While *Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis* is a remake of the very first game in the series, our gameplay review concludes: It’s primarily looking toward the future.
Well, let someone try to complain about that. After years where new Lara Croft games were rarer than fair rent prices in major German cities, we’re now getting not just one new Tomb Raider, but two! With Tomb Raider: Catalyst comes a massive sequel that aims to coherently continue not only the latest reboot trilogy but also the three Legend games that came before it.
And then there’s Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. This 2027 Tomb Raider is being developed by Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog (Evil West, Shadow Warrior) and has a noble mission: To reimagine the origin story of Lara Croft—that is, the very first game in the series—for all the young people for whom 1996 sounds even more ancient than going to the movies without constantly checking your phone.
There’s just one problem.
Lara Croft has changed over the years. In the latest installments, her dialogue sometimes sounded like a Tumblr account, while the old Lara from back then steals the show from every ice cube when it comes to coolness. So does the heroine in Legacy of Atlantis have to tone it down to fit the new style of the reboot era?
After playing Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis at the Summer Game Fest 2026, I can state with all eloquence: No./p>
Table of Contents
A Remake of a Different Kind
The more experienced shrews among you will have already caught on: Wasn’t there already a remake of the first Tomb Raider? That’s right, but Legacy of Atlantis takes a very different direction than Tomb Raider: Anniversary from 2007.
Don’t expect a remake in the sense of a faithful re-release, like Metal Gear Solid Delta or the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced. Legacy of Atlantis draws inspiration from the original 1996 Tomb Raider, but treats the original more as a color palette to create a completely new work of art.
I was able to experience this firsthand during my half-hour hands-on session on the Peru level.
The opening scenario of Legacy of Atlantis will be very familiar to fans of the original: the hard-nosed archaeologist Lara Croft is recruited by corporate executive Jacqueline Natla to recover remnants of the legendary Atlantis. One of these is said to be hidden in the Inca ruins of Vilcabamba in the Andes, so the game promptly begins in Peru.
Throughout the entire demo, Lara exudes the charm of the classic Tomb Raider era: she delivers sarcastic one-liners, wonderfully voiced in a British accent by Alix Wilton Regan, doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do, yet never comes across as silly or, conversely, too disinterested. At least in the demo, the developers have hit the perfect sweet spot.
“One of the most beautiful games I have ever seen”
The new Peru level shares a few basic ideas with the original: Lara must interact with ancient column and water systems to open paths, and a T-Rex awaits at the end. The “how,” however, feels completely fresh.
Whereas levels in Tomb Raider 1 (and also Anniversary) still felt like gyms with a Peruvian, Greek, or Egyptian theme, where crates, ledges, and rooms didn’t really feel natural, Legacy of Atlantis presents me with a breathtaking landscape where everything looks unique.
I’ll even go out on a limb: Legacy of Atlantis is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen. Sure, its predecessor, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, already flexed its graphical muscles here, but Atlantis draws an opulence from Unreal Engine 5 that is second to none. The ruins of Peru are overgrown with vegetation, and every crack in the rock looks believable.
Much Less Modular
As a result, the gameplay also feels much less like a modular system. Sure, at its core, Lara Croft’s arsenal remains very familiar; the design signature of Shadow of the Tomb Raider carries over almost one-to-one: I have to climb, solve puzzles, and fight now and then.
But Atlantis achieves a much smoother flow than the original because I rarely perform the same action twice in a row. To activate a mechanism, for example, I have to collect gears. I reach the first one fairly easily by using my grappling hook to tear down a wooden beam and expose the loot.
For the second one, I have to manipulate an ancient water pump. And for the third, I climb up a massive waterfall, hack through dense vegetation with my pickaxe, swing across chasms using makeshift crossbeams, and then use sheer brute force to smash a mechanism so the gear can float down the waterfall.
By the way, there’s also a new skill system: By finding secrets, I earn skill points that I can use to… unlock something. The mechanic was still disabled in the demo, but I’m guessing we’re talking about crafting and health boosts here.
Speaking of crafting: Just like in the Reboot games, Lara finds all sorts of plants and resources in the environment that she can use to cobble together useful… stuff. Here, too, the demo remains very restrained when it comes to health items.
And “vague” point number three: In the options, I can manually adjust all sorts of difficulty levels, including the puzzles. I don’t know yet what concrete effect this has, though. According to the description, it’s mostly about hints and UI tips that are missing on higher difficulty levels.
So you see: The devs are still keeping many genuinely new mechanics under wraps; the demo session remains a rough first impression.
Speaking of keeping things under wraps: You don’t actually fight until the very end of the demo. And I think that’s great.
The Right Focus
Over the years, Tomb Raider has occasionally flirted with the idea of being more of an action shooter than an action-adventure. After all, Call of Duty raked in the cash in the 2000s, and the 2013 reboot in particular felt quite heavy on the gunplay at times.
Legacy of Atlantis seems—at least based on the demo—to stay close to the more puzzle-heavy original. From experience, I can confirm: it’s definitely a statement (and a risk) when a press demo consists of 90 percent puzzles and exploration, but in my opinion, a good Tomb Raider should do exactly that! Legacy of Atlantis rekindles the thrill of exploration and the fun of discovering secrets hidden throughout the levels.
Lara Croft now even has a scanner—much like her counterpart Samus from Metroid—that allows her to scan all sorts of interactive or important objects in the game world to get additional information and tips. This underscores the focus on exploration.
Conversely, this also means: You probably shouldn’t buy the game just for the action. At the end of the demo, Lara fights some raptors, revealing a rather rudimentary combat system. Since you rarely face human opponents, the game does away with the cover mechanics of the reboot trilogy; instead, the fights are very reminiscent of the Legends, Anniversary, and Underworld eras.
In other words: Lara dodges the raptors’ attacks with acrobatic maneuvers; using a special button, she briefly slows down time and then lands precise headshots to quickly take down the vicious dinosaurs. It’s fun, no question, but it feels more like a utilitarian experience.
The escape from the T-Rex, on the other hand, is “style over substance,” just as we’ve come to expect from most chase sequences in the reboot era: You press the run button and jump here and there while everything around you explodes and crumbles. It looks fantastic, but by no means captures the true appeal of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
That looks good
And Legacy of Atlantis has plenty of appeal. If the rest of the adventure maintains the demo’s level of quality in terms of level design, variety, and flow, then you can expect not only one of the best action-adventures since Uncharted 4 or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but also one of the most beautiful.
For me, the biggest question marks still hang over the story: Aside from the cool locations, the plot of the original could fit on a beer mat. The first remake from 2007 solved this shortcoming with a clever twist, combining the old story with the larger narrative of Tomb Raider: Legend and Underworld to tell a new and bigger story.
So far, Legacy of Atlantis shows no signs of that. The first trailers and the playable demo adapt the 1996 setup one-to-one; and if Natlas’s obvious betrayal from the very first second remains the biggest surprise of the story even in 2027, then I’m almost looking forward to my tax bill, because that promises more thrills.
But well, to be fair, I’ve only peeked at the first level, so my conclusion remains optimistic for now: Legacy of Atlantis has made a fantastic impression in every respect so far. And that makes me, as a Tomb Raider fan, happier than I’ve been in a long time.
Editor’s Verdict
I have to confess: After the initial announcement of Legacy of Atlantis, I was disappointed. If you count the 2024 remaster, this is the fourth time I’ve been served Lara Croft’s first adventure—and hey, nothing against the first Tomb Raider, but compared to the equally fantastic second, third, and fourth installments, the original doesn’t deserve such a high pedestal, neither in terms of story nor in terms of actual game design. The first Tomb Raider was great back then, but personally, I would have been much happier with a remake of the second, third, or fourth installment.
After playing it, I see things differently. For one thing, Legacy of Atlantis doesn’t just restore the original’s levels and game mechanics; it creates a completely new adventure within the familiar framework. For one thing, no material is better suited to bringing Lara Croft back to her core business than the Atlantis chapter.
Globetrotting, exploration, puzzles, battles against prehistoric monsters –if you feel Lara has strayed too far from her path over the past 15 years, here you’ll find all the strengths that made the brand great in the first place. No tacked-on open-world nonsense, no whiny demystification of a heroine, no shooter in Tomb Raider’s guise. I don’t want to badmouth the reboot trilogy here—after all, it simply took a different path, and did so very, very well—but it feels great to experience Lara Croft in such an old-school way again after all these years. Especially since, with Catalyst, we don’t have to do without the actual sequel at all.
