Tomb Raider Reloaded Review

The long-running Tomb Raider franchise has gone through many reinventions and explored a variety of genres and styles, even spawning several films and multiple unique forays into mobile phone gaming. I personally found myself very invested in the endless runner, Lara Croft: Relic Run, a few years back, but most audiences might be more familiar with Lara Croft Go, a puzzle title themed after board games that was developed by Onoma — then known as Square Enix Montréal — as part of their Go series. Now, alongside Emerald City Games, they are back to have Lara Croft tackle a roguelite experience for the franchise’s first time in Tomb Raider Reloaded.

Bringing back the classic Lara design, Reloaded features the beloved tomb raider running through a variety of somewhat randomised levels where she must shoot down hordes of wolves, snakes, bats, dinosaurs, and other enemies as well as solve puzzles and evade traps in order to reach the innermost parts of each tomb. They all contain some amount of rooms or stages to work through, either with a variety of foes to defeat or a puzzle to solve, and a boss fight at the end. And sometimes also a boss fight halfway through. Or maybe three times throughout the level. Or more.

Controlling Lara couldn’t be simpler, as the only thing the player is truly able to do in the heat of battle (at first, anyways), is move her around by dragging their finger across the screen. This causes her to put forward her best brisk jog around the tombs and ruins she finds herself traversing, which is usually enough to get out of the way of stray rocks or run away from ravenous plants. However, when Lara is on the run, she is (mostly) unable to attack anyone. Only when the player lifts their hand and allows the treasure hunter to stop in her tracks can she shoot at anyone with her wide assortment of weapons. This offers an interesting challenge where the player has to figure out the right time to move and the right time to stay put — a tough balancing act, especially when the screen is coated in enemies and all you really want to do is get Lara to run as far away as possible.

This engaging replacement of the more traditional action-adventure style of running and gunning is further complicated with run-exclusive upgrades, a staple of the roguelike genre. Many of these boosts will merely impact the stats, speed, effect, or spread of Lara’s basic attack, which is very helpful, but some can also unlock new methods of murder. For one example, there are the mines, which Lara will automatically drop onto the ground whenever she is still for a moment and which will explode when an enemy walks over them. For another, there are the grenades, an explosive slowly lobbed towards the closest enemy whether or not the player is moving. And then there are even more beyond that, with more being added into the mix with each new level.

These run-exclusive upgrades can seem like the only way Lara can get stronger, but she can also collect a variety of items that she can keep between runs, like various weapons with upgradable attack stats as well as differing firing speeds and spreads or powerful equipment that activates upon physical contact with opponents or when the player double taps the screen.

Each level has its own overall theme and the various stages get progressively harder the further Lara gets, so there’s never really a dull moment. Admittedly, the difficulty seemed to spike a bit too hard and a bit too frequently for my own personal tastes, but that’s primarily so that players will work through older levels more frequently to unlock more equipment and upgrade the tools they already have to their fullest extent, so I can’t get too mad. Plus, after the third level’s completion, Lara is introduced to smaller sets of 10-stage levels that act as a stepping stone between each of those major difficulty spikes, which is much appreciated in terms of offering a balanced feeling of progression.

Of course, while Reloaded is technically completely playable for free, a lot of important content, including free daily sets of coins and randomised equipment and the one-per-run free revive, is locked behind advertisements that the player has to watch. Thankfully, Reloaded offers the option of not curating these ads to one’s own tastes and, more importantly, there’s never a moment where the player absolutely must view an ad, but they do still come up quite frequently.

Aside from the potential frequent interruptions from ad viewing, Reloaded’s presentation is quite nice! As stated, the environments are fairly unique in their own rights and also, both the characters and enemies have this nice cute-ified, shrunken look to them that really works for a mobile game. The music and sound design are perfectly serviceable as well, offering a nice tinge of adventuring wonder throughout, though I often found it hard to notice anything remarkable therein.

Additionally, while I thankfully never saw anything directly impact the gameplay during any of my runs, I did find a few odd visual glitches and bugs in the menus — the screen darkening for way too long after disassembling extra equipment and different screens overlapping onto each other being the most common.

All in all, Tomb Raider Reloaded offers a solid package for Tomb Raider fans hoping to enjoy some light roguelite fun and an exciting mobile game that’s difficult to tear your eyes away from, lest Lara be torn in half by wolves.