The last Tomb Raider of the classic era.
TRC is widely considered as a regular game at best, product of the impossible schedule of releasing a new game every year since the first one. I kind of disagree, this game is the shortest one and it doesn't really innovate a lot, but has for the most part very interesting setpieces.
After the events of Last Revelations, this is a flashback game. Lara's old friends and his butler get together to remember four very different adventures of her past, each one having between 3 and 4 levels. The first one is in Rome, it includes a small tutorial area that can be skipped (although you will miss a secret and some items) and it features the return of Larson and Pierre from the original TR. The game is very ambigous in the timing of these events, could be a prequel to the first game, or not. Rome is classic Tomb Raider, a mix between the colisseum from TR1 and Venice from TR2.
Next is probably the best set of levels, a russian military base and a submarine. The atmosphere is superb in the submarine levels, there's even a short section where you get access to a motorized scuba diving suit and you have to dodge torpedoes fired by enemy submergibles.
The third section has you playing as teenage Lara in Ireland, the only gameplay change being that you don't have access to any weapons. The visuals are great, but unfortunately this section drags a lot, with long and useless cutscenes, obscure puzzles and the return of the dreaded swinging rope mechanic. Since you cannot hurt enemies directly, you have to restort to dodging or finding creative ways of dispatching them.
The last section ties with Werner Von Croy story from the last game. Lara infiltrates his company skyscraper in order to get the iris, an artifact that was hidden as an easter egg in TR3 and was crucial at the start of TR4. This part is obviously inspired by the success of Metal Gear Solid, as Lara is constantly interrupted by a sidekick who gives intel over a headset. Weirdly, Lara has no access to her dual pistols so you have to take care of your limited ammo. There's also a lot of emphasis on stealth, with items like chloroform to help you avoiding alarms.
As usual, Lara has a couple of new moves: tightrope walking (which is the slowest and most boring mechanic ever), bar swinging and a very welcomed forward jump when crouching. Regarding the bar swinging, they somehow forgot to include it in the tutorial and it's only used a couple of times during the last levels of the game. Surprisingly, there's no vehicles at all, but there's a gimmicky grappling hook gun that only shows up in the last level.
It's generally an ok farewell to the saga into the 21st century. All previous TR games built new stuff into the last one, Chronicles is the exception. There's also the huge bugs and issues with the last level Red Alert. Be very careful with that level, bosses can get stuck, saving in specific rooms might break scripts, some explosive barrels might not explode. Keep a lot of saves because if you run into one of these bugs, there's probably no way to beat the game.
It originally came with the level editor but unfortunately it was skipped in this release. A shame, even if it's outdated nowadays.
Again, and with more emphasis than ever, don't play this bugged version. Go for the incredibly better remastered version in the second trilogy. Not only they fixed most issues but they also enhanced the square looking cubes more than all the other remastered games.
