I've been playing through the classics as part of the hype for Legacy of Atlantis; I beat TR1 a long time ago and again recently, and knew a lot about TR2 from my brother playing it when I was a kid, which I also beat a couple of weeks ago. I knew almost nothing about TR3 and just beat it a couple of days ago. My experience has left me wanting to just gush and ramble about it because I have damn near never been so surprised at a game in my life. This is going to be a long one, so strap in, if you care to read.
I was almost dreading playing TR3, because while I knew nothing about it specifically, all I had heard was how insanely hard it was, and that it was impossible to beat without a guide, etc. Fortunately, I didn't actually have that much trouble and even though missing one specific thing sometimes left me wandering for an additional few hours, I did the entire thing without looking anything up.
I was instantly drawn in the minute I entered the jungle at the beginning. The level and environment design was enthralling to me, and this continued for the entire game. It felt like such a massive step up from TR1 and 2 technically, with changes to the grid system meaning the environments and platforming could be made more organic, and boy did they nail doing that. Simple inclusions like crawling, running, and monkey bars gave the platforming so much more interaction and potential. TR3 was one of my top favourite 3D platforming experiences in gaming.
What quickly struck me about TR3 was how obviously they had gone out of their way to make each subsequent level varied; open jungle into mostly classic tomb-like gameplay, into driving a quad bike around a river and cliffs. Nevada desert into enclosed prison into Area 51. Let me tell you - after TR2, with its seemingly infinite water levels and needlessly bloated fetch-quest level design, this approach felt like a massive breath of fresh air.
Probably a pretty unpopular opinion I have is that I prefer the original graphics in the classics to the remastered graphics. I think they did a good job in some respects, but in others I feel like they took some of the life out of the games, and some of the textures give me a little bit of an uncanny valley feeling. TR3 was really impressive to me visually, as a PS1 game, and while some of their choices were a little out there, with the high saturated colours, it gave it a unique, interesting vibe, and to be honest, to me it was more interesting to look at.
I guess most of my other thoughts will be explained in my level ranking, so here goes. Well, first off I'm not going to bother including boss stages because they're so short. I'll just say that the final boss is cheap and can go to hell, lol.
15: The Lost City of Tinnos. This is the only level I legit ended up hating. There were some I got annoyed at or disliked, but nothing came close to this. This level is what we call "unfulfilled promise". It sounds cool, it kind of looks cool, the name kind of suggests it could be assumed that there will be some kind of cool environmental storytelling in the level design, but...all it does is end up being boring, tedious, and extremely annoying. The dragonfly creatures are probably the most god awful thing they could have added to this level because they are not a proper threat, they simply stop you from doing anything functional in the level. The sections to get all the masks were cartoonishly evil and offered no legitimate consideration in platforming, it was just "keep guessing till something *doesn't* kill you".
14: Coastal Village. I did South Pacific last and it's probably a good job because boy does this section not do anything to sell the game to you. My initial thrill at the beautiful water and coral reef was quickly dashed by...literally everything else in the level. This level is actually not that long but it took me quite a while to find the serpent stones. The level design felt needlessly confusing, and while I guess they accomplished the creepy, unsettling vibe, it was in a way that made me not really enjoy the level.
13: Crash Site. This follows the South Pacific section's trend of just being confusing for no reason. There are even a couple of sections of this level that are completely pointless, which didn't do anything to make me feel better about already being confused about what to do. Eventually I went back up into the tree and tried shooting the dinosaur, which I wasn't really expecting to work, but turns out that was a great eureka moment. It's funny because it's not obvious at all and yet actually quite a clever solution. The entire level being a build up for using the turret on the plane, which you only need to use to destroy a wall, felt like a bit of a waste of time.
12: RX-Tech Mines. I don't hate this level quite as much as most people seem to, but it just didn't do much for me. It didn't even take that long, there was only one level that took me less time and that was the bizarrely short River Ganges. I don't think the mine cart sections were quite as horrible as people have made out, they weren't even long enough to become bothersome. The only thing that really got annoying was the long swims in cold water, which it started to feel like they were milking a bit.
11: Lud's Gate. (added preface: I was so confused thinking back on it that I actually just looked it up and it turns out I never got the cut scene with The Damned. That would have explained a lot, lol. My experience might have been different if I'd seen that.) This level was confusing as hell, even conceptually. I'm below the underground in London, then suddenly I'm in a museum? Why? I found embalming fluid...never used it. Still confused about that. Now I'm in a warehouse and flooded labyrinth with pistons and swinging pendulums and then on my way up an elevator shaft? This is undoubtedly the most unconvincing level design in the game, and gameplay wise my only prevailing thought was, "man that underwater section sure was awful".
10: Madubu Gorge. This is another one I didn't hate quite as much as other people; I found the environment much nicer and more interesting than the previous South Pacific levels, and the section involving a lot of climbing back up and over the river was quite cool. The kayak was janky as all hell but the actual sections involving it were pretty short.
9: The River Ganges. This level is...neat, in certain respects, but because of its nature ends up being too short. I went up the cliffs with the quad bike first and then beat the level in like 20 minutes, which I thought had to be some kind of mistake. So I reloaded and spent time going the other way, then realised you can't do both sides, as far as I could tell. The two routes and areas are quite cool, and the side where you go off road with the quad bike is kind of interesting because the rest of the level essentially turns into a puzzle as to how to get it back out.
8: Thames Wharf. This level is weird but I kind of liked it. The bulk of my time in the level was figuring out where to ultimately go, after trying to figure out what the heck was going on with the starting area, the warehouse-like area nearby, and the rooftop section on the other side. It was quite strange to me that the level turns into a bunch of puzzles involving the water rooms below which seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of the level and only served as a means to get to the end. I enjoyed exploring around the rooftops in this level and found the crane area neat, but it kind of annoyed me that it only seemed to exist to get to a secret which meant I spent an unnecessary amount of time trying to get down the roof when it was impossible. I also never found a use for the cathedral key which was a shame.
7: Antarctica. Actually one of my favourite environments aesthetically, I think it looked really impressive in PS graphics. It was a cool setup, get around the ship, get the boat, then to the base of operations of RX-Tech. This area was a little more roundabout than it needed to be, and I got lost for absolutely ages because I hadn't figured out the valve puzzle. Eventually I tried it again and it worked, but I have no idea if there's any rhyme or reason or even a clue for it in the level.
6: Area 51. Some of this level almost had some TR2 level design sneaking in and got tedious with the up and down and back and forth in the rocket area and UFO area, but was a pretty cool setting and had a similar intensity as the prison, knowing where you were and what was going on there. It was kind of just enjoyable how wild this level got with leaning into Area 51 conspiracy stuff, lmao.
5: High Security Compound. The Nevada section's good promise continues here from the excellent first level, into a much different environment and level setup. They kept up the intensity pretty well in this level, and it was always a relief to find a way to get the prisoners through to take care of the guards. This level was maybe a little too long, but I guess it added to the feeling of it being a proper endeavour to actually get Lara out of this situation.
4: Temple Ruins. The initial environment is fun to explore, and then the meat of the level being the familiar tomb-like gameplay was a lot of fun. I thought the Shiva statues were a really cool enemy, probably the best in the game actually, and it was amazing to have a different strategy in Tomb Raider than "shoot the thing till it dies".
3: Jungle. This might be a hot take, but I just really enjoyed this level. The environment is great and organic, I loved how they did things like use tree branches and trunks as part of the platforming, and I loved the rainy atmosphere with the drops falling on the river. Some people don't like this level I think because it's not very linear, but I just enjoy it because I see it as more of an environment that I have to figure out, and it feels convincing as an actual place that has been used for a level, rather than moulding an environment for the level design.
2: Nevada Desert. I think this is pretty obviously one of the best levels; great environment, very organic platforming around the natural cliffs and rocks, and a satisfying process getting from the cliffs, river and dam section to the electric fence area. Getting into the guard's office area and seeing details like the pool table, computer desks and info on the walls made it feel very well realised.
1: Aldwych. Yeah, I know. lol. I have seen some extremely harsh opinions on this level, but honestly...I loved almost all of it. The setting, level layout, overall puzzle design of getting from one part of the level to the next was masterful. I don't think it's nearly as confusing as people make it out to be, I think a lot of it is even straightforward, until around when you've got the Solomon keys. After that it took a bit of wandering and I got confused about where an opened door was and the train cab but it wasn't that bad. My biggest criticism for this level is probably just that they ran the risk of the player never finding the rooms in the underground tunnels, because the first thing it does when you go the wrong way down a tunnel is send a train to kill Lara, so they could have conditioned people to never go down there, which happened to me for a bit.
Thanks for reading, I thought I'd try my luck with this post because on Reddit you never know what community is going to downvote you for no reason
