Tomb Raider III (PC) Level 1 Gameplay -No Commentary-

I recently bought the first four Tomb Raider games off Steam just to have the whole set. I already own Chronicles in physical form. I have also discovered that using the controllers that come with the Playstation Classic are a great way to play these games on the PC. The only one is doesn't work so well with is the original which doesn't recognize the trigger buttons.

Now, if you owned this on the PS1 instead of the PC back in the day, you may be wondering what differences in the two are. Well, for one, the PS1 version is 10 times harder. In the PC version, you can still save anywhere like you can in Tomb Raider II. For those who owned this on the PC, in the PS1 version, the green crystals which only seem to serve the purpose of giving you life in the PC version are the Save Crystals in the PS1 version of the game.

This means that in the PS1 version, you can only save during the course of the level if you have a save crystal. Run out of crystals, and you cannot save your game. I have literally lost over an hour and a half of my time playing a level in the PS1 version, because I didn't have a save crystal, or was too scared to save, because I only had one.

I tried putting my first ever playthrough of TRIII on the PS1 last year, and man, it was brutal. I ended up rage quitting after a while, because it just ground me down after a while. I even had a glitch happen where I got to the screen where you choose your next level, shut my game off, and then I could not longer choose the next level. Not even level skipping would work, I was forever stuck in London.

The PC version is far less frustrating, and a lot more playable thanks to the save system. That being said, TRIII has some other issues that make it probably my least favorite TR game in the original series. The levels in this game are huge compared to the first two. They have a ton of extra space, and are quite impressive, however, a lot of the space serves no purpose. You'll have a huge area with not much to do except maybe find an some ammo or something. It generally feels like there should be a lot more to do in these levels than there is.

There are some huge secret areas in some levels, but, for the most part, it feels like there is a lot of wasted space. I can't help wonder if maybe Core was initially planning on implementing the more open-world exploration elements in TRIII they would later use in The Last Revelation, but just ran out of time. The level designs almost feel like they were planning on it, but just ran out of time.

The story also doesn't make a whole lot of sense either, having almost as rushed a feel to it as the level designs. I never have a clue what is actually going on in the game, but then again, story isn't very important to me anyway.

Overall, I like Tomb Raider III, and still think it's a good game despite it's flaws, but it's still my least favorite of the first 5 TR games, and while some people really liked the save crystal system in the PS1 version because it makes it harder, I'm more prone to liking the PC version better, because there's nothing more frustrating than losing hours of gameplay because you have no means to save it, and get hit with an instant death trap which, oddly enough, get sprung quite often in Tomb Raider if you can believe that.

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