How to play the Tomb Raider games in Chronological order
Tomb Raider is one of the most storied franchises in gaming history. Debuting almost 30 years ago, Lara Croft’s first adventure was one of the pioneers of early 3D gaming, and turned the fearless explorer into an instant icon.
Since then the Tomb Raider series has spawned numerous sequels, spin-offs and movies. The mainline games themselves can seem trickier to navigate than the caves Lara often explores, with multiple timelines and different styles of games, which most markedly changed with the franchise’s gritty reboot.
If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve put together this guide on how to play the Tomb Raider games in chronological order, which walks you through how to play each timeline in the right order, and how to play the games in the series in release date order.
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To see this content please enable targeting cookies. How many Tomb Raider games are there?
The Tomb Raider series has 20 games in total, which includes 13 main games and seven spin-offs. The mainline games take place across three different timelines, which each have their own overarching plots. The three timelines are: Original Saga, Legend of Tomb Raider and Survivor.
Which Tomb Raider should I play first?
If you’re just getting into the Tomb Raider series, a good place to start is the 2013 reboot. This acts as an origin story for Lara Croft, and kickstarted the most recent trilogy which offered a gritty reimagining of the franchise.
Tomb Raider chronological order
Here’s how to play the Tomb Raider series in chronological order. We’ll go through each timeline one-by-one, talking you through the how to play each saga in the right order:
Original Saga timeline
The Original Saga focuses on the first set of Tomb Raider games which are synonymous with the PS1. Almost all of Lara’s early adventures are playable on modern consoles, thanks to the Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered and the Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered collections.
Tomb Raider (1996)
Original release date: 1996
Time to beat: 15.5 hours
Where to buy: Steam / Amazon / PlayStation / Xbox / Switch
The original Tomb Raider is one of the defining games of the early wave of 3D gaming. It launched as a timed exclusive for the Sega Saturn before heading to the PS1, where it became one of the best-selling games for Sony’s first console. This huge success made the game’s heroine, Lara Croft, an instant gaming icon, who to this day is one of the most recognisable characters in all gaming.
The first game in the Original Saga has Lara being hired to find an artefact known as the Scion of Atlantis, which sends the archaeologist off on a globe-trotting adventure. It laid the blueprint for the series, with its mix of platforming gameplay, puzzle solving and gunfights. Like Super Mario 64, it was a watershed moment for 3D gaming, which offered a previously unprecedented level of movement over the 2D games people were playing only a few years earlier.
