YMMV / Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation

• Awesome Music: The main theme of the game. Amusingly, it's often mistaken as the main theme for the whole franchise.
• Breather Level: Many of them throughout the game
  • The two jeep-based levels early on, Valley of the Kings and KV-5, are this, being a nice, action packed break between the exploration-heavy Tomb of Seth and what awaits in Karnak string of levels.
  • Desert Railroad. This one comes after the Karnak segment and is significantly more straightforward than even the previous two levels in Semerkhet's tomb. The worst hazard is falling off the train to an instant death, but a competent player should have little issues. The only problem is that this is before the significantly more complicated Alexandria segment.
  • Giza's segment, the last in the game. While the more difficult levels of the game, THANKFULLY you no longer are traversing a labyrinth of levels with little to no guidance, the game returning to standard Tomb Raider linearity to the end of the game.
• Broken Base: Two very mild examples, since the game was really well received by fans of the series.
  • It's either the hardest or almost as hard as the third game made by Core Design, depending mostly if your evaluation is based on game mechanics or complexity of level design.
  • Based on thickness of Nostalgia Filter, it's either as good as the first one or exceeding it in every single way.
• Camera Screw: Like its predecessor, this game sometimes shifts the camera to a fixed angle which provides a panoramic view of the area, but due to the controls of the game (which are based not on camera direction but Lara's), this can make getting around more difficult than it should. Some insistent pressing of the Look button or drawing your weapons usually fixes this, though.
• Complete Monster: Set is a Egyptian God of Evil and God of Chaos, who swore vengeance upon the world when he was imprisoned by his nephew Horus. Upon getting released, Seth uses his powers to release various monsters across the land and possesses the body of Lara Croft's former mentor, Werner Von Croy. Leading his monsters to attack the city of Cairo, resulting in it turning into a lifeless warzone and its military getting slaughtered, Seth tries to stop Lara Croft from thwarting his plans to "violate the Earth" and intends to spread his plagues across the world.
• Even Better Sequel: Opinions tend to vary on how the game stacks up to the first and second entries, but general consensus is that The Last Revelation was on par with the first game, with most of the fandom regarding it as one of the best games developed during the Core Design era, if not the whole franchise. The engine was dramatically improved from the previous games, introduced new elements to the gameplay, had complex and challenging levels and the plot was a tightly knitted story that not only managed to work with Egyptian Mythology in interesting ways, but also injecting far more characterization into the game than any prior Tomb Raider game had ever done before.
• Fan Nickname: "Ninjas" for mercenaries hired by Von Croy, even if they are implied to be locals and both script and game files name them as "desert warriors". Just check◊ yourself◊ to understand why. This comes from limited capabilities of graphics and game engine - their concept art◊ is far from stereotypical ninja.
• Goddamned Bats: Well, there are the bats.
  • More annoying are the golden birds in Cleopatra's Palaces; aside from being bullet sponges that launch fireballs, they will attack the golden statue of Lara that appears in the level, forcing her to drop down several stories just to take them out.
  • Let's not forget about scarab beetles. You can't kill them and they won't kill you instantly, but you will be forced to constantly run away from them and avoid them at all costs.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In-universe, Werner scolds teenage Lara for thinking about herself as "a world famous archaeologist adventurer Lara Croft, ja?" Becomes darkly humorous in Chronicles where Lara makes the news after her supposed death.
• It Was His Sled: These days, it's pretty common knowledge that Lara apparently dies at the end of the game. But back when the game was still new, it was a massive Player Punch to see one of the most iconic heroines in gaming history be killed. Fans were jostled by the reveal for a while afterward, since Core Design were deliberately tight-lipped about whether this was truly the end of the franchise or merely a cliffhanger meant to give the franchise a rest before continuing Lara's adventures in earnest.
• Player Punch: The ending. Of course, Lara turns out to have survived, but that didn't stop her apparent death from being a huge shock before it became common knowledge.
• Polished Port: Zig-zagged for the Dreamcast version. On one hand, the more naturally-colored lighting, better draw distance and general performance give it a unique edge over the original PlayStation release, but at the same time it really is just an up-ressed PS1 game, and it shows in the character models and level geometry. Plus the original, more vibrant lighting has its own sort of charm to it. The PC version on the other hand straight up uses the PS1 graphics unaltered besides the draw distance changes and being able to play at a higher resolution, but for how good the game already looked, that isn't a bad deal at all.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Rope swinging. Cool idea on paper and fitting for this type of game by all means...not as fun when the unusual physics and controls can have Lara swinging severely off course when having to make more precise jumps, such as swinging from rope to rope rather than swinging to another ledge. Needless to say, that attempt to do so in the Catacombs is likely to require a lot of reloads, and heaven help you if you attempt to get the secret you have to swing to...
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: After the enthusiastic reception of the second game and the divisive nature of the third game, The Last Revelation is often regarded as the pinnacle of quality in regards to the games made under Core Design. Just about everything was fine-tuned and improved upon from the previous three games: some of the best graphics and textures seen in the PlayStation era of the franchise, an improved engine, absolutely massive and complex levels, a far more immersive and engaging plot and giving the Narm Charm aspects of the series a darker spin - essentially reinventing the franchise without resorting to a Continuity Reboot. This is what ultimately lead to the following entry being far less regarded by both fans and critics alike.
  • It should be noted that original reviews were rather mixed. The game truly started to shine when the next two were released and then the series went through two reboots.
• That One Achievement:
  • The rope swinging secret in Catacombs is particularly infamous. The rope swinging controls make it way more difficult to get to than it should be.
  • There's a secret in City Of The Dead that requires the nitrous oxide upgrade for the motorcycle. Then, with the extra speed, you need to make a very difficult jump over to the secret, and then you have to jump back over. Expect a lot of deaths.
• That One Level:
  • The levels on the surface of Karnak temple complex. They are mildly difficult on their own, but what makes them so frustrating is the fact that's where the game introduces the whole concept of interconnected levels, without ever explaining this. The end result is aimlessly going around each level, with loading screens from time to time and no clue what's going on. The whole complex is so infamous, it outright sieved large chunk of players in such early stage of the game and was part of the reason why it received mixed reaction from fans. Ironically, compared with later levels of similar design, Karnak is pretty tame and straightforward.
  • The Alexandria segment is where the game's significantly more open world begins to become a massive labyrinth with very little indication of where to go, when, and what's necessary to progress. In comparison, the Karnak segment only encompasses three levels before Tomb of Semerkhet and Guardian of Semerkhet levels return to the linearity and Cairo only encompasses six. Alexandria involves a whopping EIGHT levels to run around and get lost in, especially with numerous passages to and from one another.
  • Cleopatra's Palaces, the final level of the Alexandria segment. Early on, you'll have to contend with more traps like those found in the Pharos, Temple of Isis level to find the remaining Scarab pieces necessary to get the Mechanical Scarab. Then, it's a matter of using the Mechanical Scarab to bypass spike traps...which is a problem when the Mechanical Scarab has about three uses before it blows to pieces if Lara attempts to use it again. If you've not been careful to explore and learn which hallways you won't need it for, then you'll miss out on a secret that you need the Mechanical Scarab to get to. The last part isn't quite so bad, though you do have to protect a Golden Statue of Lara from the vraeus' that attack it while you climb up a towering room.
  • The Great Pyramid, during the Giza segment, is a long level with loads of precise platforming required to avoid Lara sliding into a deep chasm and falling to her death, which isn't made any easier by frequent giant scarab attacks and a number of falling rocks trying to smash you.

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