"It's not every day you come face to face with the Cretaceous period."
--Lara Croft, Tomb Raider Reloaded
Tomb Raider Reloaded might or might not have been through very tumultuous updates since its release; I did not play it immediately upon launch, so everything I observed is from within a particular window of time afterward. What this mobile game offers is a very specific, alternate direction for the franchise. This is not Rise of the Tomb Raider, with its third-person gameplay and exploration of a psuedo-Christ figure, whether or not God reveals himself through the natural world, and the nature of eternal life in a world like ours. It is not Lara Croft Go, a game that makes up for its lack of ideological and narrative depth with its brilliantly executed turn-based mechanics. It is a very different Tomb Raider game, and this is not a negative thing in itself--besides the potentially enormous time that can be required to complete the game for free.
Production Values
Tomb Raider Reloaded's stylized graphics are perfectly at home in the smartphone format and maintain consistent quality through the entire game. Lara and her different outfits, the enemies that range from animals like snakes and bats to screen-filling bosses, and the 11 different environments (as of the last time I played prior to scheduling this post) are animated very well. Many, many enemies can appear onscreen at the same time without drops in performance. In some levels, the number of opponents that manifest at once will be so overwhelming that without persistent upgrades and/or fortunate in-run bonuses, it would be almost impossible to survive. Crisp sounds like Lara's gunfire and the noises from miscellaneous creatures complement the aesthetic strengths and fairly smooth stability of the game.
Gameplay
Each of the game's regions (Peru, Greece, Egypt) has its own levels, and each level has its own stages, ranging from 20-50. With puzzle or "escape" stages periodically appearing, the majority of each stage in a level is devoted to fighting enemies. You do have to stand still to attack unlike the firing mechanic in Mighty Doom, a very similar game that is also a spin-off from an established mainstream gaming franchise; in that game, you automatically shoot even if you never stop moving. This delays the clearing of dangerous levels in Reloaded but adds elements of strategy and vulnerability completely absent from Mighty Doom. As you clear a stage, Lara's XP meter fills up, granting an ability of your choice (out of a handful of options), like an elemental grenade that is launched every four seconds at a nearby enemy, a ring around Lara that damages enemies inside the radius, or a two second boost of 50% to damage every eight seconds. These abilities only last for the duration of the level, having nothing to do with the permanent upgrades to weaponry, amulets, and so on.
The weapons you can use range from Lara's signature dual pistols to a shotgun, an assault rifle, a spear, a chakram, and more, so there are instruments beyond firearms. Along with other equippable items like masks, amulets, and ammunition types, these can be upgraded by using coins and a certain amount of "manuals" for each category (weapons, masks, etc.), which can be obtained at random by finishing stages. Likewise, though they use a distinctive upgrade system, individual outfits can be upgraded--and already have their own base stats and special abilities. The Bomber Jacket featured in many of my screenshots, for instance, lets you burn enemies upon attacking them; it simply takes a very particular amount of separate collectibles to unlock a new outfit. Also, artifact pieces recovered from puzzle stages show up at random, but once secured, allow even more passive bonuses like additional health points or a reduction in damage from direct contact with enemies, and these can also be upgraded. The equipment, skins, and artifacts thus contribute to a rather nuanced web of items and enhancements.
Now, it is precisely the details of the upgrade system that can force the player to spend so much time grinding. Combining three of the same, say, weapons or ammunition types of the same color forges a superior version of the item, which then requires two others of its new color before the equipment can be enhanced again in this way. This process becomes extremely lengthy for people unwilling to pay for microtransactions because you cannot control which items you will receive from playing through levels or from item crates (one is free every day if you watch an ad). It could easily take 5-10+ months of playing, depending on how frequently someone gives the game their attention, to become powerful enough to complete the entire game without paying money to accelerate the process. Thankfully, there is some variety. You do not have to replay whichever main levels have already been unlocked in order to gradually gain resources. Weekly events such as banner brawl, where Lara has to remain within migrating circles to earn points as enemies start to swarm her, offer something different, yet the same handful of events are eventually cycled through.
Story
Lara travels from Peru to Greece and eventually Egypt in search of various artifacts, with no developed narrative (although none is necessary here). Her friend Anaya and her butler appear to provide bonuses every so many stages, but they do not speak, and Lara herself only speaks in introductory cinematics.
Intellectual Content
Reloaded does not dive into (as fallaciously as Lara from the 2013-2018 games handles herself philosophically) subjects from the reboot trilogy like the metaphysics and logical possibility of supernatural phenomena, what eternal life in the present human condition would be like, and so on, but in this genre of mobile gaming, this is not a problem though it is not even a puzzle game like Lara Croft Go [1]. Upholding the imagery of the franchise and adapting it for a smartphone-exclusive experience, it does not need to do more than provide challenging combat that sometimes calls for careful observation and strategizing, and in this the game succeeds. It is not a narrative or theme-driven game and this is not to its detriment.
Conclusion
The core problem, other than occasional server issues, is not the microtransactions themselves, but that without them, the game takes such an enormous amount of to complete all the way to the end of whatever is the currently released final location. Tomb Raider Reloaded is otherwise great at what it sets out to do: providing a stage-based, isometric shooter take on Lara Croft's adventures suited to the mobile format. It is difficult enough that players must actually put in effort and take the time to grind for items but strong enough in its mechanics to have competence and depth. For what it is, at least in the form I experienced, Tomb Raider Reloaded is a generally well-designed game great for bursts of play and for casual or thoroughly invested players alike.
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