TR4 is awesome haha. Exactly what I want in a TR game.. being lost, feeling trapped, being stuck.. Being frustrated but then the joy of having finally beaten it.
the last revelation was actually my absolute favourite as a kid, into adulthood i replayed all of the games, and that's when i started to realize its flaws. up until after cairo, the game is so strong, so fun, and i loved the atmosphere of every single level. the game fell apart for me after cairo, you could tell it was rushed, and the repetitiveness was just plain boring for me. this game still has a lot of sentiment to me as it was the first tomb raider i ever beat on my own, and i still love it a lot. i just wish it was given more time to be finished to it could really flourish.
I'm currently going through the whole series again as well. I'm gonna be honest, I really feel the games fall apart after 3. But I do enjoy them still. Just not as much as the first 3. I'm currently on this one(4) atm. Maybe I'll like 5 more. I do hate how cyptic some of these puzzles are though.
@rhyswhittington8759 Oh yea, I agree. Honestly, the design doesn't make sense like a good 50% of the time in 3. How the fuck did I even beat anything past 1 as a child? Lol
@@tonyalmodovar7629 no idea lol, i never beat 3 without save cheats. i still havent beaten it to this day without unlimited save crystals, i just dont have the time to finish a game with a system like that. personally the franchise fell at three for me. tomb raider 1 and 2 were amazing. tomb raider 3 just didnt do it for me with the save system, levels being far too long and a heavy leaning on trial and error gameplay that wasnt present in the first two games all that much. dunno, maybe its just me but TR3,4 and chronicles arent that enjoyable for me.
@@rhyswhittington8759what we know as TR3 was originally just created as a spinoff named "Adventures of lara croft" while the real tomb raider 3 would have been a different game with a completly new engine. But that would have took 2 years, so they where forced to turn the spinoff (that uses the old engine of TR1 and 2) into tomb raider 3 to keep releasing it every year.
Am I the only one that think they should remake this game? TLR was waaaaay too abitious for it's time/technology and a remake would be a fine way to soft reboot the series.
ive done what i could to replay this game as an adult. with the remakes for 1-3 coming out next year, im really hoping this and chronicles get the nod soon after
I actually DID finish this game without walkthroughs but got stuck for months in the Cairo section (the whole pipe thing to put on the bike was very random). I eventually finished the game on my own. The puzzle that got me was arguably one of the easiest: the N, S, E and W moving blocks. In Portuguese, we use different letters so I never thought as a teen W stood for WEST LOL
The pipe on bike thing was explained in the cutscene from 1:07:49 I was a toddler, my dad only learned Spanish in school, so only my mom had some basic English, and we kept replaying the part to figure out what "nitrousoxide connected to the CARBRARAK should gibe you the extra punsh... Go, girl... Brrring me the codes!" probably a month of trial and error. xD And any pushing blocks were trial and error too, it's way too cryptic, like the planet thing using a binocular on a dark hole, really?
been binging your Tomb Raider reviews and I gotta agree with the people here: These videos and your channel deserve a lot more views and attention. Very well made and your love for these games is very apparent and therefore your videos are very authentic.
The Last Revelation is my favorite Tomb Raider game. I don't necessarily disagree with your criticism as such, but something about this game just really clicks with me. Atmosphere especially I feel has never been done better in any Tomb Raider game before or since, and I really dig the Egyptian setting and mythology. It makes the game feel less episodic than the previous titles, but more like one big adventure, which is something I very much appreciate. It's funny to hear you say that back in the day, you thought TR4 was more difficult than the previous titles. To me, the exact opposite was the case. This was the first Tomb Raider game I managed to beat as a child without using a walkthrough or resorting to cheats. And I'm sure it probably took me many weeks to do so, but I definitely feel that TLR is significantly more manageable than TR3. As much as I love TR3, even as an adult playing it now, I still find many levels in that game to be an absolute NIGHTMARE in terms of convoluted level structure, obscure puzzles, and trial-and-error, made even worse by the fact that saving in TR3 was a limited resource. In comparison, I don't think anything in TLR is quite that bad. I guess The Lost Library gets kind of close, but I still think it's worlds apart from the absolute hell that were the London levels in TR3. Anyway, great video! I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
I agree with you, for the most part. That being said - the problems of this Last Revelation are more clear to me now that I look back and after watching this excellent video). Random objects hidden in the environment that you actually need to take (the valve in Cairo...), interactions that would only occur once in the game (grabbing a corpse), or simply too many options made several parts of the game tiring and overwhelming. Still love TLR for its atmosphere, and it sure as hell was satisfying to beat it. But the game has various flaws that the original TR didn't.
The atmosphere in many levels of TRLR is simply unsurpassed! One of the reasons for this is the composer Peter Connelly, who replaced Nathan Mccree. He wrote a great ambient score, and a cool soundtrack in general! I love the soundtrack of the first 3 games, but it's in the 4th part that the soundtrack is the deepest for me, even frightening at times.
With all due respect, I find it extremely hard to believe that you beat this game as a kid without walkthroughs. Especially if you thought TR3 was more challenging. The levels and puzzle solutions in this game are just intentionally way too obtuse to figure out without help. It's so bad, it feels like the developers are intentionally trying to be as difficult and abstract as possible to confuse players. It actually feels spiteful, like they are angry at us for buying the earlier games and making them so popular, that they even had to develop this game in the first place. T1-3 are expertly designed to guide you where you need to go without it feeling obvious, TR4 is just a mess you're expected to make sense of. It's either bitterness or laziness, because the level design feels lazy, and important new mechanics have no introduction. The best example of this is being able to open doors without levers or switches, after three games of building that repetitive knowledge in the player, with absolutely no indication the mechanic has been changed. They even go back to levers/switches opening doors again right away, just to be more confusing. And you would either have to be one very imaginative child, or a genius child prodigy, to know what to find and combine to progress in the Cairo/Bike levels without some assistance.
@@VitZ9 With all due respect back, you could have made your points without insinuating that I lied in the comments of a random RUclips video about beating a video game as a child. Yeah, I guess I must have been a child prodigy for having beaten TR4 as a twelve-year-old. That definitely makes sense and is not an insane stretch.
Tomb Raider 4 was about raiding tombs which is the essence of the game brought back. Anyone who says that TR3 was better than TR4 is basically not understanding the original idea of the game. This game was about tombs, not fighting guards in Area 51 in UFO.
This was my favorite one! Played with parents as a kid. Knowing little English, we got stuck for a long time at the motorcycle part... "Nitrous oxide connected to the carburetor should give you the extra punch. Go, girl! Bring me the codes!" is still stuck in my head. They never really explain in the game you have to combine items in inventory. xD But the parts where you ride around Egypt on a car, explore Valley of the Kings, climb the pyramids are absolute best. I haven't felt like that since, at least until Assassin's Creed Origins.
@@GFrom I played original Assassin's Creed before release, the leaked version. It crashed so I never finished it. Played through Ezio games in order, 100% Revelations and then kinda dropped the franchise without finishing AC3. They were releasing so many of them I got confused and only returned to series with Origins. Still pissed Aya parts were cut so much, but the game was so good especially Curse of the Pharaohs DLC. Now am replaying the rest.
@@GFrom Which of the handhelds are worth it? I got Liberation HD already, and it seems that most mobile ones are no longer available. Dunno outside of that. Also, the quote I remembered, you have it in video at 1:07:49 for some reason the guy chews the scenery so hard it stands out. Nitrousoxide _connectedtoacabrary._
One observation for 22:44, Semerkhet was actually the high priest of Horus, not an ally to Set. We learn more about him later in the "Tomb of Semerkhet" level but you can see him even earlier during the final cutscene after the "Tomb of Set" where he is there for the sealing ritual and presents the Amulet to Horus afterwards.
Interviews with the developers at the time they said they wanted to go back to basics. They didn’t like the way two and three had become more like a Commando taking on soldiers in modern bases. That’s why they made a decision to stick to only the original costume and make it all take place in Tombs in Egypt.
It's growing on me... I really don't like the interconnected levels, I'd rather be certain that the answer to a puzzle is in the area I'm currently in. I also find myself getting stuck for reasons that come from low quality graphics, like not realising you can shoot the wood planks blocking the Egyptian adventure, or simply open the trap doors leading to the water in The Lost Library. It's always something like this that has led me to search for a walkthrough which is disappointing.
52:30 the snake torch puzzle has a simple solution: Just push every lever once. That's it. It's an old paper puzzle that has smaller depth than you think it is.
I will HAPPILY admit I wear the rosiest of nostalgia glasses, but I love The Last Revelation. The narrative felt so cool and grand and the way it moved slowly into the ancient and supernatural realm of the Egyptian deities was just amazing. The latter half of the game was certainly where things dropped off, but it's still easily one of my favorites, even having played the original 3 prior. I mean this is coming from a gal that liked TRAOD. I'm just drawn in by narrative.
hi fellow raider. Been playing the classic games for 20+ years now. Got this game back in 1999, beat it back then once, and 3 or 4 more times over the years. Loved this game because of all the improvements from TR3, you start the game and you are raiding tombs again ! this was Back to basics, it was the heart of TR1 (at least until the train + Cairo levels). Lara finally moved her lips, it felt so wonderful. They also introduced tons and tons of new movements and mechanics, no other TR game had so much news, and ultimately, it got frustrating at times since there was no proper introduction nor tutorial. The open trapdoor move, Shimmying around the corners, the use hook to get keys that you need to manually enter the inventory to use with no prompt, the open water doors, the spirits and the totems, the binoculars being useful for hints or solutions. Good luck figuring all of them out. It was a good effort, and they should had included most of these moves on TR2 or 3. Also the lack of a proper final boss is a bit of a letdown, but the game is so long that I don't think I minded an easy escape level. With no walkthrough, 35 levels took me tons of hours on first playthrough. Getting all secrets is almost impossible with no help, and yeah, I agree with most of your points. Still a fun game to play with at least the order of maps present.
You mention most of the problems. The tutorial forgot about all of those NEW INTERACTIONS 🤣 plus really obscure puzzles at times, dark levels and repetitiveness really “killed” this game. I still love it but sometimes less is more.
Been watching your Tomb Raider videos all weekend and now into Monday night. Thanks so much for helping me relax and unwind and set my worries aside. You have definitely earned my sub. 44:50 I know you already joked about Lara being able to push and pull massive stone blocks but this pillar pulling is just going way overboard lol
I spent so long trying and failing to do that rope swing in the tutorial level that I eventually gave up and didn't bother playing the game ever again! So I will say, thanks for playing it so we don't have to
Personally this is one of my favorites of the classics. Currently doing runs on the classic TR games since i didn't play them as a child, and so far The Last Revelation is really strong like the very first game. To me the essence of this game is pure Tomb Raider, the envoirments, the storyline and Lara's skills and attitude are a complete package for a great adventure. Sure things can a get a bit confusing here and there, but on a modern day standpoint, using a guide is always an option specially with puzzles that dont make much sense along the way. I find TR2 and 3 A LOT of work actually meanwhile LR is more like a journey, specially 3 which is a very very evil game even if you are used to the mechanics, that game is borderline infuriating and confusing at many points. TR2 gets dragging and annoying for me as soon as you reach the middle of the game with all those underwater levels only to finally get back on track once you reach Tibet and the Temple of Xian.
I just subbed to your channel because of this review. While TR: The Last Revelation was amazingly atmospheric, it was also a very tedious affair. You and I must be around the same age because I remember owning a copy of this game on Dreamcast and plaything through it in the summer of 2001. I was absolutely late to this game. I share a lot of the same issues you have with it. I liked its moody atmosphere, but also it felt like a lot of with with hardly any reward. Although, I wouldn’t mind going through it again.
I didn't play any Tomb Raider games after 3 until the 2013 reboot, and I dunno why I didn't get this for my Dreamcast back in the day, considering I loved the first on my Saturn. It kinda looks like they made the City of Khamoon into a whole game with this one judging by how huge and intricate the levels appear.
FYI, if you swim up in the Pharos level, there is a ledge you can climb out of the water and you can snipe the shark with the crossbow, disintegrating it. It's been 20+ years and I still remember that. What I loved about this game was the sublime way it descended into an end of the world adventure. You are wandering in some desert ruins and a couple of levels later you accidentally release Set but don't realize the gravity of your actions just yet. The blood flowing from the sarcophagus is the first hint that something has gone very wrong and that's when the story behinds to be truly grasping. Slowly, the mystery begins to unfold and gives you just enough of the apocalyptic scenario with great timing to keep you hooked like a good book. With every level you descend into the mystery and realize what you did though the fantastic atmospheric cutscenes. They were so fantastic and well-crafted that they felt like a reward in themselves ...and then halfway through, after the temple of Semerkhet the atmosphere begins to lose all that and feel more like a game again. It just rushes you through the story while stretching the levels in complexity too much, making it frustrating and no longer enriching the narrative any more. In the end it feels like a chore only because after all the effort you at least want to know how the story ends... And it's anticlimactic. TLR could have been a great game. It is still a good game but it just started so well that we can only wonder how great it would have been if it had kept going like this all the way. The music, atmosphere and half of the narrative are true works of art and feel fantastic to this very day.
See, this game came out when I was about 16 years old. Felt like I got my money out of it and then some. Really dug the music and was blown away by the new 3D engine. Game felt extremely atmospheric and overall it felt like a much-needed throwback to Tomb Raider 1's ancient ruins after all the space alien globetrotting espionage of Tomb Raiders 2 and 3. I did beat this game without any guide. (And the planetarium puzzle, while tedious, is very memorable, one of the parts of the game that stuck with me all these years later).
My favourite TR games are 1, 2 and TLR. TLR was such a good combination of exploring classical settings, ruins and a bit of action. The storyline was amazing.
3:36 If I remember correctly, it's possible to skip Von Croy's dialogues in Angkor Wat by pressing R1+R2 together (or was it L1+L2) when he starts talking. It's useful to complete the level more quickly, I guess. The Last Revelation was my first and most favorite game in the series, but yeah I did get stuck a few times on it, most part for not knowing what she was capable of doing. I was stuck in the very beginnig for not knowing that she could push and pull objects lol. Anyway, great video 👍 Edit: Oh you already knew about the skip button 😂 I also learned that by pure luck. But I didnt know you could change targets with L1 though, almost 20 years and still learning something new about this game.
Was looking forward to this one! False start with the forced tutorial levels in Angkor Wat aside, I thought this game was shaping up to be pretty good for the first 3/5ths or so, to the point where it was on pace to be better than TR2 (albeit not as good as 1 and 3). But Where TR2 stepped up in Tibet, giving incredible levels like Barkhang Monastery and Temple of Xian, my all time favourite Tomb Raider level, Last Revelation falls to pieces once you hit Cairo. Didn't help that the dreary atmosphere akin to Aldwych in TR3 was omnipresent from City of The Dead onwards. Couldn't even manage to be spooky like RX Tech Mines.
The same person designed LONDON/ELCAIRO/IRELAND. He is the worst designer in my opinion. He was the boss also; if you hear him talking about the creation.. he is so condescending… i would have fired him after aldwych/ludsgate.
Snappy editing, lovely personality and wonderfully paced & written. Excited to hear your thoughts on other games, especially TR. Time to binge through the rest!
Ich habe damals die PC Version gespielt und eine ganze Weile hat mir das Spiel auch sehr gut gefallen. Ab einem gewissen Punkt (irgendwann in City of Dead) war es dann aber doch zu viel des Guten für mich und die Freude daran hat mich verlassen. Per Levelsprung betrachtete ich mir schließlich noch die letzten Level um mitreden zu können. Der Nachfolger war dann angenehm kurz, abwechslungsreich und im Vergleich nicht mehr so schwierig, den zog ich vor.
What a throwback. Thanks a lot for this honest review. I totally felt like the 15yo back then, but now finally able to describe my emotions. You nailed it at the end. Great work! 💪
42:21 this is what stumped me as a kid! I started this game over numerous times because I thought I missed something! It’s 2025 and they’re coming with the remaster and I can’t wait, just so I can make it past this part after 25 years! 😭
this was always my favorite TR and represented what I thought the series should be, puzzles and tombs. I do hate the tutorial, it should be optional. The Cairo section is confusing and ruins the pacing IMO. I could have done without that and the Egyptian amusement park. I'm planning on replaying it soon, hopefully this in-depth review will help!
So you know, I got stuck forever in Great Library due to an underwater glitch, with a door not opening as it should've. Tried to figure it out for weeks before giving up. Had to wait several years to get my hands back on the game and finally finish it, using a walkthrough. The underwater part of the Great Library still freaks me out to this day because they purposedly made it confusing af. Technically, there are 2 ways to access it : two trapdoors, at the end of two symetrical corridors with balancing chains. Once you open the two trapdoors, you're able to go in circles, and why would you want to do that, you ask ? Because doing so triggers changes in the environment : some torches are turned on or off in the corridors, and to this day I still don't understand why. The result is of course, the player thinking that it's all part of a puzzle, while in fact you would only end up being stuck by a glitch that wasn't planned. Horrible.
I had a love-hate relationship with this game when it came out. I bought a cheap memory card for PS1 (as my original one was full), and naturally the data got corrupted at some point during the game. The disappointment of losing tens of hours of progress was massive (I think I had managed to get to around Cairo), and I put the game off for months. I ended up beating the game just once on the PlayStation and thought I'd return to it some day... never have, but I still plan to do so. And yeah, I share the same sentiments with you, this game was hard for a 14-year-old me with no proper walkthroughs.
I gotta be honest this game is still one of my favorites but the second half had a few moments that were anoyying. But overall I love this game and it's story I still think is really strong, the visuals are the best yet, the music is very good, astomphere is good, items are more forgiving then tr3s since you have more ammo and pick ups, it's move set is the best yet. Theres. Ore tombs to raid then 2 and 3. Yet I agree there were levels that need some work. Excellent job on the review and time you took to make it since this is the longest in the series.
TR4 is actually my favorite of the Core Design made TR games, it's not flawless, but for me it was a fresh breeze after the first 3 games (two of which, let's be honest, were kinda copies of the first instalment) and hours of relax after the torment that TR3 gave me. Also, I played on PC and didn't face any annoying bugs Stella's walkthrough warned about. Good graphics, good music, and good story, although a bit depressing ending. But we can't all be the same so I respect your opinion :)
I have a weird soft spot for this game. I wanted TR2 for Christmas but wasn't very specific about my wish and got TR: The last Revelation instead. I was like: Cool, it's a Tomb Raider game that's all that matters. For some reason I could never really make it past the tutorial level but I played it over and over again with my brother. I loved it for some reason and while I got TR2 later for birthday I still fondly think back to this game as my first TR experience.
I enjoyed The Last Revelation but it's certainly not a favourite of mine. I've played it three times, and I came out feeling moderately disappointed on all of them. Some of it is due to subjective preference, but some of the levels are tedious to play. In general, it has the same problem as Tomb Raider 2 but for different reasons; it just doesn't have the tight balance of the fundamental core pillars that make the best of the classics (1 & 3) thoroughly engaging to play. My ranking: 1st: 1 2nd: 3 3rd: 2 4th: 4
Cairo was when i had to cave once (using guide) got lucky with a certain space in Giza. Can’t believe i did all that without a guide. I felt like a king at Cleopatra’s palace lol. It was ridicilously hard and confusing. Oh, and the removal of the level select screen…no words, no words….🙄
I feel like one of the things I hated the most about this game is almost never brought up when people discuss it: the locations are boring. I know why Core decided to put Lara to sleep in Egypt, but I missed the variety. In the previous games it was always refreshing to get to a new location with brand new buildings, flora and fauna. This aspect of the game is probably why I never enjoyed it as much as the other classics and I still don't know if I'm going to ever go back and finish it.
I appreciate the way you pronounce "Werner"😂. As a kid I hated that it sounded like "Weerna", the way you say it it actually sounds like how it's written.👍
I can help you with the Senet issue. Think of it as secret path or non-secret path instead of win/lose. If you care for secrets, you go for harder path, if you don't - easy path. If there were no secrets in "losing" path, what would be a point of it? just reload and win, no one would go that way. And this gave use more variety which is good. Plus I think that winning or losing Senet is equally difficult, since it's all RNG, so you just try to get the favorable outcome :)
Man, I love you reviews not only you giving your own opinion about this game, but also shows all the levels and description of them. For me, this is the quintessential tomb raider not that many enemies, but each are different, and Lara is exploring the tombs. but this game is difficult especially when you don’t know what to do I was stuck many times thank God for guides on the Internet🎉
I got TLR for the PC back when it came out and (had to sneak to) print out the entire text only walkthrough for it. It was probably a couple hundred pages long and I never actually beat the game. I may pick this up again and give it another shot as I have beat all the others. This game is very convoluted for sure.
I remember students in junior high would sneak print strategy guides with text back in the day. It was amazing lol my teacher saw a copy come out and told me to throw it away
Man I remember playing the demo for this in late 99, it came on the PSX magazine demo disk. Never played the full version, TR3 was the last I completed in 1998, well actually it was early 1999 because it was so damn hard!
With that rope jump in the Catacombs, the thing I found out is that when you swing forward, you veer towards the right, so you have to adjust to make Lara face to the left side of the rope you want to swing to as a correction.
OK... so I think I know where the tutorial goes wrong. Y'know at the start of Indiana Jones 3 where you see young Indy go on an adventure? He is a bit wet behind the ears but he is still absolutely the badass Indy that we know and love later on. We even see him get his hat (in the same way we see Lara get her backpack). THAT is what the tutorial should have been. A Lara who doesn't need to be taught anything by some old man but still green enough that she wasn't able to save him.
Great Video.Still my favorite Tomb Raider Game. It was my first game on PS1 and i have so much Childhood memories with it. The Setting was great, its a shame that its not part of the upcoming ps5 Remaster
I've been getting into TR games recently and I've beat 1 to 4 and I'm on the last stage of Chronicles, I did beat TR4 around 3 days ago and for the 3/4 of the game I really liked it but when I started getting at Cairo with multiple parts i got stuck multiple times and the game really started feeling like work. It didn't help that I was playing a community version of the game with many enhancements but that had some bugs that made me afraid of softlocks (I couldn't get some secrets without using glitches or just downgrading to the old GOG executable). Toward the end I had a guide to look at but only for when I got really stuck because I wasn't sure if it was how the game was supposed to work or just me getting bugged and softlocked. I Also completely missed the great pyramid labyrinth entrance, its the most cryptic of the entrances I've ever seen and I thought something was wrong when I had the option to backtrack from the inside to the entrance of the pyramid. Still, I had to check a guide to find it because I would've never guessed that I had to push a block of a shape that I never pushed in the game before since pushable blocks are usually just regular cubes, not that one tho.
There's a save (I think) glitch in trenches involving shooting with the revolver + laser sight where the bullet is silent has no impact on what you're meant to shoot which stopped me progressing further
Wow RUclips really recommended me something great! This is a great review of the game. I grew up with all the core games and even what I call Season 2 of TR (Legends to Underworld). 2 and 3 are my absolute favorites and while I did enjoy this game too I got stuck a TON in this game, strangely more then the third one thats known for having some really out there puzzles like the coin. I also managed to get outa bounds a lot due to exploring a little too hard. Iir I also had a save file that was the level after the tutorial to get things going when I wanted to play it again :P I look forward to Chronicles since, while I do have a bit of a soft spot for it due to the time it came to me in my life, its so-so as a whole imo.
Well done, I enjoyed this! I used to find this game very frustrating as a 13 yr old because of the lack of any hints at places where I got stuck at. Not knowing where to combine items, that certain things that look like decoration are actually interactive in ways that weren't in previous games, certain switches and things like the crowbar are really easy to miss coz they blend in with the muted textures of the floors and walls. I played all the first four games as an adult recently and I really enjoyed this one and managed it ok. There were a few overwhelming bits where the game makers seemed to be screwing with me but I enjoyed the interconnected levels and it was a beautiful game especially the Alexandria and Karnak levels. In earlier games you do get a hint of the levels leading on from one another and occasionally saw areas of previous levels but they were always changed slightly or a landslide/earthquake would block the path. It was cool to be able to have massive areas to go through on this. I thought 3 was the hardest game by far as it was so easy to get lost and there were so many traps that you can't even cautiously avoid if playing it for the first time. Playing the series as a whole shows the amazing improvement in graphic and gameplay that happened during PS1 era. Its amazing that TR4 and 1 are just three years apart. The fire and water looks amazing in this game, I love the fast moving tinted sky, the bouncing boulders on the pyramid and even the fact that the controllers vibrate when you shoot or land from a jump. It just feels so much more tactile than the first game. I wish they'd continued making games with this engine but just a bit more refined but it seems that 3rd person adventure games adopted a Prince of Persia style movement in the 2000s.
19:34 I always hated that concept. How did the items not end up in some corners when the room is getting rotated all the time? 23:54 With all your body! Legs, back muscles, and arms. 27:52 Dito! I never finished a Resident Evil classic. I hated the camera angles. I finished Dino Crisis though.
I'm definitely on the top tier TR game camp :-) I loved everything about Tomb Raider IV. And it was a spectacle that Lara had the German voice of Pamela Anderson in this game 😀
I'm loving these reviews so much, I played 3 and chronicles alot, I am unbelievably stoked for your review on chronicles! Revelations gave me so much trouble too I never actually finished it, fucking good job doing that! It was a game that was such a chore to get even halfway lol
greetings my friends, am using this "review" as a guide actually, even tho i was doing unexpectedly well until reaching coastal mines where it gets confusing. i also missed the gap in the wall which leads to "lost library" and somehow i ended up outside again on the coastal mines. i also lost 1hr on lost library underwater pool looking for a lever until you said "i've obviously come here too early" as there was really nothing to do. first time i used "help" was on a damn train, i had no idea i should hang sideways on last wagon to find a door, that was completely beyond my belief. i was sure i missed something on the beginning so i was running 5x from first to last wagon. i managed to beat TR 1,2 and 3 remastered for the first time (not saying i didnt used help here and there) and it's just too long to wait 3 months for this one to come in remastered version. what's your opinion on this game's difficulty overall? imo it's not even worth starting this game before beating previous 3 titles. this one is much more confusing, way too many ways to go in certain areas, the game doesnt tell you what to do in most cases. i was usually wondering around levels most of the times not even knowing what is the ultimate goal on certain levels. am wondering if there is one single person on this planet that has manage to beat this one without a single peek into guide or walkthrough. am stucked atm on that damn puzzle on citadel gates and am wondering how much will it take me to take another "sneak peek" before i pi** off once for good. damn, this whole game after 1st chapter is completely madness, something like u're playing f***** Aldwych level whole time in terms of difficulty
Great video. Just a heads up theres a secret in the burial chambers. Before you approach set's sarcophagus, go into the mummy room. One of the empty pools has an open door that you can enter for a secret with shotgun ammo i believe.
Hey GFrom, after watching this review in the last months for multiple times, I dusted off my PS2 and tried to play it this summer without a guide (I didn't bother with all the secrets, those can't be found without a guide). It was a good run through memory lane. In the city of the dead I needed a peek in a guide for the first time and at the pyramids in the last chapter for the second time. Thanks for the good (Tomb Raider) reviews, I enjoyed it! And of course: Where is the review of Tomb Raider 5?
A gigantic review for a gigantic game. Just like you, this game never had a good impact on me. I remember waiting for its release anxiously and I loved the tutorial (except for the interruptions you mentioned), but the first actual levels end the fun for me. I couldn’t recognize the franchise in terms of graphics and Lara’s model has something weird to my taste. She seems shorter with a bigger head… Anyway. Believe me or not, I enjoyed Chronicles way more. Still, you have made a review that makes me want to replay 1-5 games including this one that I never actually played entirely (Hello cheat codes) so thank you and yeah… your reviews are truly perfect! Take care!
After watching this, I've got to question myself on how the hell did I ever complete this game when I was still a kid, I had all the PS1 Tomb Raider games, the one I know I never completed was TR 3. (and Angle of Darkness on the PS2, but there's a very good reason why I never finished that one.) The quick sands on TR 3 got me stumped and my kid brain could never figure a way through. Damn, I really want to play through these games again, for the nostalgia of my childhood. It was the game I daydreamed about playing after getting back home from primary school.
Your impressions about this game totally fit mine as well : I felt exactly the same as a kid. Bak in the 90's, I loved TR1 and 2, and had a lot of troubles with the 3 (I replayed TR3 during 2020 pandemic, it drove me nuts, especially in the London and Antarctica sections). So I was so HYPED for TR4... And, gosh, it was hard ! The menu, the game structure, the overall experience... The changes were really confusing when I was 10 :D But the most confusing stuff was after the train. After the tutorial, I remember enjoying the two first chapters (but I used some cheats to pass Semerkhet's levels... Too much for me back then) and being astonished by Coastal Ruins... Before getting deeply lost. Such a shame Core Design teams were rushed in creating new games. This constant pressure really destroyed classic Tomb Raider franchise.
I’m pretty sure they approached Last revelation’s intro level as a way to teach new players coming into the series. Its not a Numbered game so it’s likely they thought ppl who hadn’t played it before would give it a shot and needed to introduce the gameplay to them. It also released on the dreamcast which Sega hadn’t gotten a title since the first one on SAT.
Yo, GFrom, are you planning to get to Lost Artefact or Chronicles any time soon? It'd be a shame to have you not cover some of Classic Lara's best moments (Lost Artefact), or give us some laughs over the jank and missed opportunities in Chronicles. As for TR4, it was the first game my Dad and I ever played together and our first TR. Picked it up right when it came out and loved it even though we couldn't finish it. We encountered a bug with the motorcycle that made it impossible to progress through the city, and we just never finished it. I'd end up beating it years later and loved every second of it. There's a number of bugs and some jank, but a lot of the puzzles, level designs, and enemies were really enjoyable. I don't personally miss the mansion since I never really bothered with it in the other games, but I do miss the statistics screen. Love the game either which way though.
While the game last a bit longer than it should, it's still my favourite old school TR by a large margin. Levels like The Tomb of Seth, Alexandria and Desert Railroad are still my favourite levels of all times.
Currently on my first playthrough since 2013. I do love the atmosphere of the game, but like you I never liked the tutorial level, and I didn't like the new inventory system nor how confusing much of the environments are. And of course the fact that I only have one save file on the Playstation memory card...
I thought tomb raider 3 was the worse tomb raider game I played regarding the ps1 tomb raider games till I played this game and some of the reasons I dislike it is uninspired levels,less colorful then the first two,long levels,boring puzzles,boring vehicles,same outfit throughout game,less cool weapons,garbage rope mechanic,ect so I give this game a 3/10
Also, "the times" music you rated as number 1 in the game, is also the theme that occurs when you enter the first official level when the sand falls in.
Oh Gfrom - I know TR3 is a favourite of yours there’s an event in Derby this year (October) for TR3 and Judith Gibbons will also be there - if you’re interested there is still tickets google quad Derby if you are!
23:46 this Werner impression was godly
TR4 is awesome haha. Exactly what I want in a TR game.. being lost, feeling trapped, being stuck.. Being frustrated but then the joy of having finally beaten it.
That's a real Tomb Raider!
"Another thing Werner didn't teach us, ja?" Lmao
the last revelation was actually my absolute favourite as a kid, into adulthood i replayed all of the games, and that's when i started to realize its flaws. up until after cairo, the game is so strong, so fun, and i loved the atmosphere of every single level. the game fell apart for me after cairo, you could tell it was rushed, and the repetitiveness was just plain boring for me. this game still has a lot of sentiment to me as it was the first tomb raider i ever beat on my own, and i still love it a lot. i just wish it was given more time to be finished to it could really flourish.
I'm currently going through the whole series again as well. I'm gonna be honest, I really feel the games fall apart after 3. But I do enjoy them still. Just not as much as the first 3. I'm currently on this one(4) atm. Maybe I'll like 5 more. I do hate how cyptic some of these puzzles are though.
@@tonyalmodovar7629 honestly i feel like it started to fall apart in 3. some of the game design is baffling in TR3.
@rhyswhittington8759 Oh yea, I agree. Honestly, the design doesn't make sense like a good 50% of the time in 3. How the fuck did I even beat anything past 1 as a child? Lol
@@tonyalmodovar7629 no idea lol, i never beat 3 without save cheats. i still havent beaten it to this day without unlimited save crystals, i just dont have the time to finish a game with a system like that. personally the franchise fell at three for me. tomb raider 1 and 2 were amazing. tomb raider 3 just didnt do it for me with the save system, levels being far too long and a heavy leaning on trial and error gameplay that wasnt present in the first two games all that much. dunno, maybe its just me but TR3,4 and chronicles arent that enjoyable for me.
@@rhyswhittington8759what we know as TR3 was originally just created as a spinoff named "Adventures of lara croft" while the real tomb raider 3 would have been a different game with a completly new engine. But that would have took 2 years, so they where forced to turn the spinoff (that uses the old engine of TR1 and 2) into tomb raider 3 to keep releasing it every year.
Am I the only one that think they should remake this game? TLR was waaaaay too abitious for it's time/technology and a remake would be a fine way to soft reboot the series.
That's actually a really good idea!
ive done what i could to replay this game as an adult. with the remakes for 1-3 coming out next year, im really hoping this and chronicles get the nod soon after
It was tomb raider at it’s peak ! I loved them all , but the 2 and the third were my favorite because of the water levels
@@Xhado-cl7kcexactly , chronicles and last revelation remasters are needed , the onlyvi would want them to change are fmv movies
They should and then they should remove the loading times between the sub levels
I actually DID finish this game without walkthroughs but got stuck for months in the Cairo section (the whole pipe thing to put on the bike was very random). I eventually finished the game on my own. The puzzle that got me was arguably one of the easiest: the N, S, E and W moving blocks. In Portuguese, we use different letters so I never thought as a teen W stood for WEST LOL
The pipe on bike thing was explained in the cutscene from 1:07:49 I was a toddler, my dad only learned Spanish in school, so only my mom had some basic English, and we kept replaying the part to figure out what "nitrousoxide connected to the CARBRARAK should gibe you the extra punsh... Go, girl... Brrring me the codes!" probably a month of trial and error. xD
And any pushing blocks were trial and error too, it's way too cryptic, like the planet thing using a binocular on a dark hole, really?
"Oh east? I thought you said weest"
You thought it said Weast?
I'm still baffled how they managed to fit over 30 levels on a 700mb CD 🥶
No one is impressed
been binging your Tomb Raider reviews and I gotta agree with the people here: These videos and your channel deserve a lot more views and attention. Very well made and your love for these games is very apparent and therefore your videos are very authentic.
Thank you, that means a lot to me!
The Last Revelation is my favorite Tomb Raider game. I don't necessarily disagree with your criticism as such, but something about this game just really clicks with me. Atmosphere especially I feel has never been done better in any Tomb Raider game before or since, and I really dig the Egyptian setting and mythology. It makes the game feel less episodic than the previous titles, but more like one big adventure, which is something I very much appreciate.
It's funny to hear you say that back in the day, you thought TR4 was more difficult than the previous titles. To me, the exact opposite was the case. This was the first Tomb Raider game I managed to beat as a child without using a walkthrough or resorting to cheats. And I'm sure it probably took me many weeks to do so, but I definitely feel that TLR is significantly more manageable than TR3. As much as I love TR3, even as an adult playing it now, I still find many levels in that game to be an absolute NIGHTMARE in terms of convoluted level structure, obscure puzzles, and trial-and-error, made even worse by the fact that saving in TR3 was a limited resource. In comparison, I don't think anything in TLR is quite that bad. I guess The Lost Library gets kind of close, but I still think it's worlds apart from the absolute hell that were the London levels in TR3.
Anyway, great video! I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
I agree with you, for the most part. That being said - the problems of this Last Revelation are more clear to me now that I look back and after watching this excellent video). Random objects hidden in the environment that you actually need to take (the valve in Cairo...), interactions that would only occur once in the game (grabbing a corpse), or simply too many options made several parts of the game tiring and overwhelming. Still love TLR for its atmosphere, and it sure as hell was satisfying to beat it. But the game has various flaws that the original TR didn't.
The atmosphere in many levels of TRLR is simply unsurpassed! One of the reasons for this is the composer Peter Connelly, who replaced Nathan Mccree. He wrote a great ambient score, and a cool soundtrack in general!
I love the soundtrack of the first 3 games, but it's in the 4th part that the soundtrack is the deepest for me, even frightening at times.
With all due respect, I find it extremely hard to believe that you beat this game as a kid without walkthroughs. Especially if you thought TR3 was more challenging.
The levels and puzzle solutions in this game are just intentionally way too obtuse to figure out without help. It's so bad, it feels like the developers are intentionally trying to be as difficult and abstract as possible to confuse players. It actually feels spiteful, like they are angry at us for buying the earlier games and making them so popular, that they even had to develop this game in the first place. T1-3 are expertly designed to guide you where you need to go without it feeling obvious, TR4 is just a mess you're expected to make sense of.
It's either bitterness or laziness, because the level design feels lazy, and important new mechanics have no introduction. The best example of this is being able to open doors without levers or switches, after three games of building that repetitive knowledge in the player, with absolutely no indication the mechanic has been changed. They even go back to levers/switches opening doors again right away, just to be more confusing. And you would either have to be one very imaginative child, or a genius child prodigy, to know what to find and combine to progress in the Cairo/Bike levels without some assistance.
@@VitZ9 With all due respect back, you could have made your points without insinuating that I lied in the comments of a random RUclips video about beating a video game as a child. Yeah, I guess I must have been a child prodigy for having beaten TR4 as a twelve-year-old. That definitely makes sense and is not an insane stretch.
Tomb Raider 4 was about raiding tombs which is the essence of the game brought back.
Anyone who says that TR3 was better than TR4 is basically not understanding the original idea of the game.
This game was about tombs, not fighting guards in Area 51 in UFO.
This was my favorite one! Played with parents as a kid. Knowing little English, we got stuck for a long time at the motorcycle part... "Nitrous oxide connected to the carburetor should give you the extra punch. Go, girl! Bring me the codes!" is still stuck in my head.
They never really explain in the game you have to combine items in inventory. xD But the parts where you ride around Egypt on a car, explore Valley of the Kings, climb the pyramids are absolute best. I haven't felt like that since, at least until Assassin's Creed Origins.
I love Origins! My favourite AC game 😍
@@GFrom I played original Assassin's Creed before release, the leaked version. It crashed so I never finished it. Played through Ezio games in order, 100% Revelations and then kinda dropped the franchise without finishing AC3. They were releasing so many of them I got confused and only returned to series with Origins. Still pissed Aya parts were cut so much, but the game was so good especially Curse of the Pharaohs DLC. Now am replaying the rest.
Cool! I've played and beaten every single one of them - even the handheld games. Not all of them are great but I enjoy most of them.
@@GFrom Which of the handhelds are worth it? I got Liberation HD already, and it seems that most mobile ones are no longer available. Dunno outside of that.
Also, the quote I remembered, you have it in video at 1:07:49 for some reason the guy chews the scenery so hard it stands out. Nitrousoxide _connectedtoacabrary._
I don't think the handhelds have aged all that well. The best is probably AC II: Discovery for the DS.
One observation for 22:44, Semerkhet was actually the high priest of Horus, not an ally to Set. We learn more about him later in the "Tomb of Semerkhet" level but you can see him even earlier during the final cutscene after the "Tomb of Set" where he is there for the sealing ritual and presents the Amulet to Horus afterwards.
Interviews with the developers at the time they said they wanted to go back to basics. They didn’t like the way two and three had become more like a Commando taking on soldiers in modern bases.
That’s why they made a decision to stick to only the original costume and make it all take place in Tombs in Egypt.
It's growing on me... I really don't like the interconnected levels, I'd rather be certain that the answer to a puzzle is in the area I'm currently in. I also find myself getting stuck for reasons that come from low quality graphics, like not realising you can shoot the wood planks blocking the Egyptian adventure, or simply open the trap doors leading to the water in The Lost Library. It's always something like this that has led me to search for a walkthrough which is disappointing.
This channel is so incredibly underrated, the quality and effort is outstanding. Cheers to your good work! 🎉
Thank you, that's nice to hear :)
Amen to that.
52:30 the snake torch puzzle has a simple solution:
Just push every lever once. That's it.
It's an old paper puzzle that has smaller depth than you think it is.
I will HAPPILY admit I wear the rosiest of nostalgia glasses, but I love The Last Revelation. The narrative felt so cool and grand and the way it moved slowly into the ancient and supernatural realm of the Egyptian deities was just amazing. The latter half of the game was certainly where things dropped off, but it's still easily one of my favorites, even having played the original 3 prior.
I mean this is coming from a gal that liked TRAOD. I'm just drawn in by narrative.
hi fellow raider. Been playing the classic games for 20+ years now. Got this game back in 1999, beat it back then once, and 3 or 4 more times over the years. Loved this game because of all the improvements from TR3, you start the game and you are raiding tombs again ! this was Back to basics, it was the heart of TR1 (at least until the train + Cairo levels). Lara finally moved her lips, it felt so wonderful. They also introduced tons and tons of new movements and mechanics, no other TR game had so much news, and ultimately, it got frustrating at times since there was no proper introduction nor tutorial. The open trapdoor move, Shimmying around the corners, the use hook to get keys that you need to manually enter the inventory to use with no prompt, the open water doors, the spirits and the totems, the binoculars being useful for hints or solutions. Good luck figuring all of them out. It was a good effort, and they should had included most of these moves on TR2 or 3. Also the lack of a proper final boss is a bit of a letdown, but the game is so long that I don't think I minded an easy escape level. With no walkthrough, 35 levels took me tons of hours on first playthrough. Getting all secrets is almost impossible with no help, and yeah, I agree with most of your points. Still a fun game to play with at least the order of maps present.
You mention most of the problems. The tutorial forgot about all of those NEW INTERACTIONS 🤣 plus really obscure puzzles at times, dark levels and repetitiveness really “killed” this game. I still love it but sometimes less is more.
I am happy that I am not the only one who thinks 3 is the best!!
Been watching your Tomb Raider videos all weekend and now into Monday night. Thanks so much for helping me relax and unwind and set my worries aside. You have definitely earned my sub.
44:50 I know you already joked about Lara being able to push and pull massive stone blocks but this pillar pulling is just going way overboard lol
I actually love this game and still play it. The fact that it's not obvious where to go and what to do next just adds to the adventure for me.
I spent so long trying and failing to do that rope swing in the tutorial level that I eventually gave up and didn't bother playing the game ever again! So I will say, thanks for playing it so we don't have to
You're welcome 😅
I remember playing this game with my father... and he never used walkthrough when he played :) and it is probably my favorite Tomb raider game ever.
No walkthrough? Impressive!
Personally this is one of my favorites of the classics. Currently doing runs on the classic TR games since i didn't play them as a child, and so far The Last Revelation is really strong like the very first game.
To me the essence of this game is pure Tomb Raider, the envoirments, the storyline and Lara's skills and attitude are a complete package for a great adventure.
Sure things can a get a bit confusing here and there, but on a modern day standpoint, using a guide is always an option specially with puzzles that dont make much sense along the way.
I find TR2 and 3 A LOT of work actually meanwhile LR is more like a journey, specially 3 which is a very very evil game even if you are used to the mechanics, that game is borderline infuriating and confusing at many points. TR2 gets dragging and annoying for me as soon as you reach the middle of the game with all those underwater levels only to finally get back on track once you reach Tibet and the Temple of Xian.
I just subbed to your channel because of this review.
While TR: The Last Revelation was amazingly atmospheric, it was also a very tedious affair. You and I must be around the same age because I remember owning a copy of this game on Dreamcast and plaything through it in the summer of 2001. I was absolutely late to this game.
I share a lot of the same issues you have with it. I liked its moody atmosphere, but also it felt like a lot of with with hardly any reward. Although, I wouldn’t mind going through it again.
I didn't play any Tomb Raider games after 3 until the 2013 reboot, and I dunno why I didn't get this for my Dreamcast back in the day, considering I loved the first on my Saturn. It kinda looks like they made the City of Khamoon into a whole game with this one judging by how huge and intricate the levels appear.
FYI, if you swim up in the Pharos level, there is a ledge you can climb out of the water and you can snipe the shark with the crossbow, disintegrating it. It's been 20+ years and I still remember that.
What I loved about this game was the sublime way it descended into an end of the world adventure. You are wandering in some desert ruins and a couple of levels later you accidentally release Set but don't realize the gravity of your actions just yet. The blood flowing from the sarcophagus is the first hint that something has gone very wrong and that's when the story behinds to be truly grasping. Slowly, the mystery begins to unfold and gives you just enough of the apocalyptic scenario with great timing to keep you hooked like a good book. With every level you descend into the mystery and realize what you did though the fantastic atmospheric cutscenes. They were so fantastic and well-crafted that they felt like a reward in themselves
...and then halfway through, after the temple of Semerkhet the atmosphere begins to lose all that and feel more like a game again. It just rushes you through the story while stretching the levels in complexity too much, making it frustrating and no longer enriching the narrative any more. In the end it feels like a chore only because after all the effort you at least want to know how the story ends... And it's anticlimactic.
TLR could have been a great game. It is still a good game but it just started so well that we can only wonder how great it would have been if it had kept going like this all the way. The music, atmosphere and half of the narrative are true works of art and feel fantastic to this very day.
You are so funny rewatching your videos every year. It’s a vibe thank you ❤️
See, this game came out when I was about 16 years old. Felt like I got my money out of it and then some. Really dug the music and was blown away by the new 3D engine. Game felt extremely atmospheric and overall it felt like a much-needed throwback to Tomb Raider 1's ancient ruins after all the space alien globetrotting espionage of Tomb Raiders 2 and 3. I did beat this game without any guide. (And the planetarium puzzle, while tedious, is very memorable, one of the parts of the game that stuck with me all these years later).
Good work man!
Also I have to say i have an Ohrwurm from your Intro Song 😅
Geeeeefrom... Love it so much!
Awesome 😄
My favourite TR games are 1, 2 and TLR. TLR was such a good combination of exploring classical settings, ruins and a bit of action. The storyline was amazing.
3:36 If I remember correctly, it's possible to skip Von Croy's dialogues in Angkor Wat by pressing R1+R2 together (or was it L1+L2) when he starts talking. It's useful to complete the level more quickly, I guess. The Last Revelation was my first and most favorite game in the series, but yeah I did get stuck a few times on it, most part for not knowing what she was capable of doing. I was stuck in the very beginnig for not knowing that she could push and pull objects lol. Anyway, great video 👍
Edit: Oh you already knew about the skip button 😂 I also learned that by pure luck. But I didnt know you could change targets with L1 though, almost 20 years and still learning something new about this game.
This was a fun video! I like how you basically described the entire game, it's nice to see all the sections and parts I couldn't get to myself 😅
Glad you liked it!
I had to stop it because it was too dark playing it on the ps1. I was stuck in the city of the dead and had no flares left.
Greetings from Finland! Love yout TR videos. Now that we finally have TR:TLR I cannot wait for Lost Artefact and Chronicles, hopefully this year.
Greetings from Sweden! We'll see about future TR Reviews. They'll come eventually
Was looking forward to this one! False start with the forced tutorial levels in Angkor Wat aside, I thought this game was shaping up to be pretty good for the first 3/5ths or so, to the point where it was on pace to be better than TR2 (albeit not as good as 1 and 3). But Where TR2 stepped up in Tibet, giving incredible levels like Barkhang Monastery and Temple of Xian, my all time favourite Tomb Raider level, Last Revelation falls to pieces once you hit Cairo. Didn't help that the dreary atmosphere akin to Aldwych in TR3 was omnipresent from City of The Dead onwards. Couldn't even manage to be spooky like RX Tech Mines.
The same person designed LONDON/ELCAIRO/IRELAND. He is the worst designer in my opinion. He was the boss also; if you hear him talking about the creation.. he is so condescending… i would have fired him after aldwych/ludsgate.
Oh wow, I had no idea
Stumbled on your channel recently. Great stuff! Love you sense of humor. Thanks for the awesome gaming content!
Thank you, I'm glad you like it!
Snappy editing, lovely personality and wonderfully paced & written. Excited to hear your thoughts on other games, especially TR.
Time to binge through the rest!
Thank you for the kind words!
Ich habe damals die PC Version gespielt und eine ganze Weile hat mir das Spiel auch sehr gut gefallen. Ab einem gewissen Punkt (irgendwann in City of Dead) war es dann aber doch zu viel des Guten für mich und die Freude daran hat mich verlassen. Per Levelsprung betrachtete ich mir schließlich noch die letzten Level um mitreden zu können. Der Nachfolger war dann angenehm kurz, abwechslungsreich und im Vergleich nicht mehr so schwierig, den zog ich vor.
This is a GREAT review! :)
TR IV is still my favorite of the classic Tomb Raider Games. thanks alot ^^
Thank you :)
What a throwback. Thanks a lot for this honest review. I totally felt like the 15yo back then, but now finally able to describe my emotions. You nailed it at the end. Great work! 💪
Thanks for your kind words :)
Holy shit, the tutorial level was WAY worse than I remembered. The amount of forced cutscenes are so infuriating to say the least.
i like watching your videos its like telling a story that ive heard a thousand times but never gets old
That tutorial walktrough enraged me so much… i had to pause to calm down XD
42:21 this is what stumped me as a kid! I started this game over numerous times because I thought I missed something! It’s 2025 and they’re coming with the remaster and I can’t wait, just so I can make it past this part after 25 years! 😭
At 5:30 I pick up the skull, backflip on the slope and jump up to the ledge. Skipping all the dialog for the two jumps.
this was always my favorite TR and represented what I thought the series should be, puzzles and tombs. I do hate the tutorial, it should be optional. The Cairo section is confusing and ruins the pacing IMO. I could have done without that and the Egyptian amusement park. I'm planning on replaying it soon, hopefully this in-depth review will help!
So you know, I got stuck forever in Great Library due to an underwater glitch, with a door not opening as it should've. Tried to figure it out for weeks before giving up. Had to wait several years to get my hands back on the game and finally finish it, using a walkthrough. The underwater part of the Great Library still freaks me out to this day because they purposedly made it confusing af. Technically, there are 2 ways to access it : two trapdoors, at the end of two symetrical corridors with balancing chains.
Once you open the two trapdoors, you're able to go in circles, and why would you want to do that, you ask ? Because doing so triggers changes in the environment : some torches are turned on or off in the corridors, and to this day I still don't understand why. The result is of course, the player thinking that it's all part of a puzzle, while in fact you would only end up being stuck by a glitch that wasn't planned. Horrible.
I cannot wait to see your reviews for TRChronicles and AOD (if ever you do :D)
Did you know there is a randomizer for the TRs? Its so much fun
Someday I will!
I've heard about it but never played it yet.
50:15 I missed this ladder for over 10 years. I had nightmares due to this as a child. 10/10 game.
I had a love-hate relationship with this game when it came out. I bought a cheap memory card for PS1 (as my original one was full), and naturally the data got corrupted at some point during the game. The disappointment of losing tens of hours of progress was massive (I think I had managed to get to around Cairo), and I put the game off for months. I ended up beating the game just once on the PlayStation and thought I'd return to it some day... never have, but I still plan to do so. And yeah, I share the same sentiments with you, this game was hard for a 14-year-old me with no proper walkthroughs.
I gotta be honest this game is still one of my favorites but the second half had a few moments that were anoyying. But overall I love this game and it's story I still think is really strong, the visuals are the best yet, the music is very good, astomphere is good, items are more forgiving then tr3s since you have more ammo and pick ups, it's move set is the best yet. Theres. Ore tombs to raid then 2 and 3. Yet I agree there were levels that need some work. Excellent job on the review and time you took to make it since this is the longest in the series.
This game kicked my ass when I was a kid but I’d totally play it again if we get a remastered version
TR4 is actually my favorite of the Core Design made TR games, it's not flawless, but for me it was a fresh breeze after the first 3 games (two of which, let's be honest, were kinda copies of the first instalment) and hours of relax after the torment that TR3 gave me. Also, I played on PC and didn't face any annoying bugs Stella's walkthrough warned about. Good graphics, good music, and good story, although a bit depressing ending. But we can't all be the same so I respect your opinion :)
The catacombs reminds me of Saint Francis Folly from the first TombRaider. Too bad you can't do Angel of Darkness and see what your opinion on it is .
Someday I probably will, but I'm not looking forward to it 😅
I have a weird soft spot for this game. I wanted TR2 for Christmas but wasn't very specific about my wish and got TR: The last Revelation instead. I was like: Cool, it's a Tomb Raider game that's all that matters.
For some reason I could never really make it past the tutorial level but I played it over and over again with my brother. I loved it for some reason and while I got TR2 later for birthday I still fondly think back to this game as my first TR experience.
yeah i couldnt work out the rope part hhaha
1:41:35 this song also appears at the start when she's sliding to the first tomb with her guide
Correct 👍
I enjoyed The Last Revelation but it's certainly not a favourite of mine. I've played it three times, and I came out feeling moderately disappointed on all of them. Some of it is due to subjective preference, but some of the levels are tedious to play. In general, it has the same problem as Tomb Raider 2 but for different reasons; it just doesn't have the tight balance of the fundamental core pillars that make the best of the classics (1 & 3) thoroughly engaging to play.
My ranking:
1st: 1
2nd: 3
3rd: 2
4th: 4
Cairo was when i had to cave once (using guide) got lucky with a certain space in Giza. Can’t believe i did all that without a guide. I felt like a king at Cleopatra’s palace lol. It was ridicilously hard and confusing.
Oh, and the removal of the level select screen…no words, no words….🙄
I feel like one of the things I hated the most about this game is almost never brought up when people discuss it: the locations are boring. I know why Core decided to put Lara to sleep in Egypt, but I missed the variety. In the previous games it was always refreshing to get to a new location with brand new buildings, flora and fauna. This aspect of the game is probably why I never enjoyed it as much as the other classics and I still don't know if I'm going to ever go back and finish it.
I appreciate the way you pronounce "Werner"😂. As a kid I hated that it sounded like "Weerna", the way you say it it actually sounds like how it's written.👍
Keep up the good work my guy love the videos
I can help you with the Senet issue. Think of it as secret path or non-secret path instead of win/lose. If you care for secrets, you go for harder path, if you don't - easy path. If there were no secrets in "losing" path, what would be a point of it? just reload and win, no one would go that way. And this gave use more variety which is good.
Plus I think that winning or losing Senet is equally difficult, since it's all RNG, so you just try to get the favorable outcome :)
What I love about this game is that it's focuses so much on the story from beginning to end
Man, I love you reviews not only you giving your own opinion about this game, but also shows all the levels and description of them. For me, this is the quintessential tomb raider not that many enemies, but each are different, and Lara is exploring the tombs. but this game is difficult especially when you don’t know what to do I was stuck many times thank God for guides on the Internet🎉
I got TLR for the PC back when it came out and (had to sneak to) print out the entire text only walkthrough for it. It was probably a couple hundred pages long and I never actually beat the game. I may pick this up again and give it another shot as I have beat all the others. This game is very convoluted for sure.
I remember students in junior high would sneak print strategy guides with text back in the day. It was amazing lol my teacher saw a copy come out and told me to throw it away
Why did your teacher say to throw the guide?
@@dangerous_woman Maybe she thought gaming would distract students or that printing guides wasn't productive
Man I remember playing the demo for this in late 99, it came on the PSX magazine demo disk. Never played the full version, TR3 was the last I completed in 1998, well actually it was early 1999 because it was so damn hard!
Now I will enjoy watching you play it, fellow 90s kid. edit: man I didnt realise how fucked and weird this game is lol.
this TR chapter is the only one i feel cinematographic. It has a strange aura that thrills & convoy me every time
With that rope jump in the Catacombs, the thing I found out is that when you swing forward, you veer towards the right, so you have to adjust to make Lara face to the left side of the rope you want to swing to as a correction.
OK... so I think I know where the tutorial goes wrong. Y'know at the start of Indiana Jones 3 where you see young Indy go on an adventure? He is a bit wet behind the ears but he is still absolutely the badass Indy that we know and love later on. We even see him get his hat (in the same way we see Lara get her backpack). THAT is what the tutorial should have been. A Lara who doesn't need to be taught anything by some old man but still green enough that she wasn't able to save him.
I loved this game!
Can't wait for your next reviews. I'm so glad I found your channel! It's amazing.
Great Video.Still my favorite Tomb Raider Game. It was my first game on PS1 and i have so much Childhood memories with it. The Setting was great, its a shame that its not part of the upcoming ps5 Remaster
I've been getting into TR games recently and I've beat 1 to 4 and I'm on the last stage of Chronicles, I did beat TR4 around 3 days ago and for the 3/4 of the game I really liked it but when I started getting at Cairo with multiple parts i got stuck multiple times and the game really started feeling like work.
It didn't help that I was playing a community version of the game with many enhancements but that had some bugs that made me afraid of softlocks (I couldn't get some secrets without using glitches or just downgrading to the old GOG executable). Toward the end I had a guide to look at but only for when I got really stuck because I wasn't sure if it was how the game was supposed to work or just me getting bugged and softlocked.
I Also completely missed the great pyramid labyrinth entrance, its the most cryptic of the entrances I've ever seen and I thought something was wrong when I had the option to backtrack from the inside to the entrance of the pyramid.
Still, I had to check a guide to find it because I would've never guessed that I had to push a block of a shape that I never pushed in the game before since pushable blocks are usually just regular cubes, not that one tho.
There's a save (I think) glitch in trenches involving shooting with the revolver + laser sight where the bullet is silent has no impact on what you're meant to shoot which stopped me progressing further
Wow RUclips really recommended me something great! This is a great review of the game. I grew up with all the core games and even what I call Season 2 of TR (Legends to Underworld).
2 and 3 are my absolute favorites and while I did enjoy this game too I got stuck a TON in this game, strangely more then the third one thats known for having some really out there puzzles like the coin. I also managed to get outa bounds a lot due to exploring a little too hard. Iir I also had a save file that was the level after the tutorial to get things going when I wanted to play it again :P
I look forward to Chronicles since, while I do have a bit of a soft spot for it due to the time it came to me in my life, its so-so as a whole imo.
59:31 Ancient egyptians invented the remington green and yellow box 12 guage, 2 and 3/4 inch 00 buck 9 pellets
Well done, I enjoyed this!
I used to find this game very frustrating as a 13 yr old because of the lack of any hints at places where I got stuck at. Not knowing where to combine items, that certain things that look like decoration are actually interactive in ways that weren't in previous games, certain switches and things like the crowbar are really easy to miss coz they blend in with the muted textures of the floors and walls. I played all the first four games as an adult recently and I really enjoyed this one and managed it ok. There were a few overwhelming bits where the game makers seemed to be screwing with me but I enjoyed the interconnected levels and it was a beautiful game especially the Alexandria and Karnak levels. In earlier games you do get a hint of the levels leading on from one another and occasionally saw areas of previous levels but they were always changed slightly or a landslide/earthquake would block the path. It was cool to be able to have massive areas to go through on this.
I thought 3 was the hardest game by far as it was so easy to get lost and there were so many traps that you can't even cautiously avoid if playing it for the first time. Playing the series as a whole shows the amazing improvement in graphic and gameplay that happened during PS1 era. Its amazing that TR4 and 1 are just three years apart. The fire and water looks amazing in this game, I love the fast moving tinted sky, the bouncing boulders on the pyramid and even the fact that the controllers vibrate when you shoot or land from a jump. It just feels so much more tactile than the first game. I wish they'd continued making games with this engine but just a bit more refined but it seems that 3rd person adventure games adopted a Prince of Persia style movement in the 2000s.
This has been one of main videos i listen to in bed for the last few weeks when going to sleep, feel like i cam recite most of it from memory now 😅
Awesome 😂
19:34 I always hated that concept. How did the items not end up in some corners when the room is getting rotated all the time?
23:54 With all your body! Legs, back muscles, and arms.
27:52 Dito! I never finished a Resident Evil classic. I hated the camera angles. I finished Dino Crisis though.
I'm definitely on the top tier TR game camp :-) I loved everything about Tomb Raider IV. And it was a spectacle that Lara had the German voice of Pamela Anderson in this game 😀
I'm sure he played his brother's Crash Bandicoot. That game was awesome!
i look forward to your review of chronicles
I'm loving these reviews so much, I played 3 and chronicles alot, I am unbelievably stoked for your review on chronicles! Revelations gave me so much trouble too I never actually finished it, fucking good job doing that! It was a game that was such a chore to get even halfway lol
greetings my friends, am using this "review" as a guide actually, even tho i was doing unexpectedly well until reaching coastal mines where it gets confusing. i also missed the gap in the wall which leads to "lost library" and somehow i ended up outside again on the coastal mines. i also lost 1hr on lost library underwater pool looking for a lever until you said "i've obviously come here too early" as there was really nothing to do. first time i used "help" was on a damn train, i had no idea i should hang sideways on last wagon to find a door, that was completely beyond my belief. i was sure i missed something on the beginning so i was running 5x from first to last wagon. i managed to beat TR 1,2 and 3 remastered for the first time (not saying i didnt used help here and there) and it's just too long to wait 3 months for this one to come in remastered version. what's your opinion on this game's difficulty overall? imo it's not even worth starting this game before beating previous 3 titles. this one is much more confusing, way too many ways to go in certain areas, the game doesnt tell you what to do in most cases. i was usually wondering around levels most of the times not even knowing what is the ultimate goal on certain levels. am wondering if there is one single person on this planet that has manage to beat this one without a single peek into guide or walkthrough. am stucked atm on that damn puzzle on citadel gates and am wondering how much will it take me to take another "sneak peek" before i pi** off once for good. damn, this whole game after 1st chapter is completely madness, something like u're playing f***** Aldwych level whole time in terms of difficulty
Great video. Just a heads up theres a secret in the burial chambers. Before you approach set's sarcophagus, go into the mummy room. One of the empty pools has an open door that you can enter for a secret with shotgun ammo i believe.
Hey GFrom, after watching this review in the last months for multiple times, I dusted off my PS2 and tried to play it this summer without a guide (I didn't bother with all the secrets, those can't be found without a guide). It was a good run through memory lane. In the city of the dead I needed a peek in a guide for the first time and at the pyramids in the last chapter for the second time. Thanks for the good (Tomb Raider) reviews, I enjoyed it!
And of course: Where is the review of Tomb Raider 5?
The most cryptic TR of original core design series.
A gigantic review for a gigantic game. Just like you, this game never had a good impact on me. I remember waiting for its release anxiously and I loved the tutorial (except for the interruptions you mentioned), but the first actual levels end the fun for me. I couldn’t recognize the franchise in terms of graphics and Lara’s model has something weird to my taste. She seems shorter with a bigger head… Anyway. Believe me or not, I enjoyed Chronicles way more.
Still, you have made a review that makes me want to replay 1-5 games including this one that I never actually played entirely (Hello cheat codes) so thank you and yeah… your reviews are truly perfect! Take care!
I'm glad you liked the video! I hope you enjoy TR4 more on your next playthrough.
Amazing work, thanks. Tomb raider: the last revelation was my favourite one of the series.
After watching this, I've got to question myself on how the hell did I ever complete this game when I was still a kid, I had all the PS1 Tomb Raider games, the one I know I never completed was TR 3. (and Angle of Darkness on the PS2, but there's a very good reason why I never finished that one.) The quick sands on TR 3 got me stumped and my kid brain could never figure a way through.
Damn, I really want to play through these games again, for the nostalgia of my childhood. It was the game I daydreamed about playing after getting back home from primary school.
i finished this game 20 years after starting it
Your impressions about this game totally fit mine as well : I felt exactly the same as a kid. Bak in the 90's, I loved TR1 and 2, and had a lot of troubles with the 3 (I replayed TR3 during 2020 pandemic, it drove me nuts, especially in the London and Antarctica sections). So I was so HYPED for TR4... And, gosh, it was hard ! The menu, the game structure, the overall experience... The changes were really confusing when I was 10 :D
But the most confusing stuff was after the train. After the tutorial, I remember enjoying the two first chapters (but I used some cheats to pass Semerkhet's levels... Too much for me back then) and being astonished by Coastal Ruins... Before getting deeply lost.
Such a shame Core Design teams were rushed in creating new games. This constant pressure really destroyed classic Tomb Raider franchise.
I’m pretty sure they approached Last revelation’s intro level as a way to teach new players coming into the series. Its not a Numbered game so it’s likely they thought ppl who hadn’t played it before would give it a shot and needed to introduce the gameplay to them. It also released on the dreamcast which Sega hadn’t gotten a title since the first one on SAT.
Yo, GFrom, are you planning to get to Lost Artefact or Chronicles any time soon? It'd be a shame to have you not cover some of Classic Lara's best moments (Lost Artefact), or give us some laughs over the jank and missed opportunities in Chronicles.
As for TR4, it was the first game my Dad and I ever played together and our first TR. Picked it up right when it came out and loved it even though we couldn't finish it. We encountered a bug with the motorcycle that made it impossible to progress through the city, and we just never finished it. I'd end up beating it years later and loved every second of it. There's a number of bugs and some jank, but a lot of the puzzles, level designs, and enemies were really enjoyable. I don't personally miss the mansion since I never really bothered with it in the other games, but I do miss the statistics screen. Love the game either which way though.
Eventually! I'm taking a break right now but I'd like to tackle more games in the future.
While the game last a bit longer than it should, it's still my favourite old school TR by a large margin. Levels like The Tomb of Seth, Alexandria and Desert Railroad are still my favourite levels of all times.
1:06:10 : you're supposed to trap the minotaur inside the citadel to climb the ladder
Currently on my first playthrough since 2013. I do love the atmosphere of the game, but like you I never liked the tutorial level, and I didn't like the new inventory system nor how confusing much of the environments are. And of course the fact that I only have one save file on the Playstation memory card...
I thought tomb raider 3 was the worse tomb raider game I played regarding the ps1 tomb raider games till I played this game and some of the reasons I dislike it is uninspired levels,less colorful then the first two,long levels,boring puzzles,boring vehicles,same outfit throughout game,less cool weapons,garbage rope mechanic,ect so I give this game a 3/10
Thanks for your hard work on this review.
Thanks for watching :)
Also, "the times" music you rated as number 1 in the game, is also the theme that occurs when you enter the first official level when the sand falls in.
Yep, I know
Oh Gfrom - I know TR3 is a favourite of yours there’s an event in Derby this year (October) for TR3 and Judith Gibbons will also be there - if you’re interested there is still tickets google quad Derby if you are!
Was a competition between me and my dad growing up on who could beat a TR first we started at 1 and this was the only one I finished before him.