The Tomb Raider series first hit stores in 1996 and has since become the 38th highest-grossing video game franchise of all time. The IP is universally recognized for its Indiana Jones-like adventures and for having one of the most iconic female protagonists in all media. Square Enix’s franchise has remained successful for over 20 years thanks to the consistently high quality of Lara Croft’s adventures, including the recent reboot trilogy, which featured some of the English archaeologist’s best games yet.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was released in 2018 and marked the end of Lara’s rebooted origin trilogy; the franchise will almost certainly return in the future, though there has been no concrete word of a new main series game as of yet. For this reason, many people may be looking to revisit some of Lara’s past adventures to keep them busy in the meantime. To help such people out, we have ranked every main series Tomb Raider game by their Main Story completion time on howlongtobeat.com.
12 Tomb Raider: Legend – 7 Hours
Tomb Raider: Legend was released in 2006 by Square Enix Europe under their previous name Eidos Interactive. The game was the first in the series to be developed by Crystal Dynamics, following the disappointment over Core Design’s Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
In hopes of revitalizing the series, Crystal Dynamics opted for a quality over quantity approach and consequently made Tomb Raider: Legend significantly shorter than The Angel of Darkness. The risk paid off, as despite the game only having eight levels, Tomb Raider: Legend was well-received both critically and commercially.
11 Tomb Raider: Underworld – 10 Hours
Tomb Raider: Underworld was the third entry in Crystal Dynamics’ Legend trilogy, following the release of Tomb Raider: Anniversary the year prior. The game took a noticeably more modern approach to its gameplay, with destructible environments, more open levels, and an intricate weather system all implemented. The game didn’t perform as well as its two predecessors critically, though it still received respectable Metascores that fell between 70 and 80 across its multiple releases.
10 Tomb Raider Chronicles – 11 Hours
Tomb Raider Chronicles’ announcement was somewhat of a surprise, as the previous main series game ended with Lara appearing to be killed after part of a temple came crashing down. However, the franchise’s success meant that Eidos Interactive didn’t want Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation to be the final main series game. Hence, Tomb Raider Chronicles hit stores almost exactly one year later.
Tomb Raider Chronicles begins with Lara’s friends reminiscing over her presumed death, with their stories becoming the playable levels.
9 Tomb Raider (2013) – 11.5 Hours
Following the success of the Legend trilogy, Square Enix decided to team up with Crystal Dynamics once again to create a rebooted origin story for Lara Croft. The first game in the rebooted trilogy was released in 2013 and took inspiration from other successful adventure games of its time, such as the Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed series.
The most notable changes to the series were the vastly more open levels that were littered with collectibles and side activities, as well as the emphasis on gritty, survival gameplay.
8 Shadow of the Tomb Raider – 12.5 Hours
The most recent entry in the series, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was released in 2018 and marked the end of Lara’s rebooted origin trilogy. The game’s development was credited to Eidos-Montréal, with Crystal Dynamics providing additional work.
The Tomb Raider franchise seems to have two consistent factors: the games can be categorized into groups of three, and the third game tends to be the weakest. Unfortunately, Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn’t an exception to the rule, as although the game wasn’t considered to be bad by any means, it’s viewed as the weakest entry in the rebooted trilogy.
7 Tomb Raider: Anniversary – 13 Hours
The aforementioned Tomb Raider: Anniversary was the second entry in the franchise’s Legend trilogy. Despite being in the center of a trilogy, the game was a remake of the original Tomb Raider game from 1996. The game was well-received by critics, though it struggled to perform commercially. This was likely due to the remake’s odd placement within the Legend trilogy, as well as its Anniversary name that implied it wasn’t a main series release.
6 Rise of the Tomb Raider – 13.5 Hours
From one game in the middle of a trilogy to another, Rise of the Tomb Raider was the second entry in rebooted origin trilogy. Crystal Dynamics didn’t try to reinvent the wheel with Rise of the Tomb Raider and kept the core gameplay similar to its 2013 predecessor. Keeping the core gameplay similar allowed Crystal Dynamics to focus on improving the pre-existing mechanics, which was evidently a wise move as the game is today considered to be one of the iconic franchise’s best-ever entries.
5 Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness – 14.5 Hours
As mentioned before, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is one of the worst received main series entries in the Tomb Raider franchise, consequently making it the last game that Core Design developed.
Core Design seemed to have the right idea when setting out their plan for the game, as they wanted Angel of Darkness, which was Tomb Raider‘s first PlayStation 2 release, to compete with other action games releasing at the time rather than reverting back to its PlayStation 1 style. However, despite multiple delays, The Angel of Darkness was released with numerous bugs and control issues, resulting in a PlayStation 2 Metascore of just 52.
4 Tomb Raider II – 15.5 Hours
A main story completion time of 15.5 hours is an incredible achievement for a PlayStation 1 adventure game, and the fact that it’s the first of the original trilogy to appear on this list shows just how ahead of their time the first three Tomb Raider games were. Despite the impressive runtime, Core Design’s second Tomb Raider game certainly doesn’t prioritize quantity over quality, as Tomb Raider II is still one of the franchise’s most well-received entries to this day.
3 Tomb Raider (1996) – 15.5 Hours
Core Design’s iconic original entry into the Tomb Raider series was initially released in 1996 on the Sega Saturn before coming to the PlayStation 1 and MS-Dos a couple of months later.
Although they may not seem like anything special today, the game’s 3D graphics were groundbreaking for the time of its release. The innovative graphics were likely a key factor behind the game’s whopping sales of over 7 million, which made it the PlayStation 1’s seventh highest-selling game of all time.
2 Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation – 16.5 Hours
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation had a huge weight of pressure on its shoulder prior to the game’s 1999 release, as not only was it the first release after the original trilogy, but the disappointment over Tomb Raider III meant it could have been the franchise’s last entry if it failed to impress.
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation isn’t considered to be among the series’ best entries, but it was well-received nonetheless and succeeded in its task of breathing new life into the series.
1 Tomb Raider III – 18.5 Hours
As mentioned before, Tomb Raider III was viewed as a disappointment upon release. However, this wasn’t because the game marked a noticeable drop in quality from its predecessors; it was because fans and critics felt that the game did very little to differentiate itself from the two previous releases. Still, Tomb Raider III is enjoyable to play even today, with the vintage Tomb Raider formula taking place in numerous interesting locations such as London and Antarctica.
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