following on from the feeling in Chronicles that Core wanted to make literally anything other than Tomb Raider, The Angel of Darkness is a moody murder mystery adventure game. There’s a lot of wandering around Paris talking to people and finding clues and little actual tomb raiding. Some of this can be interesting, but a lot of it feels half-baked and doesn’t feel like Tomb Raider.

The adventure elements like NPC dialog trees and shops do little more than slow down the already plodding experience. Meanwhile, the strength-boosting mechanic remains as useless as ever, prompting endless moments of Lara refusing to open a door until she’s hung from a ledge for thirty seconds first. It adds nothing but padding.

As an overall package, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is a great remaster. If you played the remaster of the original trilogy last year, you’ll know what to expect here. The blocky polygons of the original PS1 games have been swapped out in favor of newly created models and textures. However, the original graphics are still an option, available at the touch of a single button at any time. The modern controls, while not my personal preference, are a decent compromise between the original design and the expectations of a modern audience. The amount of work applied to The Angel of Darkness alone is impressive. As remasters go, this is a perfect example of how to do it right.

Overall, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is a mixed bag. It’s an excellent remaster that balances preservation and improvement. However, two-thirds of this package are games that are, at best, merely fine, even with improvements. For The Last Revelation though? It’s worth it for that alone. 

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch.